Sunset in Babylon

People in their 20s and 30s don’t imagine getting old. We’ve got too much going on with careers, romance, and the occasional budding family. But like it or not we will one day be standing in line at the Shoney’s buffet in Boca Raton and arthritically grooving to the Chili Peppers on oldies stations.

Of course, we might be living in alleys and scraping out tin cans with a rusty spoon, the way social security is currently headed.

On the up side, we will reap some benefits on the coattails of the baby boomers, the enormous bulge in the population that will process through the system like a baby goat through a boa constrictor.

Given the self-involvement and materiality of that generation, hospitals and retirement homes should by then look like palaces. Medicine, already miraculous today, could be on par with storybook magic. Rested and healthy, we will spend our time using our cool cybernetic limbs to freak out the grandkids.

And we will likely have robot companions to chase after us, bleeping, should we ever wander off into the night.