What do these things have in common?
Colbert's D'Artagnan performance, the California prison guards' union's yearly p.r. budget, McDonald's remote digital order-takers, Al-Jazeera global TV in English, the Israel Lobby, United 93, the US Embassy in Baghdad, the Book of Revelations of John the Divine, the Russian economy, the Arkansas River, the $100 "gas tax holiday"/ANWR drilling proposal, the Sago mine disaster, the Gran Boicot of May 1, polar bears "threatened with extinction", Bush's approval rating headed toward the 20's, Khartoum, Tehran, Kabul...The short answer is they're all happening now, they're all here, with us. Part of the world we live in right this moment.
The longer answer is that any future we might have will come right out of these things, these places and conditions and actions and words.
