The Who Cares Era

>>NotInO+(OP)
The future is gone. I'm in my 50s, and for nearly all of that time I thought, dreamt, and worked towards a future that I read about, researched, talked to others about, and consumed media about. But over the past several years I realize it is gone. I thought maybe it was just my age, but it seems like the world is doing the same, so maybe not my age. Another thread mentions that no one talks about "life in the 22nd century". People are focused on what's in front of them in the present. Even companies don't really talk about the future anymore, just vague AI thoughts (and often crazy negative ones, witness the CEOs talking about the white collar bloodbath coming).

Things aren't really changing in many ways, but changing crazy fast in other ways, but not toward anything in particular. Maybe it is some sort of singularity-type thing approaching that I'm feeling. All I know is that my life hasn't changed much in the past decade. Smartphones, awesome computers, instead streams of videos, a sea of video games and books and music, but nothing new and remarkable. AI is here, probably, but that is just weird and terrifying, and this coming from someone that has watched and participated in it's development the entirety of my adult life.

Instead of new categories being created, we're just optimizing the hell out of everything.

>>gilbet+BG
I'm nearing forty and I have a sneaky suspicion it's a weird cultural thing. A bit like the Romans lamenting the fall of their culture right at the start of their golden age and they never stopped doing that. Always looking back saying shit sucks now and how in the old days everything centered on competence and morality. Men were actual men back then. That sort of thing. Some parts of it might have made a tad kind of sense, but a lot of it was baloney.

I suspect we're becoming more realistic now about the nature of our civilization. There won't be any riding of laser-shooting cybernetic unicorns and we have to come to terms with that. There's adulting to do now. We have some climate issues and we have to deal with wealth inequality and finding and maintaining proper forms of government (worldwide). The laser-shooting unicorns have become the "maybe we can sort of survive as a species" and we need that. We always needed that, but we were too busy watching Terminator and playing GTA.

I'm not convinced it's all bad. Maybe some societal existential depression is called for and perhaps we'll awaken from our funk with some fresh ideas.

zlacker