Cool Futurism: The Future Arrives In Ski Masks and Leather Jackets Bearing a Cross

Some time ago Serdar and I were discussing the revival of Omni and the loss of Cool Futurism. I had noted that Cool futurism’s ideas of unity were lost (or not practical), we missed the need for ourselves to evolve, and of course consumerism which made it easy to seem to buy the future. Of course there are other issues I still want to address because I feel there are distinct patterns we should study.

Another factor in the decline of Cool Fururism is it’s dark sibling, a form of Apocalyptic Futurism.

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Cool Futurism: If You Buy It You Don’t Try It

In my last post analyzing what happened to Omni-esque Cool Futurism, I focused in the issue that Sedar and I both covered to an extent; that we didn’t imagine the future would involve improving ourselves.  That kind of left out a major part of building the whole future right there.

The problem is the better future needs better people, and we had to aspire to become them; and usually there was a mix of laziness and a kind of Integrationist sense of perfection.  However I think another factor played into a loss of Cool Futurism, one that amplified and embodied the issue.

Consumerism.

The earlier Cool Fururisms of the 60’s and 70’s and part of the 80’s at least did have some surprising elements that seemed anticonsumerist.  Star Trek was not about the marketing team of Starfleet worrying about their image.  The neat cities of Omni weren’t plastered with advertisements.  No one worried about buying the next Pokemon game in our fiction.  The evolving Cyberpunk genre was one of the genres that kept consumerism in mind (though I have theories of how Cyberpunk presented its own problems), but that wasn’t the Cool Future.

However, I think that as real amazing technical advances happened, we just . . . bought them.  New computer.  New car. Cool device.  Associate with a cool future by buying the poster (or the magazine).  By the time the late 90’s came around and High Tech consumerism began a reign that continues to this day, it seems like we were busy buying all the neat things from our stories and movies.  It was easier.  You just used your credit card.

Of course we didn’t build those dream cities.  We didn’t create the Hyperion space plane.  In fact, after awhile we figured we’d just cut our taxes, watch TV, and everything would magically work out and be sold to us.  You’ll note that this didn’t happen, our economy melted down, and now some of us hope the future includes such amazing things as an actual retirement.

Meanwhile, ironically, we really DO have amazing and incredible advances around us.  It’s like your Cool Future and your Cyberpunk Dystopia had a bastard child.

I think an increasing emphasis on consumerism and technology was a distraction and a detriment to building a real Cool Future.  You get used to thinking you can buy the future – and that distracts from the effort, sacrifice, and self-evolution required to build that future.  It’s too easy to get a gizmo or put the poster up on your wall and give yourself an illusion of progress.

I think oddly, this is one of the reasons I see a kind of Cool Futurism among Makers.  Being extremely hands-on and being skeptical of rampant consumerism, they’re able to visualize a better future and think of building it.  It’s a culture shift that I’ll be following.

I also have hope that technology has enabled people to do more and bond together more to change the world.  I’ve actually been surprised what social groups, advocacy groups, and movements are born in social media.

But right now, and as not-positive-me as it sounds, I think too many people think the future is waiting in line for the next popular gizmo.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.

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

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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