A new year, what will it bring?

At the mid-year of the last century I came into this world.
Space travel was a province of fringe groups, cheap magazines and grade Z movies.
Computers were fifty ton behemoths, vacuum tubes glowing, consuming as much power as small towns.
Radios had tubes and knobs. If you had a portable radio you needed a five pound battery to power it.
Airplanes had propellers, and piston engines.
Children died of Polio.
People all over the world lived in an insulated manner, news traveled slowly.
Private peccadillos of politicians, movie stars and sports figures were just that, private. Not front page news.
WW-II was a fresh memory, the Korean conflict unknown. Much less the National soul eroding experience of Viet Nam.
Treatments for Heart Disease, Diabetes, Cancer, Smallpox and a host of other miseries the human race had suffered since we stumbled out of the Great Rift valley were in their infancy.
Microwave ovens weighed half a ton and cost thousands of dollars.

I have seen mankind move from the throaty roar of piston engines to the supersonic scream of rocket exhaust as it lifted men to the Moon.
I have seen real pictures of the surface of Mars.
I have seen electronic devices do for man what he had only dreamed of.
I can now stare into this small screen and instantly communicate with someone halfway around the world.
I have seen the hellish misery of HIV, Alzheimer’s and other diseases we didn’t know. Not new but now recognized.
I have seen war brought into the living room, up close and personal. It had not changed, but now everyone could see it.

I walked outside a few minutes ago and stared upwards into the clear winter sky. The Stars are brilliant and steady.

And I wondered, what next?

What Indeed?