The Loss of Cool Futurism: Disunity

Serdar and I were recently’ discussing the revival/return of Omni magazine. If you’re not familiar with Omni then you’re . . . probably younger than I am.  So stop playing your music so loud and get off my lawn.

Anyway, Omni was one of those publications that had a theme of what I call “cool futurism”, of the amazing stuff we’d see, of soaring cities and great technology and a better world. It was hip and happening and often positive. Cool futurism is the kind of thing you see in Star Trek TOS, in speculations on future architecture, on imagining how we’ll solve disease or poverty – not naive, but, well, “Cool”.

It’s cool to make things better. Cool to imagine awesome things we can make.

It just doesn’t seem to be that popular anymore in America. So I began asking what happened, and you’ll be utterly shocked to hear there’s a blog post about it to follow. Probably several.

First of all, I think Cool Futurism is gone because there’s no sense of unity or potential unity.

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Link Roundup 8/2/2013

Whew!  Lots in the news!

3D Printing:

3D Printers can pay for themselves in a year – I also wonder what the environmental impact changes are as well.  Now you have ANOTHER excuse to get one!

Also since you could scan objects to 3D print with your browser then you have even more reasons to get one.  Also if 3D printing goes big, then imagine the other forms of scanning and interface that could happen.  Say tablet cameras . . .

Comics:

A comic on the Stonewall riots on Indiegogo?  A chance to fund indie comics and capture a piece of history that’s very relevant now.  Quick thought – what other historical occurrences could be described in comics form that you could do?

Law And Technology:

Feds say Apple have to give access to Amazon and Barnes And Noble.  It’s a tad fuzzy, but interesting reading.

Culture:

Omni is coming back.  I’m hopeful that this also brings back “futurism cool,” but wait to see what happens. Wonder what other magazines and pubs out there could be revived?  Might be something for you to try . . .

Crowdfunding:

IMPORTANT: People are copying crowdfunding campaigns as a scam.  Indiegogo seems especially vulnerable because of their methods.

– Steven