As those of you who have added Biola Centennial Celebration to your friends list on Facebook may have noticed, last weekend was the kickoff of Biola’s Centennial Celebration. This is a special year at Biola — we are not only celebrating one hundred years of existence but the inauguration of a new president as well.

While not taking anything away from Dr. Barry Corey in this momentous new ministry he has undertaken, this is a particularly special year for my roommates and me as we celebrate the centennial birthday of our microwave at my apartment in Welch. This technological marvel that was actually a part of the original Biola campus back when it was located in Los Angeles is still operated by igniting the pilot light followed by several sharp cranks. It truly is a monument to the ancient ingenuity of the first Franciscan Monks to reach this land.

The occasional workings of my microwave have given me plenty of time to think as I wait half an hour for my popcorn. In Corey’s inaugural address, he said he believed the best days of Biola were still ahead of us. Now I understand that it just isn’t proper MLA format to have an inaugural speech for anything and not include that line, it did get me thinking. What will the future look like? What will happen in the next 100 years?

First of all, I believe there will be some things that will change dramatically, but there are some things that aren’t going to change at all. For instance, they have been promising flying cars for the last 60 years. Well, the year 2001 has come and gone, and the best we have is radio volume controls on the steering wheel so you can trick your passengers into thinking that your stereo is voice-activated. “Radio on!”

Flying cars are no where to be seen. Maybe they’ve been invented but didn’t pass the California emissions test. Maybe they are being mass produced by Peugeot, and we will never see them here. More likely, they’re just not eco-friendly enough. I imagine that flying cars would probably only get 12 miles per gallon. Either way, I think that the flying car is probably not going to happen.

That being said, there are plenty of things that will change around here. The most obvious candidates are of course are the entertainment and cell phone industry. The two of those are rapidly merging. Already we can download TV shows right onto our cell phones. Pretty soon we will all be hanging out on a Friday night to get together and download a movie on our cell phones for $2 instead of going to the dollar theater. The screens might be smaller, but the sound will be better and your feet won’t stick to the floor.

Since Facebook has added applications, it has been rapidly evolving as well. I predict that in the future we will be able to be listed as in a relationship with more than one person as well as having a nominal friends list where instead of having your top friends listed, it will list all the friends that you are only friends with on Facebook. It will automatically place them on the list if you have not had any contact with them, visited their profile, or tagged them in any photos. This will take all the wind out of the sails of all those people with 600 friends on Facebook and 340 of them are in their Top Friends.

So as we gather on the threshold of a new century, a new century where we can all look forward to technological advances such as pod communities on the moon and hover boards like in “Back to the Future,” I can confidently say it is nice to know some things will still be there. Like my microwave. I don’t think that thing will ever go away.