A Future Unchanged

Stories on the future and time travel have always fascinated many people, I for one included. The unlimited possibilities of what’s ahead spur our imaginations to perceive what is to come. Futurama, a popular American satirical sitcom, shows us a possible future where science and society aren't on the best of terms. The story starts when Fry, a depressed, teenaged, pizza delivery boy, ends up being accidentally frozen for a millennium in a capsule and wakes up in the future.

The time travel method in the series is cryogenic freezing, it’s where a person is preserved by freezing and eventually revived in the future. However, it is infeasible with our current technology. Cryogenic freezing is still in its infancy and no human has been successfully revived from being frozen. If the method in the series was to be followed, the unprepared person would immediately die with his cells shattered due of the intense cold or be frozen successfully but will be unable to be revived.

 The show depicts science and technology as fields that have advanced so much that a multitude of things we think as science fiction today become reality. Some notable examples are pneumatic transport tubes, interstellar spaceships, laser weaponry, android robots, and automated suicide booths. Aliens have also contributed and influenced the progress of human science and technology in the future and became integrated into human society as well. In the future, humans co-exist with intelligent being such as aliens and robots that surprisingly behave just like humans do albeit with some weird differences. However, I think that society failed to bring out the full potential of science and technology in that era. Instead of investing on inventions that will truly help mankind and further exploration and research, science and technology was used to satisfy very basic and trivial needs like a suicide booth. I consider this as a tremendous waste of time and resources that should have been used for better causes. Additionally, society in that era still hosts the many flaws that our society has today such as violence, crime, and vices.

Hidden behind the veil of jokes and laughter is the truth about us today. Futurama shows us how our society behaves now; it is the honest truth on how dark our society is. Although exaggerated, the show gives us a glimpse on a future if our society degrades even further, a future where science is misused by society.