Is it ethical for a man with a bionic eye to play baseball? This is the question I was asked approximately 45,000 times from Thursday to Saturday by CBS in a promo for some new show which, despite repeated admonishments to watch, I never caught the name of.
While I doubt that by the year 2030 there will be some sort of bionic eye debate in baseball, such a debate would be interesting. Bionic Bud Selig and Ted Williams' re-animated frozen head could debate the issue in Congress until the android hybrid of Barry Bonds and Cy Young came in and destroyed them both.
Do you really believe that the future will be anything like this? Will there really be bionic eyes, triple-decker highways and giant tomatoes that can cure world hunger? I sure hope so, but forgive me if I'm less than optimistic. When I was little, I was promised super-vitamins that would keep me slim and healthy, 300,000 interesting channels on cable television and hover bikes that'd take us easily from country to country.
What do we have now? Get-slim-quick pills that do nothing, about 200 channels of utter crap and the Segway
Ahh, yes, the Segway. Remember when that was a big deal? All the major newsmagazines did stories about how it would revolutionize transportation. I remember reading a column that said "cities would be built around it." What did we end up getting? An overpriced piece of crap that eventually had to be recalled. Could you imagine actually riding a Segway? You'd be laughed off the street, and then thugs would steal your $3,000 scooter.
Even the greatest innovation of the past half-century, the Internet, has proven to be nothing but a wasteland. The Internet was supposed to give me access to boatloads of information, and yet every time I search, I end up getting bombarded with porn advertisements. Thanks, Internet entrepreneurs: you took a research tool and turned it into the world's largest database of porn.
Even when breakthroughs in science or knowledge are made, idiots will find a way to screw it up. Charles Darwin comes up with evolution; people shun it because it might go against a 2,000-year-old book. The hybrid gas-electric car is made; fuel company executives shun it so people will still have to pay a fortune on gas. The Internet is created to close gaps in communication; FiFteeN-YeR 0|_D$ TyPe LiKe ThiS (^_^ lmao a/s/l?), making everything incomprehensible.
Look, the future may be different, but I'd wager to bet that things will turn out very similar to today. All I know is that there aren't any moon colonies, there aren't any robot maids and I don't live in a floating house in the sky.
As for the bionic eye issue, of course it shouldn't be allowed. Babe Ruth didn't have a bionic eye as far as I know, and we have a game's integrity to think of here.
Steroids, on the other hand, are apparently fair game.
