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Why Futurism Has a Cultural Blindspot

nautil.us

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Re: Why Futurism Has a Cultural Blindspot

#31

Post by happyscrappy »

stillsut wrote: post #22

Dystopian anticipations have been 180 degrees wrong: 1.Genetic Testing - Anticpated: GATTACA What we got: A bunch of innocent people freed from jail. Who, today, would want to live in a world without genetic forensics? 2. Pacifying Narcotics - Anticipated: Brave New World What we got:War on Drugs, 80's crack epidemic. Huxley foresaw the gov't forcing people to take drugs. The real problem was the gov't trying to stop…

It is much more exciting to discuss strife and chaos. Doom sells. Continual progress is boring but more accurate.

Re: Why Futurism Has a Cultural Blindspot

#32

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

m0v_eax wrote: post #25
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #24

One problem is what demographics futurists tend to be. White men are less likely to imagine a future with full gender equality and black liberation than black women are, I would imagine. People living in the West will think less about the rise of the rest of the world.

Unnecessary generalizations..

Unnecessary? This is not a novel suggestion about the problems with futurists. It may be a generalisation, but it's pretty accurate generally. People privileged in some way aren't going to think much about that privilege. The rich won't envision a future with less (or more) poverty.

Re: Why Futurism Has a Cultural Blindspot

#34

Post by eli_gottlieb »

notahacker wrote: post #23
SRasch wrote: post #15

I feel that the author bases the hypothesis on what journalists say sci-fi predicts (flying cars) not what they actually predict. Most sci-fi deals with pretty radical views of culture in the future. Look no further than Banks' Culture-series, which deals a lot with the power-structures, norms and rules of a post-scarcity society. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_series In one aspect futurism often looks like an…

Flying cars have been part of science fiction since road-going cars and flight were a relative novelties, and the sentence in the original article is obviously referring to flying cars "we predicted we would" quite some time ago. I don't think pointing out that fantastical views of the far future written in the nineties didn't place quite so much emphasis on them really contradicts his point. On the contrary, I'm sur…

Liberal foreign-policy concerns? Why does everyone always forget that the Culture are anarcho-communists?

Re: Why Futurism Has a Cultural Blindspot

#35

Post by klagermkii »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #24

One problem is what demographics futurists tend to be. White men are less likely to imagine a future with full gender equality and black liberation than black women are, I would imagine. People living in the West will think less about the rise of the rest of the world.

Or perhaps it's the reverse. If you ask "white men" about the liberation status of women/minorities, you're probably going to find them MORE likely to say that equality has already been achieved. So when they write stories, they'll write them as if everyone is equal and living the same utopian dream they are.

On the other hand if someone comes from a background where they feel oppressed, they're going to write that into their work.

That's part of the point of the article. People continue to extrapolate from what they view culture currently is, as if it continues indefinitely into the future. I think based on that "white men" are going to view it as being more pleasant and fair (i.e. their own experience) than minorities.

Re: Why Futurism Has a Cultural Blindspot

#36

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

klagermkii wrote: post #35
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #24

One problem is what demographics futurists tend to be. White men are less likely to imagine a future with full gender equality and black liberation than black women are, I would imagine. People living in the West will think less about the rise of the rest of the world.

Or perhaps it's the reverse. If you ask "white men" about the liberation status of women/minorities, you're probably going to find them MORE likely to say that equality has already been achieved. So when they write stories, they'll write them as if everyone is equal and living the same utopian dream they are. On the other hand if someone comes from a background where they feel oppressed, they're going to write that i…

That's true. People from oppressed groups are more pessimistic about the future.

Or, well, pessimistic at all. One of the weird things about the post-war West is most people honestly expect the future to be better.

Re: Why Futurism Has a Cultural Blindspot

#37

Post by onion2k »

stillsut wrote: post #22

Dystopian anticipations have been 180 degrees wrong: 1.Genetic Testing - Anticpated: GATTACA What we got: A bunch of innocent people freed from jail. Who, today, would want to live in a world without genetic forensics? 2. Pacifying Narcotics - Anticipated: Brave New World What we got:War on Drugs, 80's crack epidemic. Huxley foresaw the gov't forcing people to take drugs. The real problem was the gov't trying to stop…

GATTACA is about genetic design rather than genetic testing.

Re: Why Futurism Has a Cultural Blindspot

#38

Post by moe »

jerf wrote: post #30
SRasch wrote: post #15

I feel that the author bases the hypothesis on what journalists say sci-fi predicts (flying cars) not what they actually predict. Most sci-fi deals with pretty radical views of culture in the future. Look no further than Banks' Culture-series, which deals a lot with the power-structures, norms and rules of a post-scarcity society. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_series In one aspect futurism often looks like an…

I'd also point out that the "flying cars" of science fiction generally either explicitly or implicitly involve some sort of anti-gravity. In the 1960s, the idea that some sort of anti-gravity would be possible in the future wasn't so silly. It just seems to be the case that we're not going to get it. (Even if physics turns something up that can be used for it, the crazier the physics necessary to invoke it, the less…

In the 1960s, the idea that some sort of anti-gravity would be possible in the future wasn't so silly.

I don't think anti-gravity is a silly idea.

We're only starting to learn about the quantum world, and who knows what we will discover beyond that?

Re: Why Futurism Has a Cultural Blindspot

#39

Post by stillsut »

onion2k wrote: post #37
stillsut wrote: post #22

Dystopian anticipations have been 180 degrees wrong: 1.Genetic Testing - Anticpated: GATTACA What we got: A bunch of innocent people freed from jail. Who, today, would want to live in a world without genetic forensics? 2. Pacifying Narcotics - Anticipated: Brave New World What we got:War on Drugs, 80's crack epidemic. Huxley foresaw the gov't forcing people to take drugs. The real problem was the gov't trying to stop…

GATTACA is about genetic design rather than genetic testing.

The protagonist doesn't wish his brother was born with his same gene for heart failure, he wishes companies would stop using genetic tests to filter out candidates.

Most of the movie deals with bad guys trying to find trace hair and DNA from imposters. Genetic testing.

Re: Why Futurism Has a Cultural Blindspot

#40

Post by ManFromUranus »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #24

One problem is what demographics futurists tend to be. White men are less likely to imagine a future with full gender equality and black liberation than black women are, I would imagine. People living in the West will think less about the rise of the rest of the world.

Why don't more non-white people become futurists then? Why don't they write their own stuff? If white people do something why is there the implication that they are simultaneously suppressing that output from everybody else? You know why you don't find more black futurists? My guess is they spend their time on anti-white rhetoric, and hypothesizing about fictional oppression. Frankly speaking, black people in the western world have it better off than almost everybody else. I'm really getting sick of reading these type of comments. Black people in the west have it better than black people in Africa. Where else but European countries, or North America would they be better off? Maybe if they spent more time DOING things and less time complaining about white people there would be more futurists/engineers/painters/doctors etc instead we have BlackLivesMatter doing die-in's in shopping malls or protesting the deaths of career criminals...
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