Culture

More On The Omni Reboot

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A look at its return, and at it’s past, and noting some of the oddities of its origins.

Serdar and I are discussing the past of “Cool Futurism” in one of our continuing dialogues, centering around Omni and its returns..  I noted we’ve lost the idea of unity, he noted how we missed our own problems, and I note any idea of the future requires self evolution.

– Steven

 

Economics: Less Teens Getting Licenses

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Don’t have time, cars are expensive, and there are options.

This doesn’t shock me in the least because between the cost of gas, the cost of cars, and the options (if you’re in the right area), the need for a car is probably lower.  Again, that’s probably the area one lives in, which makes me curious about demographic distribution here.

Now what’s got me curious is if this decrease (and the decrease of car sales has an interesting spread into older demographics), is going to fuel more interest in public transport at least in America.  That’s a bit tough with slashed budgets and your usual government dysfunction.

I also wonder how many teens don’t need licenses as they don’t have jobs in this economy.

– Steven

 

Cool Futurism: We’re The Foundation, and Not In The Asimov Way

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“Such was the delusion. We wouldn’t have to do any actual work to get rid of all those terrible problems that didn’t actually have technological solutions, like class warfare (or actual warfare). All we had to do was wait for the tech to evolve to the point where those problems would wither away, where money and jobs (at least, as we currently understood them) would become irrelevancies.“

In response to my analysis of the Omni Cool Futurism and how disunity set in in social trends, Serdar noted one of the big flaws that occurred was that we relied on technology to solve problems. The problems that we needed to solve in many cases were the problems of US.

Now Serdar notes that he thinks 9/11 more finished demolishing the sense of a bright high-tech future that had been slowly eroding. I’m not sure that’s the case as I felt it was more a catalyst/opportunity for some of the forces and trends out there to be unleashed. That may be something to address further down the road (or specifically). The demolishing of the idea of a bright future was one, in short, that I think benefited some people not in a conspiracy sense, but more in that pressing their own advantage harmed us.

However, he hits on the simple point that we thought technology would solve our problems and it didn’t because sometimes, we’re the problem.

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