The world of tomorrow
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The world of tomorrow
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Re: The world of tomorrow
#2That's the view from a country on the trailing edge. In Shenzhen, or Seoul, or Tskuba, or Tapei you'll find enthusiasm for technology.
The US can't even make a smartphone any more. Or electrical distribution equipment. Or telephone central offices. Or TV sets. Next to go, cars. (Chrysler just exited the car business. Minivans only now.)
Re: The world of tomorrow
#3The productivity increases of the modern times led to a corporate class. These oligarchs have eschewed the progressive initiatives, in eager pursuit of even greater wealth, supported by the wholly owned media and a bribed political class. What has been more evenly distributed globally is the ever-growing poverty, pollution and apathy against these powers.
To be fair, some improvements have been made, even at the feet of these giants, driven by government action and populist initiatives. This has been at the cost of concentration and increases in pollution and poverty in the poorest nations. The future looks bleak today, as the divide grows and progressive progress has all but halted.
Re: The world of tomorrow
#4> When the future arrived, it felt… ordinary. What happened to the glamour of tomorrow?
That's the... subtitle? Thesis statement? It's the first line after the title at any rate. I stopped reading as soon as the first paragraphs felt the need to define glamour. Anyone with a modicum of life experience should already intuit one obvious answer: glamour can only exist in brief moments in reality. "The Future" necessarily only exists in fiction, and fictional works can string together glamourous moments end-to-end indefinitely.
But in real life, you can't keep the glamour turned on. People need to defecate, that toilet eventually needs be cleaned, and the sewage treatment plant needs to keep working. People have to start as infants that scream and adults that have to hold them and hear it, then toddlers that make messes everywhere, etc. Maybe dinners could all be glamourous, if you want it bad enough, but are you going to get up, do your makeup and put on your most stylish breakfast clothes everyday? Can you get away with the same outfit at lunch and still be glamorous?
"Life" cannot be glamorous unless you are fabulously wealthy AND make very specific life choices.
Re: The world of tomorrow
#5Growing up in the oughts, the future was Ghost in the Shell: SAC and Xenosaga and .hack//Sign and Gundam 00. I didn't see the dystopia; I imagined a glass metropolis beside a glittering bay, bleached and blue; VR diving into pools of ephemeral neon filament; trips to a space colony. The ISS had launched when I was in elementary school. 2012 came, and I graduated from college, and the Rift had its Kickstarter. I had a supercomputer in my pocket and a black president. Things seemed on track.
Of course, Oculus dragged its feet until it was bought by Facebook, who dragged things even more. Obama droned weddings. The ISS prepares for reentry burn in a few years. Et cetera. All of it - the corporate politicking; the political atrocities; the logarithmic progression of scientific advances, where technological progress is overtaken by the social calamity it unleashes - predicted by the media that had set my mental image of the future in the first place. Whose fault is it that the future failed to materialize again? I'd say corporate greed and the captured institutions that are supposed to police them for the greater good, but the fact that we're seeing the dream die again means that laying blame might be futile (particularly if we're not going to actually do anything about the bad actors).
Essentially, the Millennial era has been one where the glamour ghost came a-knockin' again, but the smart people who were paying attention already knew how the story goes. As for the rest of us? Mana du vortes.
Re: The world of tomorrow
#6I don’t think it’s fair to look at artefacts of a past era and compare them to today.
The only things preserved are the ones deemed worthy of preservation. That leads to a skewed perspective.
Re: The world of tomorrow
#7That's the view from a country on the trailing edge. In Shenzhen, or Seoul, or Tskuba, or Tapei you'll find enthusiasm for technology. The US can't even make a smartphone any more. Or electrical distribution equipment. Or telephone central offices. Or TV sets. Next to go, cars. (Chrysler just exited the car business. Minivans only now.)
Yeah this writer seems confused, by definition any above average group is more likely to regress to the global mean… Than to keep going upwards.
That’s the default, so any speculations/arguments/etc… should be written to show why the other direction is more likely than not.
Re: The world of tomorrow
#8Growing up in the oughts, the future was Ghost in the Shell: SAC and Xenosaga and .hack//Sign and Gundam 00. I didn't see the dystopia; I imagined a glass metropolis beside a glittering bay, bleached and blue; VR diving into pools of ephemeral neon filament; trips to a space colony. The ISS had launched when I was in elementary school. 2012 came, and I graduated from college, and the Rift had its Kickstarter. I had a…
a view from a generation earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39084117
Re: Ghost in the Shell, I find it amusing that Gibson's 1984 opening line: "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." used to mean grey, but now could mean bright blue (or even black?) due to the march of progress...
Re: The world of tomorrow
#9That's the view from a country on the trailing edge. In Shenzhen, or Seoul, or Tskuba, or Tapei you'll find enthusiasm for technology. The US can't even make a smartphone any more. Or electrical distribution equipment. Or telephone central offices. Or TV sets. Next to go, cars. (Chrysler just exited the car business. Minivans only now.)
Yeah this writer seems confused, by definition any above average group is more likely to regress to the global mean… Than to keep going upwards. That’s the default, so any speculations/arguments/etc… should be written to show why the other direction is more likely than not.
It feels like we are instead bifurcating instead of regressing to a mean. The rich are getting richer and moving to one side together as a group, while the middle class and poor are merging the other way into their own "barely hanging on class", distributed around a point far on the other side.
The average going up doesn't mean it's a tide that raises all boats.
Re: The world of tomorrow
#10Growing up in the oughts, the future was Ghost in the Shell: SAC and Xenosaga and .hack//Sign and Gundam 00. I didn't see the dystopia; I imagined a glass metropolis beside a glittering bay, bleached and blue; VR diving into pools of ephemeral neon filament; trips to a space colony. The ISS had launched when I was in elementary school. 2012 came, and I graduated from college, and the Rift had its Kickstarter. I had a…
a view from a generation earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39084117 Re: Ghost in the Shell, I find it amusing that Gibson's 1984 opening line: " The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. " used to mean grey, but now could mean bright blue (or even black?) due to the march of progress...
The poetic meaning of the line still works. The sky, the symbol of boundless optimism, the place of open infinite wonder and possibility...reduced to meaninglessness, closed possibilities, and failed promise.