By Julie Greness
Imagine Footscray and the surrounding suburbs when your grandchildren’s grandkids reach our age. Footscray in the future, and what will it be like?
For starters, all the heritage properties and 21st Century ticky-tacky units will be swept away by progress. Footscray in the future shall consist of towering apartment blocks, with one bedroom units. These towers will be interspersed with high-rise hydroponic farms. Here only certain foods will be grown, pest-free, cultivated by clever robotic devices. These shall be the food sources of Footscray in the future, all the present farming communities long since depleted, blown away by blasts of winds, and eroded by droughts.
This may also be a future world of very little oil, which drives the machinery and transport of our current world. Thus there may be little vehicles, solar powered by a blazing sun, chauffeured by robots, travelling between the vertical farms and clothing depots, to the high rise apartment blocks.
In Footscray in the future, each individual will dwell in a one-bedroom unit, with adjoining walls and ceilings. All hermetically controlled, with a constant atmosphere and temperature, in contrast to the harsh world of the exterior. People will be kept away from each other, with fertility and reproduction strictly controlled by the benevolent powers-that-be running the teeming populace of our planet.
In Footscray in the future, each resident will be awoken at, say, 6:30 am to 7am. “Wake up”. The digital alarm will then dictate, “Breakfast”. Each Footscray citizen, like everyone else, will eat the foods he or she has been permitted to select from the neighbourhood vertical multi-storey farm. Beverages and multivitamins shall also be allowed. “Exercise”. A light, well-designed aerobic physical activity program is scheduled.
Then, “Ablutions”. Sewerage in Footscray of the future, to dispose of each individual’s digestive system, shall thoughtfully take away effluents and recycle them. This shall be a ‘waste not, want not’ kind of world in which to live.
8am. “Log on”. Future Footscray residents (and everyone else on Planet Earth), shall switch on a digital implant in their brains, and receive the world and local news in an immediate format, translated into a global language, easily understood by all. This shall be an ever evolving language, an advanced form of the current texting. 8:30 am. “Social contacts”. Footscray of the future shall touch base with any family or friends online, finishing with the now universal farewell, “C.U./M.8!”
9am. “Work”. This is how citizens of Footscray in the future shall be employed. Still in their little abodes, they shall trigger part of their digital implants, and engage in their designated occupations, administering their little corner of the world. Their salary will be paid in credits for digital shopping.
There shall be a break at noon, for more nutrition and beverages, all calorie controlled, with more vitamin capsules. Relaxation, listening to music until 1 pm, then back to the workstation. By 4:30 pm, this hard work is to be completed for the day. The citizens of Footscray of the future shall be then permitted to change their synthetic clothing, eat a light meal and view movies telecast by the digital implants.
By 5pm, routine unit cleaning and clothes washing will have been performed by helpful household robots, and each individual here settles in to refresh their neurons. On Saturdays, there shall be a real treat. Citizens are rostered to visit the basements of their unit towers. Here, in Footscray of the future, people will be able to sit and gaze at holograms of trees that once existed. They can view our olden days brought to life with plastic once-were-birds, and they can touch a toy kangaroo. All gone by then, the habitats and creatures, even an insect will be hard to find in Footscray one day.
For more solitary fun times, after movies on the digital implants, there is some digital pornography. But this too shall grow a bit tiresome. 9:30 pm. “Bedtime.” Each individual of Footscray of the future shall log off for the night, before tomorrow’s efforts. Yes, a peaceful world at last. Thnx. Sleep tight, our grandchildren’s grandkids, and all shall be well. C.U./M.8’s!
