Tomorrow will be just like today, only moreso

[elfs]

The Office Of, Er, Today.

While at Disneyland, I avoided Tomorrowland for most of the day, sure I'd be disappointed. And I was. The House of Tomorrow was, well, the house of today, only with more monitors. The home office of tomorrow is made of stained cherrywood, very masculine, with a four-monitor setup (and every monitor that wasn't in a tablet or handheld was 24" or bigger) on the desk, a monitor over your head with your to-do and agenda staring you in the face, and monitors on your desk facing outward convincing anyone who looks at your desk that you love your family. The den of tomorrow has a 100" TV. The kitchen of tomorrow has 24" monitors and tablet computers running Windows 7 to help you cook. Every bedroom has a wall-embedded gigantic monitor, and a tablet for environmental control, and pitch-perfect surround sound. The patio of tomorrow has an enormous gas grill and, yes, a monitor. This one was vertical; I kept hoping Wheatly would show up. It's all fully aspirational.

"The House of Tomorrow" is really the House of Today With A Much Higher Electric Bill.

Oh, and the sound systems are all controlled by a Microsoft Zune. Bill Maher recently did a skit about Osama Bin Laden, then apologized for one slur: "Saying Osama Bin Laden was a Zune user is a line I should not have crossed, and I'm sorry." Disneyland uses Zunes.

I walked through the exhibit, amused, and when I reached the end I said aloud, "Dammit, where's my posthuman future?"

A hipsterly dressed young man next to me said, "That's what I was wondering, too." We smiled at each other and went our separate ways.