Sure, we won't be celebrating New Years by flying our jetpacks through the snow or watching the countdown from our colony on Mars, and so what if I can't teleport to work?

Thanks to a combination of 3G internet, a touch-screen interface, and Wikipedia, the smartphone in my front pocket is pretty much the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I can communicate with anyone anywhere at anytime. I can look up any fact I want, from which puppeteers played A.L.F. to how many flavors of quark are in the Standard Model, and then use the same touch-screen device to take a picture, deposit a check, and navigate the subway system.

We live in the future, ladies and gentleman.

But you may still have your doubts. Allow me to put things in perspective.

Imagine it's 1995: Almost no one but Gordon Gekko and Zack Morris have cellphones, pagers are the norm; dial-up modems screech and scream to connect you an internet without Google, Facebook, or YouTube; Dolly has not yet been cloned; the first Playstation is the cutting edge in gaming technology; the Human Genome Project is creeping along; Mir is still in space; MTV still plays music; Forrest Gump wins an academy award and Pixar releases their first feature film, Toy Story.

Now take that mindset and pretend you're reading the first page of a new sci-fi novel...

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