Visions of the future

This morning I began pondering upon how we envision the future. Given a rather vague description in a text will most certainly result in an envisioned picture of your imagination that is very real indeed. You will "see" much more than the author originally intended and this of course is a good thing. The text and story should be more likely to suit your taste.

Now, through this argument rises an interesting question. How different would that inner picture be? It would be very interesting to give the text below to several subjects. Shall we say five families and that the experiment is carried out at the age of twenty for five generations? This of course will risk the older family members to pass on their visions, so perhaps a choice at random among the population currently 20 years of age is more appropriate? But then instead we risk not to have a similar social context instead, which could affect the result. Considering both options above, I'd say that determining several social attributes and then choosing randomly within several combinations at each experiment. The same combination for each experiment, so there would be several lines of pictures. This is likely to yield better results than the first two options.

Now to the text, I imagine something like. "When he got home from work later that day, the stars were already visible. As he reached the doorstep, he stood still for a moment and looked up at the serene sky." How different could that image be? Perhaps this is the very reason that some books never feel old, unlike films which age very quickly. Does our imagination aid us when reading, turning the authors hints about a world into our very own creation?