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Why Futurism Has a Cultural Blindspot

nautil.us

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Re: Why Futurism Has a Cultural Blindspot

#71

Post by cstross »

koberstein wrote: post #70
cstross wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Planet Earth calling: science fiction is not a predictive medium . It's a literary form -- a subcategory of fiction. Yes, some works of SF are set in a plausibly-imagined future. Yes, some of these works may make projections/extrapolations about technologies around us. But the authors are writing in the social context of the present, and what they write about reflects the present day's concerns and perspectives, unle…

What is the difference between predicting and influencing?

Hard call: I'd have to say it all depends on the author's intent.

Let's see ... at the time he wrote "Neuromancer" William Gibson had never used a computer -- he wrote it on a manual typewriter (and used the royalties to buy an Apple IIc). His creative vision was more one of social atomization and a particular aesthetic in a multi-national dominated future than it was informed by actual technology. Despite which, his creative vision of "cyberspace" got taken seriously enough as a visual metaphor that I remember sitting in on a debate at the W3C conference in 1996 between folks proposing that VRML should follow a Gibsonian model, and those who thought "Snow Crash" was the way forward. (Neal Stephenson's followers won the day. See also "Second Life", I guess ...)

That's an example of "influencing". "Neuromancer" was very influential, but hardly predictive.

Actual predictive SF is much, much rarer, but if we ever get a space elevator you can probably blame Arthur C. Clarke ("The Fountains of Paradise"), which is an old-school didactic hey-why-don't-we-do-this-the-numbers-check-out work of prediction in fiction drag. Or maybe Andy Weir's "The Martian".

Written SF has traditionally been utter rubbish at predicting developments in the IT/computing sector, with notable exceptions -- for example the novella "True Names" by Vernor Vinge. (I've attempted this too but I'm not going to bang my own drum here.)

Re: Why Futurism Has a Cultural Blindspot

#72

Post by dragonwriter »

cstross wrote: post #29
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…

Planet Earth calling: science fiction is not a predictive medium . It's a literary form -- a subcategory of fiction. Yes, some works of SF are set in a plausibly-imagined future. Yes, some of these works may make projections/extrapolations about technologies around us. But the authors are writing in the social context of the present, and what they write about reflects the present day's concerns and perspectives, unle…

There is an additional consideration with dystopian science fiction, which is that, to the extent that it may be predictive of what the author sees to be the direction society is (or might be) currently heading, its also very much an attempt at influencing a change in the opposite direction.

Re: Why Futurism Has a Cultural Blindspot

#73

Post by ManFromUranus »

gress wrote: post #58
ManFromUranus wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non it's not a non-sequitur as I am not replying to the article but to another poster. My reply is relevant to theirs. The point of the article is that we get cultural changes wrong or don't account for changes in culture the way we anticipate changes in technology. The comment I am replying to makes racist generalizations about white people and what the white people and western world are able to imagine. I imagine i…

So your response was to write a comment filled with obviously racist invective attacking black people in general. Quote: "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..." Perhaps the original commenter is…

Pure hyperbole, and incorrect at that, and it's equally clear where you stand.

In case you are still reading: The poster I was replying to didn't commit a subtle act of prejudice, they made an overtly racist statement about white men. Then claimed that white men can't envision a future of black liberation. That's literally what they said, I responded to that comment.

I am saying that instead of futurism (and other cultural works), the focus of a lot of black people and their effort seems to be civil rights activities. These civil rights activities have an opportunity cost, while you're doing die-ins at the mall you may not have time to write about the future. So therefore we don't have as much of a black vision of the future because they (black people) aren't spending their effort on that.

My comment was about fighting prejudice, prejudice against white people. That sort of behavior is totally kosher on the internet and in the mainstream media and it's very PC and fashionable to bash "white people" and their culture (when it's admitted that they even have a culture). I have gotten pretty sick of it.

Re: Why Futurism Has a Cultural Blindspot

#74

Post by gress »

ManFromUranus wrote: post #73
gress wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your response was to write a comment filled with obviously racist invective attacking black people in general. Quote: "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..." Perhaps the original commenter is…

Pure hyperbole, and incorrect at that, and it's equally clear where you stand. In case you are still reading: The poster I was replying to didn't commit a subtle act of prejudice, they made an overtly racist statement about white men. Then claimed that white men can't envision a future of black liberation. That's literally what they said, I responded to that comment. I am saying that instead of futurism (and other cu…

Saying that more black people would be doctors if they complained less is absolutely racist. Do you not see that?

You claim oppression is fictional - so I guess it's possible you don't.

You say you are pointing at the opportunity costs of protesting oppression. They are only opportunity costs if the oppression is not real - otherwise they may be part of a necessary struggle to obtain opportunity. Do you really think that there is no anti-black racism?

You may be fed up with people bashing white people on the internet - I am too. But that is no excuse for making overtly racist statements against black people, a behavior which is certainly counterproductive to what you claim to be your true aim.

Re: Why Futurism Has a Cultural Blindspot

#75

Post by mcguire »

Fede_V wrote: post #16

A bit of a pet peeve, but futurism already has a meaningful definition - it refers to an art movement at the start of the 20th century. Just because you like how the word sounds, it's pretty poor form to recycle it to indicate a particular trend you've 'identified'.

Unfortunately, that ship sailed[1] in the early 1980s.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Naisbitt

Re: Why Futurism Has a Cultural Blindspot

#76

Post by Retra »

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.

Gattaca doesn't really show off any technological problems so much as it does a new kind of racism. Which, frankly, is not a problem so unmanageable that we should avoid genetic engineering to prevent.

Basically, Gattaca's problems could be managed by passing a couple of well-designed laws.

Re: Why Futurism Has a Cultural Blindspot

#77

Post by Kalium »

psb217 wrote: post #69
Kalium wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably because the books are mainly concerned with how the Culture meddles with others to amuse themselves. And I'd say that they're only anarcho-communists in name. Really, they're ant farms, kept by the Minds.

The minds are the Culture and the minds are anarcho-communists (at least as far as I can tell).

Eh... I'm not sure notions of government work at that level. The Minds don't need to work together in any way. They're each perfectly fine on their own.

Re: Why Futurism Has a Cultural Blindspot

#78

Post by RodericDay »

stevejones wrote: post #62
RodericDay wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article is about how people into "futurism", like people over at /r/futurism or a large part of HN's userbase, keeps wishing people would stop "concerning" themselves with society and politics to bring technological future faster, have a big blind spot about what really matters and changes our lives. G.K. Chesterton points out, in reply to the original manifesto: Suffice it to say that Futurism has a gratifying d…

> The article is about how people into "futurism", like people over at /r/futurism or a large part of HN's userbase, keeps wishing people would stop "concerning" themselves with society and politics to bring technological future faster, have a big blind spot about what really matters and changes our lives. The article, and you, fail to make the case that this is anything more than a strawman.

r/futurism (https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurism/) sidebar:

> The founder of Futurism and its most influential personality was the Italian writer Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. Marinetti launched the movement in his Futurist Manifesto, which he published for the first time on 5 February 1909 in La gazzetta dell'Emilia, an article then reproduced in the French daily newspaper Le Figaro on 20 February 1909. He was soon joined by the painters Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Giacomo Balla, Gino Severini and the composer Luigi Russolo.

> Marinetti expressed a passionate loathing of everything old, especially political and artistic tradition. "We want no part of it, the past", he wrote, "we the young and strong Futurists!" The Futurists admired speed, technology, youth and violence, the car, the airplane and the industrial city, all that represented the technological triumph of humanity over nature, and they were passionate nationalists. They repudiated the cult of the past and all imitation, praised originality, "however daring, however violent", bore proudly "the smear of madness", dismissed art critics as useless, rebelled against harmony and good taste, swept away all the themes and subjects of all previous art, and gloried in science.

Notice in particular "admired [...] violence", and "however daring, however violent".

The original article cites numerous examples, centrally the one about a futuristic workplace without women, and my post cites a GK Chesterton piece that directly criticizes, with quotes, Marinetti's manifesto.

For HN, just consider that threads dealing with "women in tech" or "minorities in tech" or "gentrification" are routinely flagged down, with a share of the website being very vocal about wanting articles focused on technology and gadgets. Insofar this is hacker "news", about new and upcoming things, many users feel like these human topics do not qualify. They still make the front-page, proving that it's far from a universal opinion, but the contingent is there.

Re: Why Futurism Has a Cultural Blindspot

#79

Post by caskance »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #66
caskance wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He wishes it the way modern antivaxxers wish big pharma would stop giving kids autism.

What? In the movie he wishes for the companies to stop doing something they are actually doing . They are overzealously testing for any possible problem and marking people as unclean. It's unsubtle textbook discrimination, removing perfectly good candidates from consideration. The company is hardly affected, there are plenty of candidates, but since these people are shunned by most companies they suffer terribly. How…

From his perspective it certainly must seem that way. He can probably even point to a paper published by a legitimate researcher to show that it does happen. Even if it was written by someone who was paid to do so and all his coauthors later retracted their support.

Re: Why Futurism Has a Cultural Blindspot

#80

Post by gambler »

cgh wrote: post #63
gambler wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bad examples. Both of those things were pretty much spot-on. Just don't get hung up on details. We don't yet have genetic testing as an entry barrier for things, but we have other similarly arbitrary tests. Companies checking your credit ratings and requiring annual health evaluations of their employees. Some companies "encourage" everyone to wear company-provided health monitors 24/7. Claims that you're predisposed…

Gattaca was specifically about genetic testing. Saying that's analogous to checking credit ratings is moving the goalposts. The government doesn't force or encourage people to take antidepressants or other "mood-altering drugs", except when they are eg incarcerated. Government involvement in the entire population taking such drugs is a crucial and explicit element of the BNW dystopia.

"Moving the goalposts" implies that I established some criteria and than changed it. I did no such thing.

>Gattaca was specifically about genetic testing.

If that's how you read/watch science fiction, you're wasting your time. Gattaca and Brave New World are dystopian stories. Dystopias are not meant to precisely predict the future. They are mean to show how the future will look like if certain conditions are met. The overall reasoning matters far more than specifics.

The overall reasoning in Gattaca looks solid. And we're nowhere near the level of genetic testing/engineering technology shown in the movie. But we're getting there.

>Government involvement in the entire population taking such drugs is a crucial and explicit element of the BNW dystopia.

Where was this government involvement described?

http://www.huxley.net/soma/somaquote.html

I don't recall the book explicitly speaking about government involvement with Soma at all, aside from the implication that government approved of it. FDA approves all the anti-depressants and painkillers as well. So?

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