The future is alive and well

firefinga

Well-known member
To look for "future" in products of popular culture IMO won't get you that far. Sci Fi? I am in my mid30s now and haven't read any current SciFi for 15-20 years so I wouldn't know anything about it.

The few times I am personally confronted with "future" I didnt ask for it's "promises" - 2 examples:

High Definition TV or smartphones.

I couldn't care less about the first, and not much about the latter. I don't have a HD TV set and don't plan on buying one any time soon. Smartphone I got one, bc I need a mobile phone for my job and my old one finally died on me after 9 years.

Next thing: 3D cinema. I am a movie buff and couldn't care less either. It's a bloody gimmick that doesnt make any movie better IMO.

Popmusic and the "future"? In popmusic it's often about the immediate future more than anything else, meaning as a listener I (used to) be lal excited about the question "Now, with what will they come up next?". This is certainly gone to a great extent, and there might be many combined reasons for this.

So, me thinks the future indeed isn't promising much worth waiting for/working towards it these days
 
The only thing we, as a species, should be doing is working out how to get off this planet and out of our solar system, because the sun is going to die one day. Our time is limited.

This is the big issue that should decide the 2015 election. Heavy emphasis on SHOULD.

Britain made something like 500 Spitfires a month at the height of the Battle of Britain. We should now be making 500 Skylons a month (lifting cargo for £400/kg rather than the currenty £10,000/kg), build a generation ship at L1 with an interior surface area equivalent to that of the British Empire at its height, take our vast national stash of fissionable material currently stored in cooling ponds at Sellafield with us, call our new home Pan-Churchillia and then decide which of the 8 newly-discovered Goldlilocks zone planets we like best and decide what to do from there.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
Fuck, that's a good plan, man.

It's a serious issue. I mean, otherwise we're all doomed.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
I've been thinking about this since I was about 6, when I first read my Hamlyn guide to the Solar System.
 

trza

Well-known member
More than likely that USA will attempt GeoEngineering "solutions" that will backfire and seriously damage the planet in the next ten to twenty years. Most likely scenario has some humans left living on the surface, while others retreat to underground lairs and evolve underground dwelling features like antennae and maybe go blind, only returning to the surface to begin conflict with those who stayed on the surface.
 
More than likely that USA will attempt GeoEngineering "solutions" that will backfire and seriously damage the planet in the next ten to twenty years. Most likely scenario has some humans left living on the surface, while others retreat to underground lairs and evolve underground dwelling features like antennae and maybe go blind, only returning to the surface to begin conflict with those who stayed on the surface.

The USA will not be remembered fondly, that place is a dead end, shot their bolt at the moon, it's been decline ever since. Like the Most Serene Republic of Genoa. Who? What? Historical has-been and also-ran.

Britain hasn't had a proper crack at space yet. I'm probably going to go Full Luka and launch the UK Interstellar Party.
 
I have to admit, I was a bit distracted by hydrogen bombs for a while there.



Partly a British invention. Freeman Dyson brought the maths.

One of the tragedies of the UK is how most of the nations smartest engineers and mathematicians, adventurers, are holding out for their next city bonus and a townhouse in Cheyne Walk rather than building a framework for infinite civilisational expansion. Daft, deluded cunts.
 
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Pleased to hear it hm guv
A massive social media campaign is in order

Kickstarter all the way mate. I've thought this through just now. What will really be compelling about the proposed large scale spacecraft will be its nose cone. It will be nothing less than a brick-for-brick replica of the Elizabeth Tower (fka Clock Tower aka Big Ben) that guides us into the great grimy firmament. Or maybe just uproot and use the real thing.
 

droid

Well-known member
The idea of mass physical interstellar travel is ridiculous. What you want is non-corporeal colonisation.
 
The idea of mass physical interstellar travel is ridiculous. What you want is non-corporeal colonisation.

The science to build whopping great spaceships is within our grasp and understanding, the science to upload a consciousness to silicon, graphene, or whatever is nowhere in sight. Would be ridiculous to put everything on hold until soul chips became a reality.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I'm not sure where I stand on the whole question of interstellar travel - I mean, it's a wonderful idea and we're at least a good part of the way there with the technology, as HMGovt says - it just seems a bit daft to concentrate on that while the terrestrial environment is in such dire peril. But it sure is a damn sight more interesting than smartphones and HDTV.
 
it just seems a bit daft to concentrate on that while the terrestrial environment is in such dire peril.

Surely that's why, spread our bets a little. I don't think the whole of world's research effort would be needed and who can tell what the world-saving spin offs would be. Hypervelcro, just imagine, man. And it's clear now that if we want to maintain a technological civilisation and it's luxuries like light, heat and not dying from treatable illnesses, developing the sort of energy sources that would power interstellar travel will become a pressing need anyway.
 

droid

Well-known member
Surely that's why, spread our bets a little. I don't think the whole of world's research effort would be needed and who can tell what the world-saving spin offs would be. Hypervelcro, just imagine, man. And it's clear now that if we want to maintain a technological civilisation and it's luxuries like light, heat and not dying from treatable illnesses, developing the sort of energy sources that would power interstellar travel will become a pressing need anyway.

Face it, we've missed the boat. Burned too much oil. Fired our second stage boosters whilst clamped to the ground. Only long term prospect for survival is in the mind.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Maybe hypervelcro will turn out to be *the* killer app to stop climate change in its tracks and I'll have to eat my words.

Or maybe I'll have to eat my words because there will simply be sod-all else to eat.
 

datwun

Well-known member
After the failure of the Copenhagen conference I kind of lost all hope of humanity lasting another 150 years in anything like it's current form, and also the desire to do anything about my own carbon footprint lol. Can't really imagine any scenario in which we're not extremely fucked in the mid-future.

That said, I know this on an intellectual level, but if I were to actually feel it emotionally the only thing to do would be kill myself lol. So I act as though I personally, and the world as a whole has a future, even though if I live to 80, the world I die in will almost certainly be very very shitty.

So ignoring our impending doom:
I still feel there are parts of popular culture - dance music for instance - that are inching towards a future - but rather than that total rejection of the past, the massive anxiety of influence and the desire to run away from your influences as much as possible, it's like, people are very very comfortable with using the past for influence, see nothing wrong with trying on past styles, but see 'the future', and innovation and weirdness as their way of updating those past traditions and putting their own stamps on it. Stuff like trap and deep tech's very much got this have-your-cake-and-eat-it metamodernist - http://www.metamodernism.com - vibe re the future and past.

In terms of literature I'd say Tao Lin and that whole alt-lit scene passes that 'couldn't have been done 10 years ago' test - and not just in subject matter, but on a formal level - a texture to the writing that wouldn't exist without the internet.

With fashion there's stuff like this http://smoooothclothing.com/full-printed/crewneck-sweatshirts - like very very high res screen printing, which I think is like, the only look which we could call definitively now and not 90s, 80s etc.

Film: Nollywood's always seemed V pulp modernist to me
Retromania nails it in terms of why its so difficult to conceptualize/create a future when the past is so extensively archived and easy to access - and even on an almost mechanical level like, when pop music was 20 years old in the 70s, any given year had a pretty high chance of bringing with it some of the greatest pop music ever. now that it's in its 60s, the chance that anything released in a given year will be of historic quality is much much lower, which really increases the incentive to be retro.

But like, I do feel if people were more interested in the future, and more embarrassed about being retro, there'd be a lot more way cooler shit. I feel like the task of culture geeks like everyone on here is to make people feel ashamed for replicating the past without mutating it.
 

PiLhead

Well-known member
has anyone noticed how active NASA's publicity department is these days? Not a week seems to go by where they don't flag up some new discovery about space, or planned mission, or the movements of something they've got up there

i don't know if it's just that they've got a better publicity relations dept, or whether it's strategic - keep visible in order to hustle continued levels of funding from the US government - or whether they actually are doing more stuff than they were

certainly they LOOK like they're up to a lot c.f. the dormant public profile of the 2000s

i don't know if it's having any effect on public appetite or interest in outer space (seems like an uptick in the number of films set in space)

would be nice to think there's a renaissance of popular excitement about Mankind's next big adventure etc although probably would made more sense to focus all energies on fixing the looming problems facing terrestial existence....
 
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