Illustration and Text Lena Reifenhäuser

What will the world be like in a hundred years?

This is a really interesting question.. especially as (almost) everyone who is reading this right now will already be watching the radishes grow from six feet under on this day in exactly 100 years, not excluding of course the writer of these words. Please excuse my having used a rather casual and cheeky way of paraphrasing the state of “departed from this world”. Children and grand-children will still hopefully know what radishes are and how tasty they are in a salad. (Hopefully, they’ll only be eating radishes that aren’t being observed from underneath by their long-gone relatives…)

It’s a good idea, before answering the question: “what will the world be like in a hundred years”, to think about whether one has a positive.. or a negative view of the future. Does the thought of it all make you want to start waggling your finger at the evils of the world as they crescendo towards one extreme apocalyptic future?

Why not take it all a bit more lightly and go to extremes of absurdity/humour instead?

Humans can be fairly stupid and cruel. On the other hand, they can reflect on their past mistakes and change their behaviour, working for a better future.
They can use their resources and their resourcefulness intelligently, sensibly and to everybody’s enrichment. At any rate, we hope that from now on that radishes will still be there for all the salads of the next hundred years. (Maybe in the distant future there’ll be sentient giant radishes, there to counsel our great-great-great grand-children, should they get no joy from the advice of their own parents. Emotionally aware giant radishes, versed in crisis counselling, will of course not be tossed into salads.) When seen from space, the earth, our planet, is really a fascinating place, and will probably be just as much so in a hundred years. I am certain that there will still be radishes then too. Maybe it’ll be possible to deliver bigger ones to Mars for romantic dinners. MacLightspeed – a delivery service that transcends time and space, despite a value of money that descends. In the paintings that belong with this text you can see on the left an abstract depiction of the world – as Planet Earth – seen from afar (with radishes).

Directly beside on the right, my vision of this picture of the world, but a hundred years in the future. (Also with radishes, but much bigger ones! I am an Optimist. At least: I’m working on it.