Future un-shock.

It was reported yesterday that the NBC Universal has paid $7.75 billion for the rights to six Olympic games from 2022 to 2032.

I'll admit it's weird to even think about 2022, much less 2032. Who knows what viewing will be like eight years from now, much less 18? Who knows what our living rooms, or even our laps will look like? Will we be sitting on virtual furniture and serviced by virtual robots while we snack on virtual Doritos and explode with virtual flatulence?

Who knows how our days will be structured in 2032 when we're watching the Summer Olympics beamed from Mars. Will we be telecommuting to paperless offices where our sole job is to create 140 characters of marketing bliss?

Projecting that far into the future of viewing is an awesome task. I wish I could have sat in on the meetings between NBC Universal and the International Olympic Committee.

I wonder, even, what the games will be like. I mean, how much more exciting will ice dancing be in the future.

Here's my guess.

Things will be pretty much the same in 18 years.

We'll go to work and work like dogs for too little money and no job security. We will come home via too crowded transit systems whether they be subways, commuter trains or freeways. These systems will continue to be underfunded because the plutocrats and oligopolies that rule the land will still have found ways not to pay tax.

We will come home exasperated and exhausted. Most of us will not be going to the hot new shuffleboard-place cum bar in a newly colonized, newly whitenized territory of Brooklyn.

We'll drag our sorry asses home.

Feeling like a cross between Ralph Kramden and Willy Loman.

We won't particularly feel like talking to our spouse or dealing with the kids.

So will turn on some sort of viewing device or activate the implants in our retinas.

We'll sit back, maybe with a plate of genetically-modified Monsanto-approved ice cream at our side. We'll worry about our weight and our cholesterol, but decide to shut out the world.

We'll sit back, like I said, and we'll watch.

We'll complain about how bad the coverage is and how commercials aren't as good as they used to be.

And then we'll watch ice dancing until we fall asleep.