this remembering of the past and what they thought about us can mostly only mean one thing: we ourselves can't and haven't been able to think of the future.
Retrofuturism
21–30 of 82 posts
Re: Retrofuturism
#22See also: false nostalgia
Re: Retrofuturism
#23[deleted]
Re: Retrofuturism
#24What then is the converse of retrofuturism where the present or future is represented with a mix of obsolete technologies along with contemporary and/or hypothetical future ones?
Re: Retrofuturism
#25What then is the converse of retrofuturism where the present or future is represented with a mix of obsolete technologies along with contemporary and/or hypothetical future ones?
Steampunk?
Re: Retrofuturism
#26What then is the converse of retrofuturism where the present or future is represented with a mix of obsolete technologies along with contemporary and/or hypothetical future ones?
A post-apocalypic present with ancient and highly advanced technologies unearthed from ruins that humanity no longer has the skill to remake. Miyazaki's Nausicaa comes to mind.
Or maybe a world where technology is futuristic but the societal structure is from the past. Warhammer 40k, the Roman empire but in space.
Re: Retrofuturism
#27There is an analogy to computing here. I mentioned a couple of 30+ year old books here about what the future of software would be:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22093100
by Brad Cox (inventor of Objective C) and David Gelertner (CS professor and entrepreneur).
I guess you could make Retrofuturistic software now by writing modern versions of those old ideas (which didn't turn out to be economically feasible / adopted, at least in the exact form predicted, although in some cases they were influential.)
Re: Retrofuturism
#28this remembering of the past and what they thought about us can mostly only mean one thing: we ourselves can't and haven't been able to think of the future.
It's subjective remembering though, so this message would primarily apply to those who are creating such content or consuming it. Those are the ones for whom your viewpoint may be true.
Others do create / conceptualize "new" futures, though I would add that a lot of this is a metaphor for big-picture ideas and general creativity drawn from the yet-unknown, which are then birthed into the present (the future present ;-)). These people have a tough job to do, because audiences like HN share the tech space with them, but tend to be relentlessly critical of wild new ideas at the same time. We are that retro-future crowd that's short on (or generally annoyed by) new ideas, many of us.
Re: Retrofuturism
#29Not sure there’s a finer visual artist to produce in the medium of retrofuturism than Syd Mead - passed away late last year unfortunately but left an inspiring catalog and vision of the future that I imagine will endure a very long time -> https://www.iamag.co/the-art-of-syd-mead/
Simon Stålenhag does really great work that if not considered retro-futurism proper is something else that doesn't seem to have a name but certainly is at least in a space adjacent to retro-futurism.
Re: Retrofuturism
#30this remembering of the past and what they thought about us can mostly only mean one thing: we ourselves can't and haven't been able to think of the future.
I mean, there were also some remarkably prescient predictions made at the time. But the more accurate they were, the less likely they'd define a retrofuturistic artistic genre.