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When I was a kid, TV was full of content like "Beyond 2000" were the general population was introduced to possibilities for the future, to what technology will

When I was a kid, TV was full of content like "Beyond 2000" were the general population was introduced to possibilities for the future, to what technology will bring to our lives, to what possibilities were out there. There were many problems, probably more than nowadays, but there was a big space for hope. Where all that content has gone? I have found many YouTube channels that show this kind of futuristic content, but views are in the 100K never millions. Do people have lost hope? Do people want to just watch negative content? I do not think so. My guess, and it is just a guess, is that people want to see high-quality content that gives them hopes for the future. But, as choosing fried food over a salad, there is a short term reward that changes that decision. You could go for the salad, you decided at home that today you will choose a healthy fresh salad, but once in the restaurant you choose fried chicken and fries. When I was a kid, people loved these programs that offered a glimpse into possible futures, kids wanted to be astronauts and technology was magical. Ironically, with so many options today, people chooses things that are bad for their mental health. But, I do not know how to change that.

Afforess 5y ago
yes. people have lost hope. the US life expectancy is declining year over year. wealth accrued by young people is declining compared to prev generations. housing is unaffordable nationwide now. education, healthcare, and housing costs are eating all productivity gains. people choose "vices" because poverty is literally painful. fix the material conditions and people will want the future again.
- goatse-4-u 5y ago
  As always, the truth is at the bottom on HN.
nine_zeros 5y ago
> Do people have lost hope? Do people want to just watch negative content? Most people are too tired of the never ending rat race. They use content to escape from reality of their lives. The alternate fantasy world where everything is blamed on incompetent leaders is appealing. And deservedly so.
- s1artibartfast 5y ago
  I don't think that explains what changed, if anything. Life has always had work and drudgery. By most metrics life is better than it ever has been.
  - nine_zeros 5y ago
    > By most metrics life is better than it ever has been. I imagine people whose wages haven't risen meaningfully in the last 20 years would disagree. So would people who can only get wage increases by constantly switching jobs.
    - korantu 5y ago
      People are steadily getting out of poverty [1], living longer [2], can afford more and more education [3]. Things like access to drinking water [4] and electricity [5] are also improving. So, yes, world in theese important ways is better than ever before now. And imagining future is needed to continue making it better. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/distribution-of-population-poverty-thresholds?stackMode=relative https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/distribution-of-populatio... [2] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy?time=1946..2015 https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy?time=1946... [3] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/mean-years-of-schooling-long-run?tab=chart&time=1985..2017 https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/mean-years-of-schooling-l... [4] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-the-population-with-access-to-improved-drinking-water?tab=chart&time=1992..latest https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-the-population-w... [5] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-the-population-with-access-to-electricity?tab=chart https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-the-population-w...
      - watwut 5y ago
        I think that thread was about USA specifically. It compares past American production with current.
      - jlokier 5y ago
        It's a bit more complicated. A lot of people in the wealthier countries are objectively worse off than their parents in ways that matter to them, and that's a relatively recent change. Many young people are seeing older people, including their own parents, with homes, jobs and comparative stability, and don't see the same possibilities for themselves. Even having more income, for the lucky ones that do, doesn't make up for that. Home prices have risen faster than wages. You can argue that numerous other metrics are in their favour, but that's not enough to make people feel optimistic.
tenpies 5y ago
> Do people have lost hope? Do people want to just watch negative content? No, their priorities changed. American kids want to be Youtubers and Tiktokers. They want followers and likes. [1] Those aspirations do not require any vision or aspiration for the future. It just requires that you manage to get attention - which political trolling achieves easily (see: Twitter or Reddit). Women - and some men - have the highly-incentivized option of achieving this through varying degrees of pornography, but for most men and many women, political trolling is the easiest and fastest way of achieving this goal. --- [1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/07/american-kids-would-much-rather-be-youtubers-than-astronauts/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/07/american-kids-would-...
- XorNot 5y ago
  No it's because these are professions which actually make you rich enough to achieve dreams like "maybe not being bankrupted by healthcare" and "owning a family home".
  - echelon 5y ago
    I don't think 12 year olds are thinking about healthcare or buying a family home. They're worrying about whether they have the best Fortnite skins and how many people follow them on social media.
    - heavyset_go 5y ago
      Kids who grow up around family members who can't afford medicine, doctors, food or their rent or mortgage become acutely aware of those things at a young age. Poverty, hunger and the threat/reality of homelessness make impressions, to say the least.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      Poor 12 year olds are definitely aware that they don’t live in a house, or have their own bedroom, or go on vacations like other kids at school, or go to the dentist when all the other kids have braces. I consciously avoided sports and activities where I might break bones or get injured because I knew the family was barely making it, and I had a sibling 6 years younger that needed to be taken care of too.
onion2k 5y ago
The pace of technological change makes predicting a viable but exciting future pretty much impossible. Back in 1960s to 80s the futurism of scifi was lots of computers, screens, automation, etc. You could make something look beliveable but far off by applying the cutting edge of tech that people knew about but didn't really have access to and making it look commonplace. Today the cutting edge of tech looks pretty mundane. It's usually software, which doesn't really translate to looking futuristic. If TV show makers go too far it looks like magic and stops being an achievable dream. Essentially, the reason why making high quality "dreams of the future" hopeful TV shows doesn't happen any more is because hardware innovation stopped looking exciting. The brilliant thing is that happened because we actually have the hardware now, and that had taught us to be realistic about the (near term) future.
- tomerico 5y ago
  The counter argument is that Black Mirror is an insanely popular TV show that shows exactly what technology innovation could bring - but again, from a dystopian perspective.
  - mbg721 5y ago
    Another comment on a recent thread pointed out that Black Mirror isn't so much speculating about the future as it is using tech storylines to expose things that make us uncomfortable about the present. The depressing content decades ago was about nuclear war, but now the source of people's anxiety isn't just faraway Soviets; it's pervasive surveillance within their own communities, corrupt politicians selling them out, and the inability to reach the standard of living of their parents.
- echelon 5y ago
  I could come up with a dozen forward-leaning SF and technology narratives off the cuff, and I bet you can too. In fact, many authors have already done this and continue to publish great speculative fiction. I think the problem -- and I speculate here -- is that the US media machine enjoys the downtrodden narrative. There's limited room at the top, and they're funding what they like. Not always necessarily what sells. I don't think science fiction would fail to sell. I would certainly consume it. You would. Look at Star Wars and other popular science fiction. Dune. The problem is that nobody seems to want to film this stuff at volume. We're in a supply side drought. I blame Hollywood for not funding their dreamers. They'd rather make depressing shit that tells people they can't reach the stars. Today's films are more gritty and human, but they're so stifling and boxed in. (fwiw, I'm personally trying to change this, but it's a tough road ahead. I can't stand the lack of good fantasy and science fiction.)
akomtu 5y ago
Imo, our capitalism has reached a kind of saturation point, a hyper efficient local maximum. The depression, despair and anxiety in social media simply reflects the conditions of the bottom half of the population. Capitalism can't get itself unstuck from this state and its usual solution is a big war. I think we'll see this at the next recession in 10 years.
- throwaway09223 5y ago
  Maybe I'm out of the loop, but I honestly don't see what any of that has to do with "capitalism." Would you mind connecting those dots? I understand the existence of social ills: depression, despair, anxiety. I understand the amplifying effect caused by the democratization of content. But how do those things tie back to economics? Do other capitalist states have the same problems? Does Canada? Does Sweden? Are things better in non-capitalist countries such as Laos or Nambia? Is this a reference to the Easterlin paradox? Is is more accurate to frame the problem as being unhappy with success and wealth, vs "capitalism?"
  - pjerem 5y ago
    My personal interpretation is that capitalism as an ideology started to fail when big actors started to sell « free products ». Rules of free market can not apply when some actors starts to accept currencies such as your privacy. I think we are training an entire generation to get everything for free. And this, even for the liberal ideology, is a transfer of the power from the states to big companies. Because « free » stuff has always been the monopoly of states (for the obvious reason that states represent people via the democratic systems). And if you are not the client, you are the product, and moreover, you have no more free choice. I’m not an anthropologist and that’s my current mood of thinking. I’m ok if you want to explain me I’m wrong.
  - anticodon 5y ago
    > Are things better in non-capitalist countries such as Laos or Nambia? Laos and Namibia are capitalist countries. The only two non-capitalist countries that I know are Cuba (and I'm not even sure about that) and North Korea. Both are being suffocated by the big capitalist forces for tens of years, so it's impossible to really assess if they're doing better or worse. Like one of our Russian politics said: "USA strangle them with one hand and empty their pockets using another hand". Hard to say how they'd fare if they weren't strangled. E.g. before they isolated North Korea it was doing much better than South Korea.
cheschire 5y ago
Shows like that were made by people who were born post-WW2, grew up during counter culture, and raised kids during the cold war. It impacted their approach to problems, but it was just another iteration of human history. A common theme I've seen repeated online is when younger people complain how things are worse today than before, and the older generation says the younger ones have no idea how easy they have it. I suspect, however, that political trolling has always been twice as popular as positivity within a standard deviation. People wanting to make positive shows like you're remembering are just as numerous today as before, but there's no longer only 20 channels to pitch your show to. Imagine the beauty of watching a herd of animals move in response to danger. Now imagine if every animal on the edge of the herd had a way to share the dangers they see to the entire herd as they see them, and could see the herd response in return. Consider that, and then consider if you would like to continue participating in those platforms.
- runawaybottle 5y ago
  Something definitely changed though. If you take the Vietnam era, even though there was a activist element protesting the war, the ‘other side’ were considered a ‘silent majority’. Think about that for a second. That both sides actually didn’t engage in politics. As trite as it is to suggest, but the media and tech social media normalized new behavior, for better or worse (most likely a weird combination of both).
iancmceachern 5y ago
I loved that show! It, along with modern marvels, 321 contact, and a few others had a big part in me becoming an engineer.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
atoav 5y ago
Yes, but the short of it is: 1.) There is a ton of content that is easier to make and sell than scifi 2.) The Studios and TV networks of the day competed mainly with each other, not with everybody who has a camera on their phone. That means even if the number of scifi content produced from the stations was the same as in the 90s, it still would be a smaller piece of the cake overall. 3.) The fundamental problem is a hyper-competition for people's attention, because we created a web where that is basically run by advertisment-revenue. What we see here is what a unregulated free market competing for people's brains results in: Polemic low quality but high engagement trash that is easy to make, and makes anybody feel right and good. 4.) Trolling only works if you have someone to troll. The (very American) idea of having two sides to everything (as opposed to say: more) has been exported as globally as the underlying fictional premise for the last 50 years at least. Just: Everybody believes they are are the good ones, if not for the sole reason that they want to be the good ones and they don't discuss anything from the "evil" side, just like their fictional idols didn't. Discussion is for intellectuals and academics who have no idea how things get done. So the right question is one of incentives. Nowadays everybody has the incentive to produce the next outraging video where you basically just filmed a talking head: Studios/Stations are drained for money, so everything that brings ad revenue without costing much is welcome. Platforms didn't find any other way of generating income, so anything that brings ad revenue is welcome. Users don't have the funds and skills to create scifi and if they had the footballification of politics (through Rubert Murdoch mostly) gave them the idea they don't even want it. Ah, and anything that brings ad revenue is welcome. Just ban advertisement networks.
- ElViajero 5y ago
  > Just ban advertisement networks. That seems a line that could be added to John Lennon's "Imagine". Imagine there's no advertisement. It's easy if you try. No more click-bait for us. The limit only the sky
- watwut 5y ago
  > There is a ton of content that is easier to make and sell than scifi There is a lot of sci-fi being released. But, they tend to be more of dystopian then "everything will be great" kind of sci-fi.
nyokodo 5y ago
> When I was a kid, people loved these programs that offered a glimpse into possible futures, kids wanted to be astronauts and technology was magical. Optimism for the future is a characteristic of a young culture and western culture is aging and decadent.
Layke1123 5y ago
I think what it really is is the idea we are beginning to dissolve the lies of western culture. For profit is not in fact the best model to run our societies on, and allowing people to hold beliefs that are clearly delusions as "normal" erodes any kind of shared narrative that helps us collaborate instead of compete. Humans and other animals have literally evolved to specifically go against raw competition because it doesn't work as well as a team
b0rsuk 5y ago
I remember the show. I remember an episode which showed extinguishing fire from a helicopter. Technology was magical, but also there was a belief that technologists would be calling the shots. Early computer users were all nerds. Operating systems, games, utility programs required you to be pretty technical. Turn-based strategy was a major genre. Today even RTS is seen as a niche. I remember an early SF book with title along the lines "Tower of light" which called the big boss The Programmer. There were also books like "Rendez-Vous with Rama". Today, the goal is to make computer games and computers in general as accessible as possible. Tablets and touch screens are ALL about accessibility. I propose an alternate explanation: reality has shown that programmers, inventors, scientists are often just pawns. The decision makers are elsewhere. There's much resentment towards "sales&marketing" departments in companies. We techies often just do what we're told, we realize someone else's vision. NASA's budget gets cut. Email spam is outrageous, spambots run rampant. SOMEONE writes these spam senders, captcha solvers, spambots! Cynical programmers. And nothing is more enduring in programming than a "temporary solution". The respect towards scientists and science has been dropping for a while. Some of it is because of problems with reproduction and peer reviews, but largely people just don't believe in scientific method. By contrast, psychology degrees and charisma are extremely valued. You don't need a good product if you can manipulate the feelings of clients (now called "consumers") or strike a deal that every new PC comes with your operating system and you get paid for it. People just assume they got it "for free with the computer". Fact-based arguments are usually less convincing that arguments from personal experience. In some areas, like History, "publish or perish" no longer holds. You can perish anyway. Nowadays you need to do a lot more than that. ------ Personally I'm very impressed by discoveries in topics like role of gut bacteria or fungi. Neural networks can do very nice stuff.
numpad0 5y ago
> Do people have lost hope? Do people want to just watch negative content? I think the answer is no and yes respectively - wider adoption of Internet rather dug down towards the bottom of the barrel and merely uncovered the nature of the humanity, that >80% of us are naturally negative, hateful, stupid, naive, etc., judging by standards of media in the past. Though I do not like the state of online world, I don't think it's constructive to criticize the straw man on their stupidity - what you are looking at is an innocent and average man, it's up to us the woke to find ways to devise ways to distill wisdom out of eternal flame of echo chambering rages, a way that are better than in the past where those voices were simply suppressed.
laurent92 5y ago
> YouTube channels that show this kind of futuristic content, but views are in the 100K never millions. Do people have lost hope? Do people want to just watch negative content? Wait you’re drawing a conclusion where there isn’t. The content on Youtube isn’t what people want to see, but what Youtube wants you to see. There are hundreds of thousands of Youtubers with 20k-people channels of extremely good quality, but you’ll never discover them organically, and the search for “futuristic content” (or anything really) will only return pre-approved channels, generally BBC or bad quality journalism which rehash other videos and slap a commentary and big text on top. Assuming that Youtube returns the videos with the most clicks is a projection onto Youtube of your assumption that they are optimizing for clicks. Maybe they optimize for sleepiness, maybe they optimize for a certain political leaning, you do not know.
- newman8r 5y ago
  >There are hundreds of thousands of Youtubers with 20k-people channels of extremely good quality, but you’ll never discover them organically would you mind sharing some of these channels? I agree that it's hard to find them organically, so I tend to ask people whenever I can.
- dehrmann 5y ago
  > The content on Youtube isn’t what people want to see, but what Youtube wants you to see. You're suggesting more intent than Youtube actually has. Youtube wants you to see more monetizable Youtube. Same as CNN. Its main bias it to get you to watch more CNN.
  - bsdetector 5y ago
    Tech companies and studios are determining what's presented to the masses and it's not entirely if even primarily concerned with what makes money. For example, PewDiePie trended ~40x more in Canada and even non-English countries than he did in the US - a difference that was not always the case, and resulted from a choice made by YouTube for whatever reason. PewDiePie makes YouTube a lot of money. Although I'm not entirely convinced Google's reason is pushing their ideology. They may simply be planning for a time when 230 is reformed and they are held responsible for content or cannot censor based on ideology, in either case resulting in them purging most user-generated content and leaving only mainstream, company-backed content.
raverbashing 5y ago
For real People take everything for granted now. There's no "future" anymore. People dwell too much into politics (where it's mostly political BS of both sides) and "feel good" actions (even if it's just "feel hate") Societal discussions are of course important but it has become more of a screaming match (to that I blame the R/Conservative side more than the other - but both sides are to blame) whereas technical innovation has been relegated to the backend. Or it is at best "taken for granted" (case of Covid vaccines) Though on the topic of YT, there is some Discovery-quality level material (I mean, there's literally some Discovery programs there)
TriNetra 5y ago
A conditioned mind (of an unrealized one) needs to be engaged in some activity to feel worthwhile (one of the definitive ways of measuring your progress in meditation is to check how long you can sit with just yourself without engaging in any activity [0]). It's also a fact that only few seem to demonstrate interest in creative/selfless pursuits at any point in time if you see in our history. For most people, the worthwhile activity had been working to survive – to make ends-meet somehow. (You'd not hear people in poor places even today having these mental problems of depression/etc.) In last few decades, more and more people on the planet (especially in western world) have gotten material comforts which were only available to very rich/powerful people. So the struggle for the basic stuff, which used to consume one's life for most people, is simply no longer there. A conditioned mind without meaningful activity is a devil workshop. It rejoices in negativity, gossips etc naturally then. Social media has given a platform to such mind and with follows/retweets/likes as added bonus that give social justification and encouragement of its negativity. 0: https://os.me/eight-signs-of-progress-in-meditation/ https://os.me/eight-signs-of-progress-in-meditation/
- mandmandam 5y ago
  > It's also a fact that only few seem to demonstrate interest in creative/selfless pursuits at any point in time if you see in our history. That's not a fact, not at all. Nearly everyone has had some creative or selfless hobby; that they didn't all change the world (and enter the history books) is quite beside the point. It's a very low view of people to take, quite superior and baseless, to be honest. Look closer. > For most people, the worthwhile activity had been working to survive – to make ends-meet somehow. (You'd not hear people in poor places even today having these mental problems of depression/etc.) Working to survive is no longer necessary. Only forced inequality makes it so. We have the technology and resources to provide for everyone. The vestigial cultural propaganda involved in making people afraid to not work is a major reason why people tweet blind bullshit, instead of living fulfilling lives. I agree that meaningful activity is important; but have a read of Bullshit Jobs to see the kind of busy-work people are given. Look around and realise how bad inequality has gotten, for no other reason than because Extreme Wealth is a vicious feedback loop in unrestricted capitalist society. > the struggle for the basic stuff, which used to consume one's life for most people, is simply no longer there. It seems you're invoking that horrible and untrue myth; that creativity comes from suffering and deprivation. It's not true. Holding on to anger, suffering, greed, pain etc, is not necessary to be creative, fulfilled, free. > A conditioned mind without meaningful activity is a devil workshop. It rejoices in negativity, gossips etc naturally then. Social media has given a platform to such mind and with follows/retweets/likes as added bonus that give social justification and encouragement of its negativity. You're not entirely wrong, but I don't see how you can seriously propose "working to survive" as a superior alternative. We are very luck that Da Vinci, Tesla, Fuller, Ramanujan, Van Gogh (...insert literally millions of more examples here) didn't need to "work to survive".
heavyset_go 5y ago
> When I was a kid, TV was full of content like "Beyond 2000" were the general population was introduced to possibilities for the future, to what technology will bring to our lives, to what possibilities were out there. How many people were watching 'Beyond 2000' compared to how many people were listening to political talk radio and watching Fox News et al?
gmd63 5y ago
Or there are actors faking views and buying clicks to sway perceived popular opinion down the drain
iechoz6H 5y ago
In the UK we had Tomorrow's World [1] on the BBC, a must watch for any budding futurist. It was a pretty breathless experience to get some audio/video mixing software I was involved with demoed on the show in the late 1990's despite having stopped watching it a decade earlier. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomorrow%27s_World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomorrow%27s_World
LatteLazy 5y ago
In fairness, there really hasn't been any delivery on those promises. It's 2021, people still work long hours in boring jobs and live in houses. TVs have gotten bigger and flstter and everyone has one in their pocket now. But if anything people have less leisure, disposable income, relationships or fun than they did back in the 80s...
hawski 5y ago
I remember "Beyond 2000" it was in Polish TV in so called "Educational Television". I loved the whole timeslot, but later on it was getting shorter and shorter and finally disappeared or blended in. There were a couple of Polish programs like Kitchen [1], where a father sat in a kitchen with his kids and presented various experiments discussing some physical phenomena. Or Visitors from Mathplanet (Przybysze z Matplanety) [2] a children program about mathematics. It was a time when I actually wanted to have access to cable TV for Discovery Channel, my friends discussed programs from there. Now I couldn't care less. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1indpuiztw4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1indpuiztw4 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSWnQLSvj8k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSWnQLSvj8k
koheripbal 5y ago
What's more appealing and addictive than hope is victory. The addiction of the never ending "struggle" against the other side is rooting in the three step psychological process of Outrage --> Hate --> Victory. Step 1. Outrage: Set the table for an outrage - some grave injustice that is occurring that can/will ultimately impact the reader. Hyperbole, cherry picking data, misinterpreting data, or even falsifying information are functional if you can do this in an echo chamber. This step creates the emotional investment in the event. Step 2. Hate: Choose a target to blame for the outrage in step 1. Again, if it exists in an echo chamber, the writer can functionally use ancillary data, tenuous/indirect relationships, or flawed logic to tie the target to to the event above. What's important here is channeling the emotion generated in step 1. Emotion is important because it make the reader immune to entertaining opposing viewpoints. Step 3. Gratification: Mobilizing pressure against the target is a bonus, but what's really needed is to be able to paint the outcome as a victory, even if it isn't. You can highlight how the "good team" actually won in some segment or district or demographic, and above all give the reader the sense of victory (or inevitable victory). It's always advisable to paint the target as in decay, aging, or fundamentally self-destructive, such that even their victory is short lived and self-consuming. Then repeat. ...and if you do this independently with both or multiple "sides", you've basically mechanized a political system that has no material path for improvement. No nuanced debate takes place because you've convinced both sides that it's "all or nothing", and that victory is reliable. They are always winning - yet constantly outraged. Any of this sound familiar?

Afforess 5y ago

yes. people have lost hope. the US life expectancy is declining year over year. wealth accrued by young people is declining compared to prev generations. housing is unaffordable nationwide now. education, healthcare, and housing costs are eating all productivity gains. people choose "vices" because poverty is literally painful. fix the material conditions and people will want the future again.

goatse-4-u 5y ago
As always, the truth is at the bottom on HN.

nine_zeros 5y ago

> Do people have lost hope? Do people want to just watch negative content? Most people are too tired of the never ending rat race. They use content to escape from reality of their lives. The alternate fantasy world where everything is blamed on incompetent leaders is appealing. And deservedly so.

s1artibartfast 5y ago
I don't think that explains what changed, if anything. Life has always had work and drudgery. By most metrics life is better than it ever has been.
- nine_zeros 5y ago
  > By most metrics life is better than it ever has been. I imagine people whose wages haven't risen meaningfully in the last 20 years would disagree. So would people who can only get wage increases by constantly switching jobs.
  - korantu 5y ago
    People are steadily getting out of poverty [1], living longer [2], can afford more and more education [3]. Things like access to drinking water [4] and electricity [5] are also improving. So, yes, world in theese important ways is better than ever before now. And imagining future is needed to continue making it better. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/distribution-of-population-poverty-thresholds?stackMode=relative https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/distribution-of-populatio... [2] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy?time=1946..2015 https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy?time=1946... [3] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/mean-years-of-schooling-long-run?tab=chart&time=1985..2017 https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/mean-years-of-schooling-l... [4] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-the-population-with-access-to-improved-drinking-water?tab=chart&time=1992..latest https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-the-population-w... [5] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-the-population-with-access-to-electricity?tab=chart https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-the-population-w...
    - watwut 5y ago
      I think that thread was about USA specifically. It compares past American production with current.
    - jlokier 5y ago
      It's a bit more complicated. A lot of people in the wealthier countries are objectively worse off than their parents in ways that matter to them, and that's a relatively recent change. Many young people are seeing older people, including their own parents, with homes, jobs and comparative stability, and don't see the same possibilities for themselves. Even having more income, for the lucky ones that do, doesn't make up for that. Home prices have risen faster than wages. You can argue that numerous other metrics are in their favour, but that's not enough to make people feel optimistic.

tenpies 5y ago

> Do people have lost hope? Do people want to just watch negative content? No, their priorities changed. American kids want to be Youtubers and Tiktokers. They want followers and likes. [1] Those aspirations do not require any vision or aspiration for the future. It just requires that you manage to get attention - which political trolling achieves easily (see: Twitter or Reddit). Women - and some men - have the highly-incentivized option of achieving this through varying degrees of pornography, but for most men and many women, political trolling is the easiest and fastest way of achieving this goal. --- [1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/07/american-kids-would-much-rather-be-youtubers-than-astronauts/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/07/american-kids-would-...

XorNot 5y ago
No it's because these are professions which actually make you rich enough to achieve dreams like "maybe not being bankrupted by healthcare" and "owning a family home".
- echelon 5y ago
  I don't think 12 year olds are thinking about healthcare or buying a family home. They're worrying about whether they have the best Fortnite skins and how many people follow them on social media.
  - heavyset_go 5y ago
    Kids who grow up around family members who can't afford medicine, doctors, food or their rent or mortgage become acutely aware of those things at a young age. Poverty, hunger and the threat/reality of homelessness make impressions, to say the least.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    Poor 12 year olds are definitely aware that they don’t live in a house, or have their own bedroom, or go on vacations like other kids at school, or go to the dentist when all the other kids have braces. I consciously avoided sports and activities where I might break bones or get injured because I knew the family was barely making it, and I had a sibling 6 years younger that needed to be taken care of too.

onion2k 5y ago

The pace of technological change makes predicting a viable but exciting future pretty much impossible. Back in 1960s to 80s the futurism of scifi was lots of computers, screens, automation, etc. You could make something look beliveable but far off by applying the cutting edge of tech that people knew about but didn't really have access to and making it look commonplace. Today the cutting edge of tech looks pretty mundane. It's usually software, which doesn't really translate to looking futuristic. If TV show makers go too far it looks like magic and stops being an achievable dream. Essentially, the reason why making high quality "dreams of the future" hopeful TV shows doesn't happen any more is because hardware innovation stopped looking exciting. The brilliant thing is that happened because we actually have the hardware now, and that had taught us to be realistic about the (near term) future.

tomerico 5y ago
The counter argument is that Black Mirror is an insanely popular TV show that shows exactly what technology innovation could bring - but again, from a dystopian perspective.
- mbg721 5y ago
  Another comment on a recent thread pointed out that Black Mirror isn't so much speculating about the future as it is using tech storylines to expose things that make us uncomfortable about the present. The depressing content decades ago was about nuclear war, but now the source of people's anxiety isn't just faraway Soviets; it's pervasive surveillance within their own communities, corrupt politicians selling them out, and the inability to reach the standard of living of their parents.
echelon 5y ago
I could come up with a dozen forward-leaning SF and technology narratives off the cuff, and I bet you can too. In fact, many authors have already done this and continue to publish great speculative fiction. I think the problem -- and I speculate here -- is that the US media machine enjoys the downtrodden narrative. There's limited room at the top, and they're funding what they like. Not always necessarily what sells. I don't think science fiction would fail to sell. I would certainly consume it. You would. Look at Star Wars and other popular science fiction. Dune. The problem is that nobody seems to want to film this stuff at volume. We're in a supply side drought. I blame Hollywood for not funding their dreamers. They'd rather make depressing shit that tells people they can't reach the stars. Today's films are more gritty and human, but they're so stifling and boxed in. (fwiw, I'm personally trying to change this, but it's a tough road ahead. I can't stand the lack of good fantasy and science fiction.)

akomtu 5y ago

Imo, our capitalism has reached a kind of saturation point, a hyper efficient local maximum. The depression, despair and anxiety in social media simply reflects the conditions of the bottom half of the population. Capitalism can't get itself unstuck from this state and its usual solution is a big war. I think we'll see this at the next recession in 10 years.

throwaway09223 5y ago
Maybe I'm out of the loop, but I honestly don't see what any of that has to do with "capitalism." Would you mind connecting those dots? I understand the existence of social ills: depression, despair, anxiety. I understand the amplifying effect caused by the democratization of content. But how do those things tie back to economics? Do other capitalist states have the same problems? Does Canada? Does Sweden? Are things better in non-capitalist countries such as Laos or Nambia? Is this a reference to the Easterlin paradox? Is is more accurate to frame the problem as being unhappy with success and wealth, vs "capitalism?"
- pjerem 5y ago
  My personal interpretation is that capitalism as an ideology started to fail when big actors started to sell « free products ». Rules of free market can not apply when some actors starts to accept currencies such as your privacy. I think we are training an entire generation to get everything for free. And this, even for the liberal ideology, is a transfer of the power from the states to big companies. Because « free » stuff has always been the monopoly of states (for the obvious reason that states represent people via the democratic systems). And if you are not the client, you are the product, and moreover, you have no more free choice. I’m not an anthropologist and that’s my current mood of thinking. I’m ok if you want to explain me I’m wrong.
- anticodon 5y ago
  > Are things better in non-capitalist countries such as Laos or Nambia? Laos and Namibia are capitalist countries. The only two non-capitalist countries that I know are Cuba (and I'm not even sure about that) and North Korea. Both are being suffocated by the big capitalist forces for tens of years, so it's impossible to really assess if they're doing better or worse. Like one of our Russian politics said: "USA strangle them with one hand and empty their pockets using another hand". Hard to say how they'd fare if they weren't strangled. E.g. before they isolated North Korea it was doing much better than South Korea.

cheschire 5y ago

Shows like that were made by people who were born post-WW2, grew up during counter culture, and raised kids during the cold war. It impacted their approach to problems, but it was just another iteration of human history. A common theme I've seen repeated online is when younger people complain how things are worse today than before, and the older generation says the younger ones have no idea how easy they have it. I suspect, however, that political trolling has always been twice as popular as positivity within a standard deviation. People wanting to make positive shows like you're remembering are just as numerous today as before, but there's no longer only 20 channels to pitch your show to. Imagine the beauty of watching a herd of animals move in response to danger. Now imagine if every animal on the edge of the herd had a way to share the dangers they see to the entire herd as they see them, and could see the herd response in return. Consider that, and then consider if you would like to continue participating in those platforms.

runawaybottle 5y ago
Something definitely changed though. If you take the Vietnam era, even though there was a activist element protesting the war, the ‘other side’ were considered a ‘silent majority’. Think about that for a second. That both sides actually didn’t engage in politics. As trite as it is to suggest, but the media and tech social media normalized new behavior, for better or worse (most likely a weird combination of both).

iancmceachern 5y ago

I loved that show! It, along with modern marvels, 321 contact, and a few others had a big part in me becoming an engineer.

deleted 5y ago
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atoav 5y ago

Yes, but the short of it is: 1.) There is a ton of content that is easier to make and sell than scifi 2.) The Studios and TV networks of the day competed mainly with each other, not with everybody who has a camera on their phone. That means even if the number of scifi content produced from the stations was the same as in the 90s, it still would be a smaller piece of the cake overall. 3.) The fundamental problem is a hyper-competition for people's attention, because we created a web where that is basically run by advertisment-revenue. What we see here is what a unregulated free market competing for people's brains results in: Polemic low quality but high engagement trash that is easy to make, and makes anybody feel right and good. 4.) Trolling only works if you have someone to troll. The (very American) idea of having two sides to everything (as opposed to say: more) has been exported as globally as the underlying fictional premise for the last 50 years at least. Just: Everybody believes they are are the good ones, if not for the sole reason that they want to be the good ones and they don't discuss anything from the "evil" side, just like their fictional idols didn't. Discussion is for intellectuals and academics who have no idea how things get done. So the right question is one of incentives. Nowadays everybody has the incentive to produce the next outraging video where you basically just filmed a talking head: Studios/Stations are drained for money, so everything that brings ad revenue without costing much is welcome. Platforms didn't find any other way of generating income, so anything that brings ad revenue is welcome. Users don't have the funds and skills to create scifi and if they had the footballification of politics (through Rubert Murdoch mostly) gave them the idea they don't even want it. Ah, and anything that brings ad revenue is welcome. Just ban advertisement networks.

ElViajero 5y ago
> Just ban advertisement networks. That seems a line that could be added to John Lennon's "Imagine". Imagine there's no advertisement. It's easy if you try. No more click-bait for us. The limit only the sky
watwut 5y ago
> There is a ton of content that is easier to make and sell than scifi There is a lot of sci-fi being released. But, they tend to be more of dystopian then "everything will be great" kind of sci-fi.

nyokodo 5y ago

> When I was a kid, people loved these programs that offered a glimpse into possible futures, kids wanted to be astronauts and technology was magical. Optimism for the future is a characteristic of a young culture and western culture is aging and decadent.

Layke1123 5y ago

I think what it really is is the idea we are beginning to dissolve the lies of western culture. For profit is not in fact the best model to run our societies on, and allowing people to hold beliefs that are clearly delusions as "normal" erodes any kind of shared narrative that helps us collaborate instead of compete. Humans and other animals have literally evolved to specifically go against raw competition because it doesn't work as well as a team

b0rsuk 5y ago

I remember the show. I remember an episode which showed extinguishing fire from a helicopter. Technology was magical, but also there was a belief that technologists would be calling the shots. Early computer users were all nerds. Operating systems, games, utility programs required you to be pretty technical. Turn-based strategy was a major genre. Today even RTS is seen as a niche. I remember an early SF book with title along the lines "Tower of light" which called the big boss The Programmer. There were also books like "Rendez-Vous with Rama". Today, the goal is to make computer games and computers in general as accessible as possible. Tablets and touch screens are ALL about accessibility. I propose an alternate explanation: reality has shown that programmers, inventors, scientists are often just pawns. The decision makers are elsewhere. There's much resentment towards "sales&marketing" departments in companies. We techies often just do what we're told, we realize someone else's vision. NASA's budget gets cut. Email spam is outrageous, spambots run rampant. SOMEONE writes these spam senders, captcha solvers, spambots! Cynical programmers. And nothing is more enduring in programming than a "temporary solution". The respect towards scientists and science has been dropping for a while. Some of it is because of problems with reproduction and peer reviews, but largely people just don't believe in scientific method. By contrast, psychology degrees and charisma are extremely valued. You don't need a good product if you can manipulate the feelings of clients (now called "consumers") or strike a deal that every new PC comes with your operating system and you get paid for it. People just assume they got it "for free with the computer". Fact-based arguments are usually less convincing that arguments from personal experience. In some areas, like History, "publish or perish" no longer holds. You can perish anyway. Nowadays you need to do a lot more than that. ------ Personally I'm very impressed by discoveries in topics like role of gut bacteria or fungi. Neural networks can do very nice stuff.

numpad0 5y ago

> Do people have lost hope? Do people want to just watch negative content? I think the answer is no and yes respectively - wider adoption of Internet rather dug down towards the bottom of the barrel and merely uncovered the nature of the humanity, that >80% of us are naturally negative, hateful, stupid, naive, etc., judging by standards of media in the past. Though I do not like the state of online world, I don't think it's constructive to criticize the straw man on their stupidity - what you are looking at is an innocent and average man, it's up to us the woke to find ways to devise ways to distill wisdom out of eternal flame of echo chambering rages, a way that are better than in the past where those voices were simply suppressed.

laurent92 5y ago

> YouTube channels that show this kind of futuristic content, but views are in the 100K never millions. Do people have lost hope? Do people want to just watch negative content? Wait you’re drawing a conclusion where there isn’t. The content on Youtube isn’t what people want to see, but what Youtube wants you to see. There are hundreds of thousands of Youtubers with 20k-people channels of extremely good quality, but you’ll never discover them organically, and the search for “futuristic content” (or anything really) will only return pre-approved channels, generally BBC or bad quality journalism which rehash other videos and slap a commentary and big text on top. Assuming that Youtube returns the videos with the most clicks is a projection onto Youtube of your assumption that they are optimizing for clicks. Maybe they optimize for sleepiness, maybe they optimize for a certain political leaning, you do not know.

newman8r 5y ago
>There are hundreds of thousands of Youtubers with 20k-people channels of extremely good quality, but you’ll never discover them organically would you mind sharing some of these channels? I agree that it's hard to find them organically, so I tend to ask people whenever I can.
dehrmann 5y ago
> The content on Youtube isn’t what people want to see, but what Youtube wants you to see. You're suggesting more intent than Youtube actually has. Youtube wants you to see more monetizable Youtube. Same as CNN. Its main bias it to get you to watch more CNN.
- bsdetector 5y ago
  Tech companies and studios are determining what's presented to the masses and it's not entirely if even primarily concerned with what makes money. For example, PewDiePie trended ~40x more in Canada and even non-English countries than he did in the US - a difference that was not always the case, and resulted from a choice made by YouTube for whatever reason. PewDiePie makes YouTube a lot of money. Although I'm not entirely convinced Google's reason is pushing their ideology. They may simply be planning for a time when 230 is reformed and they are held responsible for content or cannot censor based on ideology, in either case resulting in them purging most user-generated content and leaving only mainstream, company-backed content.

raverbashing 5y ago

For real People take everything for granted now. There's no "future" anymore. People dwell too much into politics (where it's mostly political BS of both sides) and "feel good" actions (even if it's just "feel hate") Societal discussions are of course important but it has become more of a screaming match (to that I blame the R/Conservative side more than the other - but both sides are to blame) whereas technical innovation has been relegated to the backend. Or it is at best "taken for granted" (case of Covid vaccines) Though on the topic of YT, there is some Discovery-quality level material (I mean, there's literally some Discovery programs there)

TriNetra 5y ago

A conditioned mind (of an unrealized one) needs to be engaged in some activity to feel worthwhile (one of the definitive ways of measuring your progress in meditation is to check how long you can sit with just yourself without engaging in any activity [0]). It's also a fact that only few seem to demonstrate interest in creative/selfless pursuits at any point in time if you see in our history. For most people, the worthwhile activity had been working to survive – to make ends-meet somehow. (You'd not hear people in poor places even today having these mental problems of depression/etc.) In last few decades, more and more people on the planet (especially in western world) have gotten material comforts which were only available to very rich/powerful people. So the struggle for the basic stuff, which used to consume one's life for most people, is simply no longer there. A conditioned mind without meaningful activity is a devil workshop. It rejoices in negativity, gossips etc naturally then. Social media has given a platform to such mind and with follows/retweets/likes as added bonus that give social justification and encouragement of its negativity. 0: https://os.me/eight-signs-of-progress-in-meditation/ https://os.me/eight-signs-of-progress-in-meditation/

mandmandam 5y ago
> It's also a fact that only few seem to demonstrate interest in creative/selfless pursuits at any point in time if you see in our history. That's not a fact, not at all. Nearly everyone has had some creative or selfless hobby; that they didn't all change the world (and enter the history books) is quite beside the point. It's a very low view of people to take, quite superior and baseless, to be honest. Look closer. > For most people, the worthwhile activity had been working to survive – to make ends-meet somehow. (You'd not hear people in poor places even today having these mental problems of depression/etc.) Working to survive is no longer necessary. Only forced inequality makes it so. We have the technology and resources to provide for everyone. The vestigial cultural propaganda involved in making people afraid to not work is a major reason why people tweet blind bullshit, instead of living fulfilling lives. I agree that meaningful activity is important; but have a read of Bullshit Jobs to see the kind of busy-work people are given. Look around and realise how bad inequality has gotten, for no other reason than because Extreme Wealth is a vicious feedback loop in unrestricted capitalist society. > the struggle for the basic stuff, which used to consume one's life for most people, is simply no longer there. It seems you're invoking that horrible and untrue myth; that creativity comes from suffering and deprivation. It's not true. Holding on to anger, suffering, greed, pain etc, is not necessary to be creative, fulfilled, free. > A conditioned mind without meaningful activity is a devil workshop. It rejoices in negativity, gossips etc naturally then. Social media has given a platform to such mind and with follows/retweets/likes as added bonus that give social justification and encouragement of its negativity. You're not entirely wrong, but I don't see how you can seriously propose "working to survive" as a superior alternative. We are very luck that Da Vinci, Tesla, Fuller, Ramanujan, Van Gogh (...insert literally millions of more examples here) didn't need to "work to survive".

heavyset_go 5y ago

> When I was a kid, TV was full of content like "Beyond 2000" were the general population was introduced to possibilities for the future, to what technology will bring to our lives, to what possibilities were out there. How many people were watching 'Beyond 2000' compared to how many people were listening to political talk radio and watching Fox News et al?

gmd63 5y ago

Or there are actors faking views and buying clicks to sway perceived popular opinion down the drain

iechoz6H 5y ago

In the UK we had Tomorrow's World [1] on the BBC, a must watch for any budding futurist. It was a pretty breathless experience to get some audio/video mixing software I was involved with demoed on the show in the late 1990's despite having stopped watching it a decade earlier. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomorrow%27s_World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomorrow%27s_World

LatteLazy 5y ago

In fairness, there really hasn't been any delivery on those promises. It's 2021, people still work long hours in boring jobs and live in houses. TVs have gotten bigger and flstter and everyone has one in their pocket now. But if anything people have less leisure, disposable income, relationships or fun than they did back in the 80s...

hawski 5y ago

I remember "Beyond 2000" it was in Polish TV in so called "Educational Television". I loved the whole timeslot, but later on it was getting shorter and shorter and finally disappeared or blended in. There were a couple of Polish programs like Kitchen [1], where a father sat in a kitchen with his kids and presented various experiments discussing some physical phenomena. Or Visitors from Mathplanet (Przybysze z Matplanety) [2] a children program about mathematics. It was a time when I actually wanted to have access to cable TV for Discovery Channel, my friends discussed programs from there. Now I couldn't care less. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1indpuiztw4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1indpuiztw4 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSWnQLSvj8k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSWnQLSvj8k

koheripbal 5y ago

What's more appealing and addictive than hope is victory. The addiction of the never ending "struggle" against the other side is rooting in the three step psychological process of Outrage --> Hate --> Victory. Step 1. Outrage: Set the table for an outrage - some grave injustice that is occurring that can/will ultimately impact the reader. Hyperbole, cherry picking data, misinterpreting data, or even falsifying information are functional if you can do this in an echo chamber. This step creates the emotional investment in the event. Step 2. Hate: Choose a target to blame for the outrage in step 1. Again, if it exists in an echo chamber, the writer can functionally use ancillary data, tenuous/indirect relationships, or flawed logic to tie the target to to the event above. What's important here is channeling the emotion generated in step 1. Emotion is important because it make the reader immune to entertaining opposing viewpoints. Step 3. Gratification: Mobilizing pressure against the target is a bonus, but what's really needed is to be able to paint the outcome as a victory, even if it isn't. You can highlight how the "good team" actually won in some segment or district or demographic, and above all give the reader the sense of victory (or inevitable victory). It's always advisable to paint the target as in decay, aging, or fundamentally self-destructive, such that even their victory is short lived and self-consuming. Then repeat. ...and if you do this independently with both or multiple "sides", you've basically mechanized a political system that has no material path for improvement. No nuanced debate takes place because you've convinced both sides that it's "all or nothing", and that victory is reliable. They are always winning - yet constantly outraged. Any of this sound familiar?