zlacker

>>diodor+(OP)
Growing up in the oughts, the future was Ghost in the Shell: SAC and Xenosaga and .hack//Sign and Gundam 00. I didn't see the dystopia; I imagined a glass metropolis beside a glittering bay, bleached and blue; VR diving into pools of ephemeral neon filament; trips to a space colony. The ISS had launched when I was in elementary school. 2012 came, and I graduated from college, and the Rift had its Kickstarter. I had a supercomputer in my pocket and a black president. Things seemed on track.

Of course, Oculus dragged its feet until it was bought by Facebook, who dragged things even more. Obama droned weddings. The ISS prepares for reentry burn in a few years. Et cetera. All of it - the corporate politicking; the political atrocities; the logarithmic progression of scientific advances, where technological progress is overtaken by the social calamity it unleashes - predicted by the media that had set my mental image of the future in the first place. Whose fault is it that the future failed to materialize again? I'd say corporate greed and the captured institutions that are supposed to police them for the greater good, but the fact that we're seeing the dream die again means that laying blame might be futile (particularly if we're not going to actually do anything about the bad actors).

Essentially, the Millennial era has been one where the glamour ghost came a-knockin' again, but the smart people who were paying attention already knew how the story goes. As for the rest of us? Mana du vortes.

>>underl+VLc
Comparing a Wired Magazine from 2014 compared to 2024 is pretty illuminating to me, because in terms of aesthetics nothing had really changed, the "modern" adverts for furniture or gadgets could be interchangable. But the difference in the content and "spirit" of the writing was palatable, 2014 definetly felt alot more forward looking and speaking towards a more unified crowd, where 2024 was often a barrage of fears and anxieties of X upcoming technologies, or how X industry was not inclusive of Y crowd, the whole thing felt alot more diversionary and tribalistic. I've observed the same thing in media, where alot of the focus has shifted from value through exploration of new concepts to value via representation.

So perhaps corporate greed is one thing, but I'd also argue that America itself dosen't seem very interested in the future anymore either, they seem alot more interested in dividing the cake now rather than making it larger.