If your 2006 self could time travel to now. How would you feel about the tech? The politics?
My 20 year old self would be blown away to see a telsa driverless car driving down the street.
Turning on the t.v to watch falcon 9 land and hear about how it'll be used over and over again. This would blow someone from 2006's mind.
I'd look at robotic news and see the unitree g1 and then see that figure can sort thousands of items. This would be unimaginable in 2006.
I'd then hear about a.i...I'd think wow this can find me anything without having to spend hours searching for it. And then do it within seconds.
Politics
-You mean Donald Trump is the goddamn president?
-He attacked Iran? Bush didn't even have the balls to do that.
-Oh yeah I look back at near history and see we just had the biggest pandemic since the 1950's. I say wow. Society was locked down for a couple of years.
2006 me was halfway obsessed with future tech in the way most 11-12 year old kids are
Watching the trio of basic DirecTV infotainment channels (History, National Geographic, Discovery) that sometimes ran docs on advanced/future technology, reading some books from the library (and this one general-edutainment book about amazing things from 2006, alongside Guinness World Records 2006), I was excited to imagine things like robots, laser weaponry, invisibility cloaks, etc.
Admittedly I was on a bit of a military kick at that age, so I'd wonder way more about 2026 military tech than the me of today does. Anything about drone warfare, combat humanoids, directed energy weapons deployed in combat like in Venezuela, and so on— the me of 2006 would unironically be amazed.
He was already fully aware that 2026 was not going to be 2106 or 3006, so he might have been way more impressed than anything. The world of 2026 is more than I thought it would have been, at that time. Actually I don't think I thought the 2020s would be that much more technologically advanced until around 2014 or so. I assumed all the high tech wouldn't really start kicking in until the 2040s.
Actually now that I think about it, I was the type of kid who would be angry that I don't have a robot if I know that they're available to buy.
He'd also be amazed that I'm not broke and homeless. Strangely, kid me had that anxiety that adult me wasn't going to become anything worthwhile, so I'd have been astounded to learn that I do actually live on my own, and not even uncomfortably.
And I'd be amazed at both how much and how little I had changed since then. There's stuff the me of July 2006 loved that I still love now.
July 2006 me: "I love reading all these books, and I'm writing a Sonic fanfic!"
July 2026 me: "I've just finished reading a bunch of Nabokov, and I'm writing a Sonic fanfic for fun that my kid self would've been obsessed with."
If 2006 me saw I wasn't married, I wonder if he'd think I was gay. "No, not really, more volcelling until I get a gynoid companion or someone just sweeps me off my feet."
"....What's a volcel or gynoid??"
And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future
And then do it within seconds.