On the fateful date of Oct. 26, 1985, Dr. Emmett Brown arrived with a quest for a young man by the name of Marty McFly. In order to save his future children, they must make an intrinsic trek to the futuristic time of 2015, Oct. 21, to be specific.
Well, Oct. 21, 2015, has come and gone, and we are left scratching our heads over what Marty and Doc predicted to be right and wrong about what many people saw as the glimmering, technology-driven time of our current day. Although articles like this have been written up hundreds of times this past week, let’s analyze this Albion-style.
One of the more noticeable traits of McFly’s 2015 is the copy of USA Today, capitalizing his son’s arrest. Surrounding this story are multiple headlines that do and do not apply to our current day.
First, let’s notice the ironic headline stating that the Chicago Cubs swept a playoff series in five games. We can only shake our heads and chuckle at this one, considering as of last Wednesday night, the New York Mets swept the Chicago Cubs in a total of five games. Will the prophets ever do the Cubs some justice? That remains to be seen (but probably not).
Another interesting sports headline on the cover was of a man finally breaking the three minute mile barrier. Whoa there, Doc, we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves here. In 2015, even the most elite distance runners train themselves into the ground in order to even run under 4 minutes. Now is a sub-three minute mile impossible? Absolutely not. In fact, Albion’s own Mitch Clinton may be able to dip under three minutes if he gets a loud enough crowd at Elkin Isaac track. Stay tuned for that one.
That incites another question: What will Albion be like, twenty years from now? Many students are pondering that question.
Lucas Lusk, a freshman from Naperville, Illinois, replied to that question enthusiastically. “(Twenty years from now) Albion will continue to offer a phenomenal liberal arts education through a plethora of resources.”
Zane Brooks, a freshman from Frankfort, also has high hopes for the future of Albion. “I think Albion will be a city on the rise, where more and more people are coming back because of the efforts of the college to make the community the place it used to be.”
While none of us have a crystal ball to predict the future, we have to hand it to Marty and Doc for giving us a humorous but foggy image of our present day. Let the record show that I fully expect that twenty years from now, a fellow Pleiad reporter will be writing a futuristic article on whatever technological advancement Apple will make by that time.
Photo by Wikimedia Commons
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