Last weekend we talked about the bits of history we’d like to learn more of. This weekend, let’s talk about the future.
What country best represents the future?
I stole this from io9, where Annalee Newitz recently wrote:
Back in the early 1990s, there was a popular idea in the United States that Japan represented the future. With its booming economy and sophisticated tech industry, the country seemed poised to become the next great superpower. But when the Asian bubble burst, science fiction writers and futurists imagined China as the next great nation, or possibly India. Previous generations cast Brazil and the Soviet Union as the futuristic centers of the world. Today, it’s not clear what countries will lead the Earth to the next level — or down a path to authoritarianism or stateless chaos.
Perhaps it’s part of the morass of interconnected problems we’re mired in today — economic stagnation, climate disaster, etc — that we have no sense of what the future is going to look like or where it’s going to be spearheaded. Perhaps it’s because, unlike during some other eras in the past, there’s little sense of hope about the future that makes it feel so murky.
What do you think? Is there someplace on Earth that makes you feel like it’s leading the way — for better or for worse — into the future?
(If you have a suggestion for a QOTD/QOTW, feel free to email me. Responses to this QOTW sent by email will be ignored; please post your responses here.)
Russia. The powerful don’t even pretend to care about anyone except the powerful, but they keep their serfs more or less safe from other powerful people.
(In a dark mood today.)
It’s monumentally sad that Mike Judge predicted the future with far more accuracy than Gene Roddenberry; so–America. (also, in a dark mood)
Austraila. (I’m in a positive mood.)
Nope. I think the human species is going down.
With the number of people on the planet and the political and economic games being played by governments around the world today, things could come apart rather suddenly. If any one of the nuclear powers starts lighting off their weapons, all bets are off. Basically, I have no idea how the future will play out. However, unless we totally screw things up here in the US, we still have geological advantages that give us an edge over many other places in the world (big oceans on either side, lots of resources). The future is rather murky at this point.
I’m not too worried about the extinction of the human race. That would take some doing. A significant reduction in our numbers, that’s seems rather likely. Time will tell.
Hello! That’s my art up there, http://fmacmanus.com
I would appreciate it if you could take the art down. You never asked my permission, and the image is under copyright.
Thank you!
-Finnian MacManus
Misery
It’s a very good piece of art :)
If you want it taken down then it ought to be. Sadly, I’m just a lowly commenter :(
If you want her to take immediate action, you might want to email her directly. The link to her email is at the end of her post.
I’m confused. You told me on Twitter that you were okay with the use of the image.
But I’ve taken it down, as well as the link and credit. Sorry.
You want to check the copyright notice on the page where you offer this image as a wallpaper. It reads:
Since the usage here was neither commercial nor derivative, it did not appear that I was violating your copyright.
Again, I apologize.
Canada. When it all devolves into Road Warrior hell, they have
abundant natural resources, a large unspoilt land mass to protect them
from rising seas and dust bowls, and few people + lots of space for becoming off-the-grid survivalist subsistance hunter-gatherers. I’d move there now if I could.
Clearly you haven’t kept up on what’s happening in Canada. The multinational corporations are way ahead of you. Those “abundant natural resources” are being rapidly extracted and exported. That “large unspoilt land mass” is under vicious assault every day. Huge tracts of it have already been laid waste.
That is terrible. But the Taiga still has to top the list of places for my plan of escaping Road Warrior hell by becoming a Mountain (wo)Man. There really is nowhere else suitable left. Well, there’s Yellowstone but I’d probably be caught if I tried to live in a tree there. Plus it’s a supervolcano, so not good for the future of my hunter-gatherer tribe. Sad times.
Nobody’s gonna say China? Really?
you beat me to it.
But it’s leading the way. OK it’;s not a way I’d like to go down but I may not have any choice.
Difficult to see. Always in motion is the future.
We look at where things seem to be heading and draw a straight line into the future, forgetting that any number of unforeseen developments can suddenly shift us onto a new course. That should temper optimism (and I’m inclined to be optimistic). But it should also temper despair. The future is for us to write.
Egypt. Corrupt elites will fail to solve the pressing matters of our time, resulting finally in violent disruption. The advantage of power and psychological cohesion will ensure those who rise to power afterwards will be the ones to double down on the policies getting us into this mess in the first place.
I don’t think of it in terms of country, but in terms of IKEA. The future holds a world where nearly everyone is sorted, mixed, then homogenized by commerce.
Scary, right?
Weird that I said this 2 days ago and just watched Branded for the first time. Although I do think Bluejay’s answer is more serious, it is remarkable to see “the” laundry basket that we have in a movie, the bedsheets and exact toddler bed models on TV, or on facebook photos of people inhabiting other continents. I wonder about more obscure cultures like the Basques and languages like Romansch and our own sense of shared culture, or lack of it, that perhaps by sharing so much of the same with so many, individuals feels lonelier than ever.