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The world of tomorrow

worksinprogress.co

121–130 of 141 posts

Re: The world of tomorrow

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're all so pessimistic about the future not because we think it's going to be captured by the plutocrats and oligarchs, but because we know the future has already been preemptively captured by them. They're all doing the work now to cement their positions in the future, and there's nothing the rest of us can do about it. I don't know what great inventions and technological leaps we are going to see in 2030, 2040, o…

That’s what they want us to believe. But at the end of the day, we can always fight. There’s little they can do to stop a massive violent uprising.

As a HN reader most likely making 2x, 3x, 4x or more the median wage, _you_ are part of the overpaid techbros they will be leveling the "massive violent uprising"(sic) against. The working class and poor know darned well we aren't part of the proletariat.

Re: The world of tomorrow

#122
post #2

That'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.)

The US writes most of the software that powers those devices. It also designs the hardware. It also runs the data centers and backend infrastructure and software required to make those phones useful, like GPS satellites and AWS/Azure. It produces most of the content that people watch on their TVs and much of what they play on their video game systems. The U.S. is a leader in robotics, robotic surgery equipment, self…

> "The US writes most of the software that powers those devices."

For the moment. Have you noticed how many of those people building that software are immigrants? Most of the FAANGs and other significant tech companies have development centers worldwide and it's vastly easier to pack up and move a software development office elsewhere than it is to move a factory and all its equipment.

Re: The world of tomorrow

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s what they want us to believe. But at the end of the day, we can always fight. There’s little they can do to stop a massive violent uprising.

As a HN reader most likely making 2x, 3x, 4x or more the median wage, _you_ are part of the overpaid techbros they will be leveling the "massive violent uprising"(sic) against. The working class and poor know darned well we aren't part of the proletariat.

You sure about that class strata?

I'm a software developer but I work in a factory making minimum wage now.

I can barely afford rent. I certainly don't feel like bourgeois.

Re: The world of tomorrow

#124

Curious. The article mentions Star Trek three times , in all cases referring to The Original Series, while stating that "Outside of niche books and magazines, the golden age of optimistic science fiction did not exist.", which is surprising it how it missed the golden era of Star Trek, beginning with The Next Generation (1987-1994), aka. the reference work for optimistic future in popular sci-fi, subsequently followe…

Star Trek TNG had a very singular kind of optimism though; it was presented as optimistic and that everything was wonderful, but if you examined it more closely it started to look kind of unappealing or even dystopian.

https://blog.plan99.net/i-want-to-see-a-libertarian-star-tre...

Re: The world of tomorrow

#125

Growing 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…

Comparing a Wired Magazine from 2014 compared to 2024 is pretty illuminating to me, because in terms of aesthetics nothing had really changed, the "modern" adverts for furniture or gadgets could be interchangable. But the difference in the content and "spirit" of the writing was palatable, 2014 definetly felt alot more forward looking and speaking towards a more unified crowd, where 2024 was often a barrage of fears and anxieties of X upcoming technologies, or how X industry was not inclusive of Y crowd, the whole thing felt alot more diversionary and tribalistic. I've observed the same thing in media, where alot of the focus has shifted from value through exploration of new concepts to value via representation.

So perhaps corporate greed is one thing, but I'd also argue that America itself dosen't seem very interested in the future anymore either, they seem alot more interested in dividing the cake now rather than making it larger.

Re: The world of tomorrow

#126

I read this blog post the other day about the hedonic treadmill that influenced my thinking a lot: https://www.optimallyirrational.com/p/the-aim-of-maximising-... Consider this 1940s ad for a "house that runs like magic", powered by gas: https://wip.gatspress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/AGAAd-1... I'm already living this dream life from the 1940s. I have a range, a refrigerator, "permanent hot springs", heating, a…

>I'm already living this dream life from the 1940s. I have a range, a refrigerator, "permanent hot springs", heating, and air conditioning.

But you also had all this stuff back in the 2000s. In the 80s, harder to say. But in 2024, nothing has really changed.

Re: The world of tomorrow

#127

I read this blog post the other day about the hedonic treadmill that influenced my thinking a lot: https://www.optimallyirrational.com/p/the-aim-of-maximising-... Consider this 1940s ad for a "house that runs like magic", powered by gas: https://wip.gatspress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/AGAAd-1... I'm already living this dream life from the 1940s. I have a range, a refrigerator, "permanent hot springs", heating, a…

One can go hiking or kayaking for a few nights or even just try to pitch a tent when it's sleeting. Ordinary stuff can feel much more appreciable after that. For a short while only though!

I hiked 1000 miles on the AT in the winter of '22, and to this day I marvel at potable water on tap, AND it gets hot! Too hot even! What a delight.

Also plumbing and a bidet! No catholes, no rashes, no norovirus! I wake up every day with gratitude in my heart for this abundance.

Re: The world of tomorrow

#128

Curious. The article mentions Star Trek three times , in all cases referring to The Original Series, while stating that "Outside of niche books and magazines, the golden age of optimistic science fiction did not exist.", which is surprising it how it missed the golden era of Star Trek, beginning with The Next Generation (1987-1994), aka. the reference work for optimistic future in popular sci-fi, subsequently followe…

>Disney's Tomorrowland - not the fair, the 2015 movie

The thing about Tomorrowland is that it really digs into the viewer in that beyond just all the blaming of external forces of corporates or governments, how much did the people truly desire the future.

And it seems as people fear the future, they also want it, they desire that bleak future. Because cynicism dosen't demand anything of them. That they can sit in their chairs comfortably and continue disparging the world, even as things slowly turn worse around them like a frog boiling in a pot.

Look at the discussions here, how so many deperately seek easy theories on how the economy might fail tomorrow or how the stock market would crash. There's nobody trying to build or maintain confidence, even as when those fears would realize would be directly detetrimental to them. They blame social media, they blame the "Algorithm" even as they consciously continue to use those very media. They want things to collapse, they want the economy to burn, they want insitutions to fail even they want to close the path to the future. And the more things get worse, the more they'll double down on a path of self-destruction.

If you were poor and just trying to survive it could be understandable, but it's arguably the poor who have a more optimistic outlook. No, it's the middle class, with far more opportunities than 90% of the other world that seem hell bent on their own own annihilation. How else can you explain how the middle-class in China, in Dubai have far less opportunities and rights than in America, yet they are far more optimistic and confident in their nation and their future? Countries are built on Confidence, and replace that confidence with Cynicism and it's over.

When you see that, it's honestly not difficult to emphasize with the elites' disdain with the whole affair, and their own efforts to building their "arks" just like Governor Nix.

Re: The world of tomorrow

#129

A great essay, worthy of detailed reading as it contains so many interesting connections and associations from the past to explain the present and maybe forecast the future. Just one example among the many: > Making family-sized dwellings abundant and thus affordable for most people would be the single most effective step toward restoring faith in progress. We are drowning in stochastic parrots and cryptographically…

Oooh, that's interesting to me, as someone who sees a common pattern in the way ills that tend to vex black Americans in one generation come back to haunt the rest of the country a few down the road (and often, silently, visited Native Americans first)[1]. There's been a decent amount of scholarship on the gulf between white and black Americans on their experience of the moon landing (shining beacon of progress versus a waste of taxpayer money while food and housing was insecure). Now, everyone's feeling the, "Can you please fund basic things that actually matter," blues. (For the NA analogue, perhaps the way the "progress" of industrialization made their subjugation and denial of land all the easier.)

[1]E.g., the crack epidemic, the opioid epidemic, and alcoholism on reservations, respectively.

Re: The world of tomorrow

#130

When the future arrived, it felt… ordinary. What happened to the glamour of tomorrow? While I share your lament, witnessing feats like a Starship getting caught by giant chopsticks feels pretty darned extraordinary!

I'm wondering if the future arrived just for people of 30 years or older. The past 15 years changed very slowly compared to 15 years before. The expectations of what's futuristic for someone 25 years old today is quite different than of the ones older.
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