Let's leave "we" somewhat indefinite. And by visions of the future, I mean the kind of thing Walt Disney was pushing back on his TV program in the 1950s and 1960s, in programs about space travel, the wonders of atomic energy, and, most specifically, in a promo video he did for the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT) in 1966 (I've embedded it below for those who haven't seen it). What was actually built as EPCOT is not at all what Uncle Walt had in mind.
Breathing Uncle Walt's fumes
What I'm coming to believe is that the kind of technotopian visions of the future coming out of Silicon Valley and elsewhere are built on the fumes of 1950s tech-infused visions of the future. They're updated with newer tech, especially computer tech and mind uploads and all that, and we now have billionaires going to low-orbit joy rides, but the underlying energy and assumptions are the same.
Dystopian science fiction
I also think that dystopian science fiction is the other side, the dark side, of that, in the way that the Monster from the Id was the dark side of Morbius's desire for superintelligence in Forbidden Planet. Thus I regard, e.g. Terminator as the spiritual heir of Forbidden Planet, with Skylab in place of the Monster from the Id and the whole earth the object of its destruction instead of Morbius safely isolated way out in space.
Meanwhile, we plan
Meanwhile, people make their plans for the future. Save money, buy a car, take a vacation, put the kids through college, whatever. Corporations have their plans. A venture capital friend of mine says there are three time horizons, 3 months, 12 months, and three years. Universities and other organizations may make their 5 year or more plans; not so much concrete actionable plans as guide points for the construction of actionable plans.
And scientists create and revise predictions about climate change. Kim Stanley Robinson writes novels which are his best guess/hope for how the future will unfold in view of climate change.
Reset, it's the 21st century
But is anyone trying to do, in and of the 21st century, what Walt Disney was doing in the middle of the previous century, where he's essentially building on 19th century assumptions about human life, the good life, and his tech vision is really the highest of the 2nd Industrial Revolution? He's taking human nature and life for granted and amplifying the good stuff with technology. What I have in mind is rethinking human nature and human life, a lot of which has been going on in the last century, and starting from some other place.
What is that other place? Maybe that's what we have to figure out. But we have to get beyond this techno-utopianism. Yes, we need to think about technology. But we need to think about and rethink so much more.
Beyond work and flying cars
Back in 1930 John Maynard Keynes imagined we'd have a 15 hour work week. Whatever happened to that? Why is it easier and more fun to think about flying cars than about a 15-hour work week?
What happened, I suspect, is that we, with our assumptions about human nature and life, have a hard time imagining what we'd do with our time if we only had to work 15 hours a week. So, if your income is high enough, when you retire, you hire a retirement coach to help you figure out what to do with the your time now that you're not working. Why do people with the ability to have earned enough that they can afford a retirement coach, why do they HAVE to hire a retirement coach? Do we have to redefine adulthood?
How about a future where people don't have to hire a retirement coach? My friend Charlie Keil wants every child to be competent in dancing and drumming by the age of five. If that were true everywhere, not just in videos of cute African kids, what kind of world would we have? Let's build our tech visions around those kinds of people. And forget all this nonsense about superintelligent machines and uploading, etc. That's projective fantasy.
EPCOT promo
This is hot hot hot in Silicon Valley. I like it too, but recognize that it is an artifact of an earlier time.
You can skip the first 5 minutes, which is about Disneyland. The future starts at 5:03, and especially 9:15, when Walt delivers his vision for the future.
No comments:
Post a Comment