| ▲ | jubilanti 5 hours ago |
| Futurism is a focus on the future. The future may be good or bad. Your desire to focus only on the upsides (for you) and not want to hear about the consequences, externalities, or dangers is one of the most "political" positions a technologist can have. Do you hate reading most science fiction? Because the ratio of dystopic to utopic scifi is pretty unbalanced. |
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| ▲ | modeless 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Yeah, I hate modern science fiction. It's almost all terrible. Sci-fi written in the time of actual ongoing world wars and the Cold War's constant threat of instant nuclear annihilation was far more optimistic, and far more imaginative. |
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| ▲ | ralfd 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| That is a modern phenomena though. Classic scifi was optimistic and utopian. But today even Star Trek has to be bleak/gritty/depressing. |
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| ▲ | bodge5000 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Classic sci-fi was far from universally optimistic, it had more optimistic pieces than we do today but I'd still say on the whole it was more dystopia than utopia. Even for its own time, the original Star Trek was considered uniquely optimistic, though a large part of that is that its just much easier to write a good story where the setting itself provides the necessary challenges for a story to work, rather than an optimistic setting which rules out a lot of the usual challenges. Even Star Trek struggled, a good chunk of its stories are about encountering a race or civilisation without that utopia, turns out telling a good story without any conflict is pretty tough, especially a long running one. But it does more generally reflect how society views technology as a whole too. People are generally a lot more pessimistic about new tech now, myself included, we've seen time and time again how its used to control or squeeze us. There actually was a Star Trek episode, "The Game" (season 5, episode 6) about an addicting device you could compare to smartphones (though the device in Star Trek doesn't spy on you to sell your every move to advertisers, missed a trick there), and that certainly wasn't supposed to be an optimistic look at technology, so you can see why things have gone the way they have. | |
| ▲ | sharkjacobs 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Classic scifi was optimistic and utopian Yeah for sure, science fiction used to be optimistic and utopian, like Planet of the Apes, Brave New World, Frankenstein, 1984, Earth Abides, The Martian Chronicles, A Canticle for Leibowitz, The Time Machine, War of the Worlds, and Island of Dr Moreau, We, Farenheit 451 ... | | |
| ▲ | bodge5000 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Great to see Island of Dr Moreau mentioned, people often forget about that but its one of my favourite books | |
| ▲ | dgellow 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Forgot about We, I love that book |
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| ▲ | dgellow 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You mean like Dune, the Neuromancer, Bladerunner, the Time Machine? |
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| ▲ | 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
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| ▲ | kulahan 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| You could just say “no” - it would save a lot of space, be about as polite, and way less annoying. Sometimes people want to talk about science stuff without talking about human fallout and political implications. It’s perfectly fine to want an occasional break from those types of discussions. |
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| ▲ | ryandrake 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Talking about "science stuff" without even mentioning the political and human implications is pointlessly incomplete. It's like trying to talk about a programming language without mentioning variables. Everything is human and everything is political. To pretend that it is not is, in itself, a political stance. | | |
| ▲ | kulahan 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Let's take the two pieces you put out there and just look at logical conclusions., because it's kinda hilarious to imagine you actually hold this actually-insane position. 1. Everything is political 2. Talking about something without mentioning political and human implications is "pointlessly incomplete" Topic: "Anyone wanna go swimming?" Normal people: "Sure." You, apparently: "Are you aware of how water is unequally distributed throughout the world? How can we possibly discuss swimming if we aren't willing to discuss the political fallout? This is pointlessly incomplete." Next panel, you're just researching local water table rights while everyone else is swimming and having fun |
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