I’m sick, tired, and generally feeling sorry for myself. Why post anything? Because even in the midst of fighting off what is almost certainly a deadly case of the common cold and moving my best friend into her new apartment (where she’s now spending a night with literally no furniture at all, or lamps, or computer), I had to laugh remembering the encyclopedia I found this week in our reference collection. The Encyclopedia of the Future sits there on our shelves… a pub date of 1996 proudly displayed on its shelf label… no kidding! Curious about the creators and their purpose, I glanced through the preface and learned that “a number of persons” affiliated with the project or writing entries for the project had died before the encyclopedia was finished. Somehow, in my semi-conscious state, this morbid detail struck me as funny. All I could imagine was centegenarians speculating about the future.
In all fairness, the encyclopedia seems to be an encyclopedia of trends that can help us see where we’re headed. But it still makes me giggle every time I think of it.