All of us have ideas about how the world works. Whether we believe that the Earth is balanced on the back of a tortoise floating on a pelican perched at the center of a cosmic fishing bowl, or that the new T-shirt company we’re working on with our sister’s best friend Harriet will be worth $15 Million in 5 years, all of our ideas fall somewhere between amazingly right and laughably wrong.

An employee asks the CEO of ACME Corp how he plans on increasing revenue this quarter. The CEO pauses, looks left, looks right and then turns deadly serious.

“Oh that’s easy. Upper management is going on a retreat to Cabo, you know, in Mexico. We’re going to spend five whole days in meetings, crucial meetings to get at the root of what has been holding us back this year. We’re going to dive into what has been keeping us from unlocking this organization’s potential. We’re going to tackle it, that thing that has been keeping us behind our competitors all this time.” He pauses and with a flourish usually reserved for circus performers or idiots he says, “The mission statement!”

One rainy afternoon, on a rainy day in Summer, journalist William Godfrey found his way into the home office of author Nathalie Singer. She was a woman of unprecedented talent, known across the globe for powerful and moving works of fiction. Long ago, the New York Times had dubbed her the genius of our times, and her sales figures backed up these claims ten times over. As William stalked across the hardwood floors, notepad in one hand and voice recorder in the other, he began thinking about what he was here to do.

Five years ago everything I read about media and technology was fascinating. More than fascinating, it was a revelation! I had stepped into a new world filled with visionaries pushing the boundaries of what it means to be consumers in the information age. I ate it up, hundreds if not thousands of articles on everything from the structure of social networks to collaborative journalism.

Artist, writer and good friend of mine Ophelia Chong asked me to post something for her. I told her I would as long as she made it incredibly entertaining. If you’ve ever read any of Ophelia’s stuff in the past, you’ll know she never disappoints in that regard, so without further ado, today’s post.

How many times have you plopped down hundreds of dollars for some new gizmo, but spent the entire ride home grumbling about a 5 cent increase in the price of gas.

How many times have you sat in front of the TV, shuddering at some story about some serial killer, cursing everyone and their dear Aunt Milli for not doing more to protect you and your family but followed up the expose on heart disease with a quick trip to McDonalds for triple cheeseburgers.

How often have you absolutely convinced yourself that you knew the right answer to that question about Van Gogh on Jeopardy, when moments earlier you couldn’t even remember the name of the Art History professor you had Freshman year.

Why is it that we are all so gung ho about reinventing the wheel? Yes, I know that the dream you had last night about a triangular unicycle with bearings made out of specially engineered, Burmese balsa wood seemed pretty cool at the time but ask yourself whether it is really worth the dozens of hours it would take to get to Burma and the hundreds more to find someone willing to decipher the “schematics” you jotted down on that cocktail napkin on the airplane ride over, or is it that your “invention” is just another thinly veiled way of proving how clever you are?

Guess what. Just because we don’t have flying cars, doesn’t mean we aren’t living in The Future.

It’s fascinating to me how many people refuse to admit any technological progress has occurred since Asimov and Orwell scrawled predictions about the magical, frightening, beautiful, perilous world we would one day be living in. It’s as if unless they see people dancing around floating cities wearing silver jumpsuits and talking to their live-in android house servant Clyde, then by gods we have made no progress.