Which do you agree with most?
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@futurebird you're alluding to what's called the slow cancellation of the future, i assume. skimming your replies i feel like people are taking a different idea of the death of the future than is presented there. of course there's ideas of the future: musk's whole brand is built on it, but what's changed is what the future means to people. when people imagine the future now they see a desperate fight to avoid extinction. the near future is us trying to hold on through the world collapsing
@futurebird the old dominant image of the future of an almost inevitable world of magical tech: flying cars, robots, luxury space communism, etc is replaced with a runaway train of capitalist industrial excess and ever more predetory repackaging of old innovations
the scifi future no longer feels inevitable and the fantasy of it has beel colonized by the likes of musk. we see it now used a a lure to ensnare hopeful people into worshiping fascists
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@futurebird the old dominant image of the future of an almost inevitable world of magical tech: flying cars, robots, luxury space communism, etc is replaced with a runaway train of capitalist industrial excess and ever more predetory repackaging of old innovations
the scifi future no longer feels inevitable and the fantasy of it has beel colonized by the likes of musk. we see it now used a a lure to ensnare hopeful people into worshiping fascists
@futurebird this isn't to say other more hopeful visions of the future don't exist, but those are now largely counter-cultural. we recognize our world in dystopian scifi of the past, not the hopeful futurism of star treck
this is the future that was stolen from us and wesee it ever day as the powerful impede and reverse any sensible path to progress, anything that could immediately improve the human condition
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@futurebird the old dominant image of the future of an almost inevitable world of magical tech: flying cars, robots, luxury space communism, etc is replaced with a runaway train of capitalist industrial excess and ever more predetory repackaging of old innovations
the scifi future no longer feels inevitable and the fantasy of it has beel colonized by the likes of musk. we see it now used a a lure to ensnare hopeful people into worshiping fascists
Inventing new futures is somehow hopelessly tied to commerce. Or it can seem that way.
When I think of an exciting future tech (nano-machine gum that repairs your cavities) I think about how it would need to cost at least as much as all the industry players in dental fillings make ... or it never gets to exist.
It's that cynicism that makes new tech just ominous, not exciting.
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@futurebird this isn't to say other more hopeful visions of the future don't exist, but those are now largely counter-cultural. we recognize our world in dystopian scifi of the past, not the hopeful futurism of star treck
this is the future that was stolen from us and wesee it ever day as the powerful impede and reverse any sensible path to progress, anything that could immediately improve the human condition
@futurebird i live in the UK and i remember having real hope for the future with the amazing popularity of jeremy corbyn and his solid progressive policies. they were generally a bit modest for my politics, but they were radical compared to what the mainsteam dared let us imagine up until then
we came so close to making him PM
but it was stolen from us as the entire establishment, including senior members of labour, sabotaged him at every turn until he was ousted and neoliberalism restored
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Which do you agree with most?
A. The concept of "Futuristic" is dying.
From the 1890s to the present the concept of a futuristic aesthetic has lost meaning, inverted in on itself and is nearing irrelevance in the past two decades.B. There is some truth to A, but this is also just a change in perspective that's a function of aging. A "futuristic aesthetic" still may make sense for young people.
C. There will always be a "futuristic aesthetic" what do you mean it's "dying?"
D. Other
I think people are constantly reimagining the future, based on changes in the present/past.
Which is why there is also "retro-futurism", where we're nostalgic for the way we used to imagine the future would be (e.g. "Tomorrowland", "Sky Captain", etc).
But the "futuristic" of my youth included brutalist architecture, hard geometric lines, etc. (The "cybertruck" is a product of this aesthetic, IMHO).
But now we have things like "solar punk", which is a very different futurism.
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If you think there is an active (optimistic projective) "futuristic aesthetic" that hits, I challenge you to show me the most "futuristic feeling" thing you can find.
@futurebird the "futurist" books I read as a child were mostly green energy, and home computers, including videoconferencing. There was a comparison between a peaceful green future, clear skies, wind and hydrogen... and a fossil fuels future, smokestacks, air pollution, suffering. This would've been published in the late 70s. I think it's still extremely relevant.
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@futurebird i live in the UK and i remember having real hope for the future with the amazing popularity of jeremy corbyn and his solid progressive policies. they were generally a bit modest for my politics, but they were radical compared to what the mainsteam dared let us imagine up until then
we came so close to making him PM
but it was stolen from us as the entire establishment, including senior members of labour, sabotaged him at every turn until he was ousted and neoliberalism restored
@futurebird we saw the same with bernie sanders in the 2020 primaries. the democrats pulled together everything they had to force all other factions of the party to back biden, whose performance had been so bad most of us had written him off as unelectable. they forced a defeat for bernie with a level of co-ordination and determination they never use against the GOP
in these times we watch our futures get taken from us by the powerful. we see our futures get cancelled
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If you think there is an active (optimistic projective) "futuristic aesthetic" that hits, I challenge you to show me the most "futuristic feeling" thing you can find.
@futurebird from Marge Piercy woman on the edge of time - the nice green sustainable alt-future where humans live in tree villages like ewoks but have enabling tech that keeps the food and water and pretty recyclable clothes running, definitely my jam
its been 20-some years since i read it so i could be misremembering
now i live in the decaying remnants of an abandoned convent on the edge of a forest... with wifi
so... maybe i've been unconsciously striving for this life
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@futurebird we saw the same with bernie sanders in the 2020 primaries. the democrats pulled together everything they had to force all other factions of the party to back biden, whose performance had been so bad most of us had written him off as unelectable. they forced a defeat for bernie with a level of co-ordination and determination they never use against the GOP
in these times we watch our futures get taken from us by the powerful. we see our futures get cancelled
@futurebird as i alluded to earlier those in power work hard to limit our imaginations of what's possible. we're always told better things aren't achievable, and yet when they want to chase the literally impossible (eg: to make trans people not exist, to achieve inifinite growth, to make musk seem likable) then they will stop at nothing to pursue it, no matter the cost
they will not let us imagine a future for ourselves, only the present status quo retold in neon and chrome
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Which do you agree with most?
A. The concept of "Futuristic" is dying.
From the 1890s to the present the concept of a futuristic aesthetic has lost meaning, inverted in on itself and is nearing irrelevance in the past two decades.B. There is some truth to A, but this is also just a change in perspective that's a function of aging. A "futuristic aesthetic" still may make sense for young people.
C. There will always be a "futuristic aesthetic" what do you mean it's "dying?"
D. Other
@futurebird huh, i cannot even conceive of "what technology of the future will do to our lives!" in like the 20th century sense
it just seems like none of its good so i don't care? i feel like the "future" was really ruined for me. i don't want the "future"
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I think people are constantly reimagining the future, based on changes in the present/past.
Which is why there is also "retro-futurism", where we're nostalgic for the way we used to imagine the future would be (e.g. "Tomorrowland", "Sky Captain", etc).
But the "futuristic" of my youth included brutalist architecture, hard geometric lines, etc. (The "cybertruck" is a product of this aesthetic, IMHO).
But now we have things like "solar punk", which is a very different futurism.
There's lot of things that exist in print, but in mainstream media, I really haven't seen any solarpunk futurism. Have I missed it?
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There's lot of things that exist in print, but in mainstream media, I really haven't seen any solarpunk futurism. Have I missed it?
Have you read "the terraformers" ? by @annaleen it was kind of a solarpunk hit and pretty good.
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Which do you agree with most?
A. The concept of "Futuristic" is dying.
From the 1890s to the present the concept of a futuristic aesthetic has lost meaning, inverted in on itself and is nearing irrelevance in the past two decades.B. There is some truth to A, but this is also just a change in perspective that's a function of aging. A "futuristic aesthetic" still may make sense for young people.
C. There will always be a "futuristic aesthetic" what do you mean it's "dying?"
D. Other
@futurebird thinking about this more, it occurs to me that most past societies probably didn't have any concept of a "futuristic" aesthetic, either positive or negative?
I would think the average historical person would guess the future would look a little different in style from their present, but not in ways they could pinpoint, which is kind of the place I am at now.
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Which do you agree with most?
A. The concept of "Futuristic" is dying.
From the 1890s to the present the concept of a futuristic aesthetic has lost meaning, inverted in on itself and is nearing irrelevance in the past two decades.B. There is some truth to A, but this is also just a change in perspective that's a function of aging. A "futuristic aesthetic" still may make sense for young people.
C. There will always be a "futuristic aesthetic" what do you mean it's "dying?"
D. Other
You've read "The Gernsback continuum", right ?
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You've read "The Gernsback continuum", right ?
I have not. But maybe I'll look at it next.
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Which do you agree with most?
A. The concept of "Futuristic" is dying.
From the 1890s to the present the concept of a futuristic aesthetic has lost meaning, inverted in on itself and is nearing irrelevance in the past two decades.B. There is some truth to A, but this is also just a change in perspective that's a function of aging. A "futuristic aesthetic" still may make sense for young people.
C. There will always be a "futuristic aesthetic" what do you mean it's "dying?"
D. Other
@futurebird I think futuristic images have died more in the last 10 yrs than the 10 prior. Speakling as an American Queer in their early 20's, I remember lots of optimism for the future still present in the 00s and 10s. Americans rode the high of gay marriage and the internet boom of the early and mid 10s for a long time, and to me the idea of futuristic shifted from shiny, 50s style space future with a touch of solarpunk to something more communicative and internet themed over the course of the 10s. Nowadays I dont think many progressive people share a common, concrete vision of the future. Im focusing on community and my personal vision for the future involves helping my friends when I can, and it's paying off well. It's the only futurism Ive seen come to a fruition I really like
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Which do you agree with most?
A. The concept of "Futuristic" is dying.
From the 1890s to the present the concept of a futuristic aesthetic has lost meaning, inverted in on itself and is nearing irrelevance in the past two decades.B. There is some truth to A, but this is also just a change in perspective that's a function of aging. A "futuristic aesthetic" still may make sense for young people.
C. There will always be a "futuristic aesthetic" what do you mean it's "dying?"
D. Other
The concept of futuristic dissolves in the kinds of futures which overturn, subvert, and otherwise transcend the here of the here and now of the now.
The phase transition which Douglas Engelbart suggests, and that which Heinz Otto-Peitgen's article in Der Spiegel and Lizb's articles about computers as dynamical systems never really ramified in user-interfaces (to operating systems in particular).
Compare, in particular:
Adam Ant's character in the episode /Such Interesting Neighbors/ of /Amazing Stories/,and most of the folks in this interview
in terms of /disintermediation of interfaces/.
we do not live in a world where knowing how energy and information sloshing around in computers is a stepping stone to understanding other systems, and where access to such is democratized.
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Which do you agree with most?
A. The concept of "Futuristic" is dying.
From the 1890s to the present the concept of a futuristic aesthetic has lost meaning, inverted in on itself and is nearing irrelevance in the past two decades.B. There is some truth to A, but this is also just a change in perspective that's a function of aging. A "futuristic aesthetic" still may make sense for young people.
C. There will always be a "futuristic aesthetic" what do you mean it's "dying?"
D. Other
I can spot one current "future setting" theme: tech disappears - digital contact lenses or implants or *sometimes* glasses are the screens, possibly with digital tattoos for a UI.
I've seen a lot "its the future" stuff with brownstone buildings, hardwood floors, classic timeless decor - but with infinite computing power tucked away everywhere.
But all the tech is generic, invisible, inter-operable, and just "there" without having to *be* there as boxes with wires and visible form
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@futurebird thinking about this more, it occurs to me that most past societies probably didn't have any concept of a "futuristic" aesthetic, either positive or negative?
I would think the average historical person would guess the future would look a little different in style from their present, but not in ways they could pinpoint, which is kind of the place I am at now.
@floatybirb @futurebird Mmm there is some evidence of cultures around the globe and across time describing fantastical visions of future or alternate worlds.
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Which do you agree with most?
A. The concept of "Futuristic" is dying.
From the 1890s to the present the concept of a futuristic aesthetic has lost meaning, inverted in on itself and is nearing irrelevance in the past two decades.B. There is some truth to A, but this is also just a change in perspective that's a function of aging. A "futuristic aesthetic" still may make sense for young people.
C. There will always be a "futuristic aesthetic" what do you mean it's "dying?"
D. Other
@futurebird I'd say one contributing factor to the feeling like there is no futurism anymore is this very specific shift in tech design that happened starting in the late 2000s and culminating by the 2010s;
There was this mostly unconscious drive to make tech intentionally seem less futuristic and instead fade into the background as the tech became more integrated in daily life. At first you got your computers and phones in very stand-out designs; even the most generic PCs were white and had some level of curves. But then, they started making computers black, made their UI more minimalist, things like making the thinnest phone and the least bezel you could have on a screen came into play. No longer is tech something of a novelty, it's here, and you're forced to deal with it.
Using the computer is no longer a fun novelty task, it's just what you inherently have to do to live in this world.
Of course, we still have some futurism in tech design, mainly in the world of gaming PCs; it's just a really genericized futurism that relies on flashy lights and sharp edges. Long gone are the days of chrome, brushed silver and curves
