Eyes to the Future
So what does the future hold.
A recent discussion with a certain archivist led me to do some thinking about what the future holds. In fact a lot of things have been making me think about the future, including the fact that I’m currently typing on Michael’s Soft Vee Star or something. (The future has been installed at my work, well, we’re testing it at least). This means that I am actually staring the future in the face.
It appears to be irritatingly shiny and polished. Distractingly graphically advanced. And slightly annoying in an indefinable way. It does look very pretty though. So far I’ve only ran into a couple of non-functioning things. But then, all I’ve really been doing is browsing the Internet. Hardly a challenging test drive.
Anyway, I’m not here to talk about that…I’m here to talk about the actual future.
What do you reckon, Demolition Man or Blade Runner?
You see, I love the future…so many of my favourite books and films and stuff take place there. The way I visualise the future is through a lens of a million and one Sci Fi books and films, and possibly a couple of tracks by Brian Eno (and others, in fact, more the others than him, but I’ve been thinking about him a bit today…Lord only knows what that means).
So I remain confused.
Is the future going to be hellish or wonderful?
Will I survive to see it?
The latter probably depends on whether I can find some proper shoes before the winter really starts to bite my toes off. If I lose my big toe to frostbite then my balance will be entirely skewed and I’ll fall over all the time. With my luck, this’ll first happen as I try to cross a road and will result in my hideous gory death.
But I digress.
There are basically two forces that I think are most significant to the way the world will work out. Humanity and Technology.
If we can invent the right stuff to save us, then we may well end up surviving. This is kind of what the Physics Maestro Stephen Hawking has been saying recently (and actually kind of for a while before this; he’s quite a smart chap you know). We need to invent the technologies that will allow our burgeoning population to actually live happily.
Now us SF readers have known this for years. We’ve been running off into space, or to the bottom of the sea, or into floating cities, or wherever we can, for years and years and years and years. There’s a lot of different ways to go, we just need the technology to catch up with our imaginations.
And we need to do it before the world comes to a huge dramatic end because humanity fucks it all up. The Doomsday clock is getting closer to midnight, proliferation is rising, and increasingly, countries are starting to once again look to nuclear weapons as a viable deterrent. Then there’s the whole global warming debacle and all manner of other things that could go wrong. Read that Hawking article, or research it, or just look around you and think about the concept of limited resources and how much we use them.
Now, for reasons of sanity I choose to remain optimistic. I reckon that answers will be found. I also hope for some big thing to happen that will refocus society to look toward new ways of working things out. A more socialistic view? A more anarchic view? A more humanistic view? A less capitalistic view? Whatever it takes for people to start working with the goal of mutual progress rather than selfish desire.
I just finished reading the Watchmen recently. I enjoyed it massively; though as a friend pointed out, the artwork isn’t amazing. Still, I think I’ve been spoilt a bit by the quality of the artwork in the comics I’ve read before.
Anyway, I won’t spoil it, but it has some fascinating ideas in it. I think what I’ve liked about the Alan Moore comics I’ve read so far, (this and V for Vendetta)is the amorality of them. Nothing is simple. V is clearly insane, as is Veidt. Yet both help the world away from disaster and towards brighter futures (hopefully). The world is never morally simple, there’s swings and roundabouts everywhere. We’re all used to this, but we all still try to make these things simple. Just look at Iraq for pity’s sake. Where’s the clear and simple morality in deposing a tyrant and creating a state more unstable and violent than before? Whatever your beliefs on the whole situation, the fact is that you know in your heart it isn’t that simple.
Life is never that simple.
So the world view laid out in these fantastic dystopias or super hero stories seem so much more real than the black and white worlds our own media lays out for us sometimes. It’s weird.
So where were we.
The future.
Well….I reckon we’ll sort a lot of stuff out. Plus we’ll have a lot more problems. Again, I’ve read the books, we know about the possibilities for police states in a technological age…hell, look at the UK right now…it’s pretty messed up right? Surveillance culture and all that jazz.
Anyway, sorry if I’m being a bit vague and rambly here, but what the hell do you expect?
We’ve got a good chance. We need to change, but if history has taught us anything, it’s that things do change. Our knowledge keeps on increasing and things keep on changing. I have a lot of faith in that. I think it’s important, yet difficult to accept.
The world will continue to change, attitudes will change (maybe for the better, maybe not..we shall see) and our lives will change.
If you haven’t noticed it in your life yet then you really aren’t paying enough attention.
What will it change into? We don’t know…we just wait for the future.
I’m looking forward to it.
Pun intended.
Any thoughts?
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You do rather more thinking than I do, although I will admit that I was thinkin about the future the other day. At church the preacher pointed out that the Day could be any day now. I think he was trying to motivate us to do things now rather than later. I just hope the Second Coming is before I bother doing my coursework rather than after, because that would be frustrating. Random, and not quite as deep as your post.
Hey…it’s only as deep as you think it is. To be honest…I tend to just flit about on the surface….trying to peer into the depths. I’d need better eyes and more time to think to go any further.
As for the second coming….I wouldn’t bank on it….the coursework should probably stay on the priority list.
I read something interesting the other day about a it being in the bible (somewhere) that working well is a good way of worshipping. Protestant work ethic and all that. But yeah, it comes up in the Tao Te Ching as well….it’s good to work and do it well. Either offer up your coursework to the lord or send it in…either way it’s worth doing.
If you believe in that kind of thing.
You ask me…I doubt anyone’s coming…I’ve explained my interpretation of the whole Jesus thing before….I won’t go into it again here.
After all…I’m still busy celebrating a lack of morality as being a more accurate way of looking at the world.
Rambling again…sozzle.
The good future, or the one where the machines have enslaved us all?
As far as reading habits go, I prefer a dystopian future, but I’d like to think things will go well for a while at least, before the end of the world.
Of course it’s all about perspective, our society could be someone’s idea of a dystopia but we’re just used to it. I don’t know if you’ve seen Soylent Green (pure cheese) but when that old guy tells the Charlton Heston (I said cheese) character how bad things have gotten he says that humanity is ‘doing alright’, because it’s all he’s ever known.
Hey, I think our society is pretty dystopic (and myopic) most of the time.
I’ve not seen Soylent green but I know what you mean, what we’ve got is what we’re stuck with no matter what it is.
But like I say…change will happen.
Gotta leave work now so no more time to respond, but I might say more in a bit.
Thanks for stopping by.
Mmm.. cheese.
Currently I think the odds of the Second Coming ocuring before I finish uni are about the same as me graduating. Arse.
That thing you said about us consuming our resources, it reminds me of my mom scolding me for wasting anything, food, water, money, paper, even if we had enough of it. She’d be appalled at the rate at which people use up stuff over here. She can’t bear the sight of anyone wasting anything. I’ve lived in communities that cook every part of the vegetables they eat, including seeds and skin, and make it taste amazing, throwing away nothing. I think it’s quite amazing however Third World it may sound.
It always occurs to me how little difference a single individual’s effort can make to a whole. I scolded my SO for wasting tissue and he said, “Hey I didn’t chop this tree down, and I may have used a twig.”
On the other hand, fixing a choked up drain is going cost us all.
Sometimes I wonder if it’s worth the effort, that’s all.
*makes excited noises*
This is what I want to do for a career! Trend forecasting and futures studies! Fear my relevant links:
- http://www.futuryst.com/
- http://www.openthefuture.com/
- http://www.futures.hawaii.edu/index.php
- http://www.futures.hawaii.edu/dator/futures/appliedknow.html
Kali,
Don’t be silly. You’re clever…you’ll get it done. (Normally I’d use more words..but it’s late…Trust that I have genuine faith in you (though not in Jebus) and that I’ll support you…yadaydayda).
Vintage,
I know that feeling, but you’ve got to think of the scale of civilisation, or even just your local community, and think of everyone in your position grabbing a twig at a time. Or just think of yourself over the whole of your life.
Everyone needs to pitch in.
Also we need to convince corporations and businesses to do the same.
The one that always gets me down is when I get the train through London at night. I think of me at home, desperately trying to remember to turn lights on all the time, or put less water in the kettle, and getting energy saving lights etc…then I look out the train window and see that almost all the offices we drive past leave all their lights on even though nobody is in them. It makes it seem futile.
But like I always say…I need to feel like I’m making my difference. Especially as if everyone did it..then things would start to improve.
Whether or not this is true I do not know.
Justin,
Bless
I thought Justin’s comment was spam, at first glance, then I remembered he posts here often.
He’s not spam. Not really.
“I thought Justin’s comment was spam, at first glance, then I remembered he posts here often.”
Well, thanks a lot.
Larger penis, anyone? :D
Two extra hands, perhaps.
The central idea in the ability to think positively about the future is this: We are all small.
You and I will never see “the future”. We’ve seen enormous technological development in a very short span of time, and the rapidity of the accompanying changes has quite winded us, I think. But sometime within the next century we most likely will quietly expire and equally likely be unnoticed in so doing except by a small selection of close friends.
But the human race, I thoroughly expect, will be here (barring rogue meteors) at least a hundred years after we’re gone. Apart from the aforementioned meteor, what could wipe out the entire race?
Even the most retrograde of nations is now paying lip service to the concept of environmental stewardship. Yet if we don’t succeed in keeping the air cleanish and the water mostly pure, we’ll manage. Say, two billion people living in bubbles around the poles?
The worst of the nuclear weapons dabblers talks about responsibility and self-defence. Tiny and unstable atomic-armed nations will never quite wipe out humanity even if they succeed in breeding bombs fifty times the size of the Nagasaki one. And the nations who could currently tear the planet in half have little reason to do so.
It’s a fearful world, full of the threat of our own tiny and unnoticeable deaths. But the monkeys who have populated this planet will march on over our bones, whether said bones are laid to rest in bed or on a battlefield.
In the end, I believe the world is currently on the perigee of a dystopian cycle, with an uptick to follow in about 725 days.
So yeah, I won’t be here in a hundred years, but there’s a lot to watch for in the immediate fifty. I eagerly await the building of a base on the moon, and the following colonization of Mars, which may happen in my lifetime.
Listen to the Ernie Cline stuff, by the way. Mme Metro discovered him.
725 days sounds optimistic… I thought we were waiting for 2013.
I think your cynical optimism is not far off my view. At least my view when I’m writing things like this: http://alabaster.wordpress.com/2006/12/13/all-these-thoughts/
Life will go on. You’re probably right about human life surviving to.
But if we can get those bubbles into space then we might even be able to manage more than 2 billion.
The odds of us being involved are indeed very small. The odds of us being remotely significant are even smaller.
However, I still have to think about the future. For a start…reincarnation might be the way it all works out…in which case I get to see it (albeit through different eyes).
Plus that’s why I want to read SF, to imagine the future, to see how things could work out.
We’ll continue to see big changes, I’m looking forward to them. And I remain optimistic.
But I can’t remember what I was saying any more.
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