12/06/95 I'm from the future...and I'm trying to get Home. It's a strange sort of statement to make, but it seems perfectly obvious to me. I have this idea of "Home" in my head, and it's a place where everyone is educated, everyone is well-fed and everyone has a roof over their head. No one goes cold at night, and people don't fight with each other over the color of skin, type of religion, or difference of opinion between them. Back Home, the people are creative. They spend their time finding problems to solve, and solving them. They don't worry about whether there will be enough food, they make sure there will be. They don't fight over oil, as they figured out long ago how to harvest the bounty of renewing resources, without dipping into the depleting stores of fossil fuels. They aren't concerned with artificially created scarcity, as they realize that we live in an infinite Universe, with untold possibilities awaiting those smart enough to grasp them. Long ago they actualized thinking for themselves, and stopped heeding the words of so-called "leaders." Once they stopped listening to the power-hungry, they found all the power they needed within themselves...and people stopped going hungry. So how do I know I'm from the future? Well, the world I envision hasn't existed in the past, and certainly doesn't exist now, so it's pretty obvious where it must be. I'm a neophile. That is, I like new things. I like change. I tend to get bored quickly with doing the same thing over and over and over again. I try to learn something new every day. At LEAST one thing. I inundate myself with new music, art, information, and experience. I've found that I have an affinity for learning new things, figuring out how they work, and being able to teach them to others. That's part of why I became a designer. I'm trying to find solutions to some of the problems that seem to keep popping up (homelessness, hunger, education shortage, rampant outbreaks of politics, etc.) and help others deal with those problems. Once we get the basics sorted out, maybe people will stop worrying so much. Maybe they'll start thinking more often, and be less likely to fall sway to the people always barking orders. I've noticed that being connected to the Internet has an interesting effect on human consciousness and intelligence: People seem to get smarter the longer they're online, and the more they communicate with others. That's part of why I work with computers, and am working to hook as many people up to the net and the world-wide-web as possible. I figure that once we hit a certain critical mass, the collective intelligence will start snowballing, and we'll spiral outward in a mass evolution unlike anything ever seen in our history. I figure that's my best bet for getting Home... Pat _____________________________Think For Yourself______________________________ Patrick G. Salsbury http://www.sculptors.com/~salsbury/ ----------------------- Don't break the Law...fix it. ;^)