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Well, I guess the question basically boils down to whether Analemma_ or you can name futurists that are not cranks... if you can't, then it seems to me the beef
by drcode 9y ago
Well, I guess the question basically boils down to whether Analemma_ or you can name futurists that are not cranks... if you can't, then it seems to me the beef is with the notion of futurism itself, not with an individual subculture of futurists.
It seems to me that Analemma_ (and likely yourself) are proponents of the view "the future will be mostly the same as the present with minor inconsequential variations" which is a very sound and reasonable view to hold, but also kind of sad and unambitious in my view.
- eesmith 9y agoAlvin Toffler, Daniel Bell, and Marshall McLuhan. I think that "futurist" is only a subset of those who make "any attempt to predict the future". For example, the Congressional Budget Office routinely makes predictions about the future effect of new legislation, though they are never called "futurists". As to your second paragraph, I have no idea of how you concluded that that is my view. As a kid I enjoyed James Burke's "Connections" which, quoting Wikipedia, "explores an "Alternative View of Change" (the subtitle of the series) that rejects the conventional linear and teleological view of historical progress", and that viewpoint has stayed with me. Personally, I'm of the view that the late 1800s - the Belle Époque - contained much more significant technological and cultural changes than the late 1900s, and that people like Kurzweil end up minimizing the large transitions brought about by the telephone, phonograph, the vertical filing system, punched cards, lighting system, etc. Concerning just lighting, Paris got the nickname "The City Of Light" because of its early installation (in the 1860s) of gas lighting, and night-life started around them, enabled first by limelight and then arc lamps.