Why Futurism Has a Cultural Blindspot
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Re: Why Futurism Has a Cultural Blindspot
#2A few non sequiturs:
1) 'Futurism' is the early twentieth century philosophy created by Marinetti, launched with this enchanting essay: http://www.english.upenn.edu/~jenglish/English104/marinetti....
2) "Instagram began life as a Yelp-style app called Burbn, with photos an afterthought (photos on your phone, is that a thing?)."
Is this somehow implying that Instagram invented phones on your camera, or indeed anything at all? This seems a common sort of confusion, along the same category as believing Apple invented smart phones, Google invented search engines or Facebook invented social networking, rather than popularizing a particular form of a preexisting technology.
Re: Why Futurism Has a Cultural Blindspot
#3A few non sequiturs: 1) 'Futurism' is the early twentieth century philosophy created by Marinetti, launched with this enchanting essay: http://www.english.upenn.edu/~jenglish/English104/marinetti.... 2) "Instagram began life as a Yelp-style app called Burbn, with photos an afterthought (photos on your phone, is that a thing?)." Is this somehow implying that Instagram invented phones on your camera, or indeed anything…
re 2)
I'd read it as that the makers of Instagram initially didn't believe in people actually using cameras in their phones, so the opposite of your interpretation.
How many people did have camera feature-phones/early smartphones and did really use the camera? Granted, I was still in high-school, but tons of my peers had phones with cameras, but they were only used very seldomly and not in any phone-specific way (take picture with phone if you didn't have a digital camera with you, send to computer, treat as if it came of a crappy digital camera)
Re: Why Futurism Has a Cultural Blindspot
#4Beware: The more you understand about how inaccurate futuristic predictions are, the harder modern sci-fis get to watch.
Especially so if you've seen a lot of older sci-fis about our present time.
Re: Why Futurism Has a Cultural Blindspot
#5Honestly, I don't get what the article is about. Was probably expecting something deeper, e.g. why our vision of the future is always so wrong and dull and not only in terms of cultural changes. Take any prediction from the 1960s for example and there will be a lot of food for ridicule. A self driving car in the year 2000 (well, ok so far), going at 500mph and the passenger reading a newspaper in the meantime. Can it get any more wrong than this?
"Radio has no future." -- Lord Kelvin, physicist, the father of thermodynamics.
Our inability to predict the distant future only says one thing: things that we can imagine are already happening. The gap between an idea and its implementation is narrower compared to hundreds of years ago. With very few exceptions maybe: AI, "eternal" battery cells, easy space travel and a few others. So in terms of predictions, I think we will be getting only worse over time.
Re: Why Futurism Has a Cultural Blindspot
#6A few non sequiturs: 1) 'Futurism' is the early twentieth century philosophy created by Marinetti, launched with this enchanting essay: http://www.english.upenn.edu/~jenglish/English104/marinetti.... 2) "Instagram began life as a Yelp-style app called Burbn, with photos an afterthought (photos on your phone, is that a thing?)." Is this somehow implying that Instagram invented phones on your camera, or indeed anything…
If you haven't already read it, G.K. Chesterton's response[1] to the original Futurist manifesto is an absolute joy. I completely lose it every time I get to his Futurist drinking song.
Re: Why Futurism Has a Cultural Blindspot
#7Beware: The more you understand about how inaccurate futuristic predictions are, the harder modern sci-fis get to watch. Especially so if you've seen a lot of older sci-fis about our present time.
Or not necessarily about the present time. For example a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away they had very advanced AIs but no computers or mobile communication (in any practical form) :)
Re: Why Futurism Has a Cultural Blindspot
#8Honestly, I don't get what the article is about. Was probably expecting something deeper, e.g. why our vision of the future is always so wrong and dull and not only in terms of cultural changes. Take any prediction from the 1960s for example and there will be a lot of food for ridicule. A self driving car in the year 2000 (well, ok so far), going at 500mph and the passenger reading a newspaper in the meantime. Can it…
To be fair, newspapers are still around...
Re: Why Futurism Has a Cultural Blindspot
#9> One futurist noted that a 1960s film of the “office of the future” made on-par technological predictions (fax machines and the like), but had a glaring omission: The office had no women.
To be fair, most futurist thought work will be fully automated by now, and there would be NO people needed in the office or factory.
Re: Why Futurism Has a Cultural Blindspot
#10Futurism is this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurism
And the article is not related at all, despite the (misleading) title.