31–40 of 87 posts
Solarpunk I suspect is more important that we know, because I think rich subcultures are the seeds of massive growth. It's just some funny drawings and internet fanfic twigging our sense of novelty on HN now, but when you see it as representing the desires and longings of young people for wilderness, and also know people who left cities in the last 10y, they were the thin edge of the wedge, where post-pandemic, young…
There's currently a huge push online to make Solarpunk a thing, as a kind of an optimistic counterpart to Cyberpunk, but I'm skeptical about whether it can attain the same level of cultural traction as the other big *punks. Cyberpunk and steampunk both fetishize aesthetics from the past - 80's corporate Japan and the Victorian Britain, respectively, - there's a sort of nostalgic longing that keeps them culturally rel…
I guess not.
There's currently a huge push online to make Solarpunk a thing, as a kind of an optimistic counterpart to Cyberpunk, but I'm skeptical about whether it can attain the same level of cultural traction as the other big *punks. Cyberpunk and steampunk both fetishize aesthetics from the past - 80's corporate Japan and the Victorian Britain, respectively, - there's a sort of nostalgic longing that keeps them culturally rel…
Cyberpunk is an explicitly dystopian genre setting so I'm not sure "nostalgic longing" is how I would characterize it so much as searching for a kind of catharsis or fictionalized escape from the things about it people feel parallel their own lives.
Cyberpunk has only become nostalgic lately.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel the same way. My SOs reaction to VR was so viscerally negative. Once I probed it was clearly driven by trends of dystopian futures.
I have the same reaction to VR, what is the optimistic non-dystopian view? I am generally curious because near complete human absorption in technology is what I see and it's hard for me to picture that in a positive light.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel the same way. My SOs reaction to VR was so viscerally negative. Once I probed it was clearly driven by trends of dystopian futures.
I have the same reaction to VR, what is the optimistic non-dystopian view? I am generally curious because near complete human absorption in technology is what I see and it's hard for me to picture that in a positive light.
There's currently a huge push online to make Solarpunk a thing, as a kind of an optimistic counterpart to Cyberpunk, but I'm skeptical about whether it can attain the same level of cultural traction as the other big *punks. Cyberpunk and steampunk both fetishize aesthetics from the past - 80's corporate Japan and the Victorian Britain, respectively, - there's a sort of nostalgic longing that keeps them culturally rel…
In many contexts, solarpunk is related to anarcho-communism and gift-economies. It can be difficult to see how a solarpunk-like society could sustainably grow directly out of our current economic system.
I think the seed for it lives in the open/free/libre source dream. If we can make it easy enough to produce what we need with open source tools then we don't need global capitalism. In many regards we're far from that dream but having a concretisation of what the end result could look like (and/or depictions of how to get there) in the shape of Solarpunk should help.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel the same way. My SOs reaction to VR was so viscerally negative. Once I probed it was clearly driven by trends of dystopian futures.
I have the same reaction to VR, what is the optimistic non-dystopian view? I am generally curious because near complete human absorption in technology is what I see and it's hard for me to picture that in a positive light.
Very cool, but I don’t want to dwell on all the bugs one would swallow cycling through one of these cities.
If you're swallowing bugs while cycling that means you're probably mouth breathing. It's pretty challenging to convert to strict nasal breathing, but it's worth it and a side benefit is bugs aren't a big deal if you're wearing something on your eyes.