Or perhaps it should be called the not-yet past.
I chose this picture, without much pondering, as an unambiguous emblem.
But of what? Looking forward? Just try assigning meaning to a photograph and you immediately get attacked by second thoughts in swarms. The future belongs to skaters? The future belongs to white American males?
Then I told myself not to be so analytical. The viewpoint character in the picture represents nothing more than my own younger self (a person fated by genetics to be white and male and by history to be American). Without a device like this my imagination could never get back to a view of the future as open-ended and promising.
Image here.