Welcome to the Future

First there was the Internet,

already predicted (among many other facets of 21st-century life!) in its contemporary form by David Brin in his novel Earth.

And then we partied like it's 1999!

(that's Will Smith's brilliant takeoff on Prince's "1999")

Then we had our first hand transplant.

Amusingly enough, not long after the newsworthy procedure took place, a certain science-fiction TV show that shall go unnamed had an episode in which a character was unrecoverably injured in their hand. Or lost their hand in an accident. Or something along those lines. Anyway, part of the plot was trying to deal with the loss of the hand, and the flaky attempts to use crappy mechanical replacements. So I'm watching this episode, and thinking, why the heck don't they just give the guy a hand transplant?

So now I hear about this face transplant in France?

Barukh hu’ haborei’ — avinu, bore’einu, yotzereinu, hatzayar ha‘elyon — asher hhalaq mikohhotav lebanav!

However, I am proud to say that the clearest sign that we are now living in the Future is part of a homework assignment written by one of my students. As an 'everyday example' of how a historical gap can complicate attempts to understand and interpret a text or other form of communication, one of them wrote:

"If I was talking to someone from the 20th century it would be hard for me to understand how the world was back then.
[However,] if I was talking to Sam who is from my century we would understand each other."