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ACTIVITIES
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 | Top Ten Adventures for
the Next Thousand Years |
| By Bill Greer, GORP Founder |
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Over the last 500 years, man conquered the earth. Columbus discovered a new world. Stanley explored darkest Africa. Byrd and Amundsen reached the Poles. Hillary, or Mallory, stood atop Everest. We even went extra-terrestrial when Armstrong walked on the moon.
Every obvious first on this world may have been accomplished. Jet travel and telecommunication have shrunk the globe to little more than a drive down the freeway, and arguably put us on a path to cultural homogeneity. So should we conclude we've seen the last great adventures?
My Top Ten Adventures for the Next Thousand Years answers this question with a resounding no. The human imagination has dreamed up adventures yet unfulfilled. Ideas of literature and science from the past thousand years appeared outlandish when originally conceived. But seen through today's prism, their potential reality is striking.
Look at if from the perspective of a first-century man viewing the 20th century. He has no concept of time - his world has been turned upside down by as simple an invention as the clock. The things we take for granted, like air transport, radio, and reading, are as remote to him as being beamed across the galaxies would be to us.
So if you remain a skeptic that new adventures await, think of what is going on in the world of genetics, astrophysics, pyschology and computers. You will lose your doubts about Adventures for the Next Thousand Years.
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 Being John Malkovich |
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| John Cusak and Cameron Diaz know a good adventure when they see one. Enter a tunnel through a small half-door, crawl a hundred yards through the muck, then suddenly get whisked into the mind of John Malkovich.
Adventure #1: Entering Another Person's Mind.
Leave it to Catherine Steener to turn it into a mass market business.
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 The Time Machine |
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| If you are looking for ways to travel to worlds not your own, jump in Jules Verne's time machine. Journey back to the first century with a few photos and see what early man thinks of life today. Better yet, rocket ahead to the 31st and see which of these Adventures is on target.
Adventure #2: Traveling through Time.
With modern physics proving the space-time continuum, can you doubt time travel is around the corner? |
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 Fantastic Voyage |
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| You are piloting your submarine through the right coronary artery, Raquel Welch at your side. Eighteen hours have passed since you and your team were miniaturized and injected into the patient's bloodstream. So far you have navigated through the organs of the digestive tract, proteins and amino acids whizzing by the windows. Just past the liver, corpuscles attacked. You put the thrusters on afterburner and escaped. Now the waters are getting choppy as you approach the heart. Your escape lies through the right ventricle. There is no turning back.
Adventure #3: Injected into the Human Body.
With modern medical technology, you can already navigate visually through the body. Why not go for the ride? |
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 Close Encounters |
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| Woke up this morning with light in my eyes, and then realized it was still dark outside. It was a light coming down from the sky, I don't know who or why. Hey, Mr. Spaceman, won't you please take me along, I won't do anything wrong. Hey Mr. Spaceman, won't you please take me a long for a ride?
Adventure #4: Beamed Up by Aliens.
Roger McGuinn and the Byrds could only sing about it. You might do it. |
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 Houdini |
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| Obsessed with death - that would be one way to describe the magician. Whether he was handcuffed, boxed and dumped into the East River or hung upside down in a glass water chamber, Houdini pitted his escape artistry against the Grim Reaper. On at least one occasion, his helpers hacked him out of a beer-filled milk can into which he was locked, the foam having filled his emergency air hole and taken him to the edge. Death-defying stunts brought him worldwide fame and accolades. Late in life, his second obsession, his mother, led him to try communicating across the spirit world.
Adventure #5: Into the Hereafter.
Houdini approached the River Styx, even yelled across. But he never managed the ultimate magic - to cross into the Hereafter and return. |
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 Mysterious Island |
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| If you think the time machine is still a bit far off, you'll have a hard time arguing with Jules Verne's second adventure to make the list. You've been sailing the high seas. A storm casts you ashore an unknown island. Everything around you is out of proportion, Gulliver's Travels in reverse. You are dwarfed by ferns and flowers. Out of the bushes comes an enormous chicken. You dart into a jumble of rocks to avoid the enormous beak pecking in the dirt. As you explore inland, you discover a land populated by giant creatures, either natural selection or a crazed breeding program run amok.
Adventure #6: A World of Giants.
With genetic engineering transforming agriculture, courtesy Monsanto and others, can this adventure be far away? |
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 Phrenology Revisited |
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| In August of 1999, Albert Einstein made another great contribution to science. We all knew that Einstein's brain worked overtime compared to us mere mortals. But until three neuroscientists measured its various pieces with a pair of calipers, we did not know how it differed physically. Now the source of his genius appears to be a large and unusually shaped inferior parietal lobe.
Adventure #7: A Race of Superhumans.
Armed with Einstein's brain anatomy and the magic of modern genetics, it is only a matter of time before we breed superintelligent beings. For the rest of us, that will be an eye-popping adventure. |
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