Essay16

Essay 16: The Impermanence of Current Trends

I was talking to my older son, over a beer, after a game of racquetball, one warm August evening when the conversation turned to grocery delivery of all things. We have great talks that wander all over the place. Sometimes we talk about important things and sometimes we don’t. Somehow, we got on the topic of grocery delivery and how it had increased during the pandemic. I think the underlying topic had something to do with how things can change in a short amount of time.

I picked up on the grocery delivery to point out that, in the future, you won’t have to go to the grocery store. Nor will you have to order your groceries. The grocery stores will figure out what you need and deliver it to you. This is one of my standard speculations. If you would like to see more of my standard speculations, please have a look at my book Predicting the Future or my upcoming book Writing Stories to Explore Possible Worlds.

In this speculation, homes have smart appliances such as a smart refrigerator which can tell which items you are getting low on. The grocery store can access your refrigerator and tell which items you will be needing in the next day or so, with your permission, of course. This is a huge benefit for the grocery store as it helps greatly with their inventory management while also reducing spoilage costs. It is a great benefit for the customer as well since they don’t have to worry about running out of basics. Let’s ramp it up a bit and say that you can plug your phone into your refrigerator and add items to the shopping list.

The grocery store polls the homes in its area, determines what items they need to stock up on and makes a plan for delivering them. The delivery is done by drones which carry the package from the story to an insulated box on the customer's porch. When the customer arrives home later, they just take the groceries out of the box and put them in the refrigerator. I wanted to add a house robot who retrieves the groceries and puts them in the refrigerator. But I did not want to tax your imagination. I am fairly sure this will happen in the future, but I am not sure when.

Nonetheless, as standard as my predictions are, equally as standard are the denials and talking points used to refute the predictions. My son, marvel of nature that he is, could not see a future where grocery stores decided what you would want and automatically delivered it to you. You, dear reader, may feel the same way. But my point here is not about grocery delivery. It is about the ability of people to see, or accept, change in the future.

Talking points about the scenario I just described include: 1) People don’t want the grocery store to access their refrigerator; 2) People need things on the spur of the moment; 3) People are not predictable enough for the grocery store to anticipate their needs; and 4) I don’t want a robot running around my house putting groceries away. But these are not real concerns. Instead, they are constructs that people use to protect themselves from the threat of change.

You might be wondering, at this point, what this has to do with the Impermanence of Current Trends. The short answer is everything. Changes in current trends are just like predictions of things in the future. Nobody thinks these changes will happen. People think the way things are is how they have always been and is the way things always will be. Not only is this not so, but it has also never been the case in all of human history.

People resist change because they think there is something sacred about the way things are. They either believe: 1) that what they are comfortable with is right; 2) that what they wish will happen will, indeed, happen; or 3) they fear that what they don’t want to happen, will indeed happen. None of these are correct unless it just happens to be correct by luck (good or bad).

Things change, people get used to it. Then they think they are the way things should be. And then things change again. Ob-la-di, ob-la-da; Life goes on.

Send an email to me at drjohnartz@gmail.com if you have a comment on any of my essays. And please check out my website at DrJohnArtz.com to see other things I have written.