• ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com
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    10 days ago

    It really sometimes depresses me to think how far along those utopian futures we could be if we as a species didn’t have to spend so much of our lives and potential counteracting bad faith sociopathic saboteurs to progress.

    Maybe history is just 75% of the people mostly at a stalemate with 25% whose empathy-deficient mental illnesses give them an edge in obtaining power and resources.

  • brianary@startrek.website
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    10 days ago

    Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow? is a really good graphic novel about a kid’s relationship with his dad through the lens of retrofuturism, as it gradually tarnishes, starting with the 1939 World’s Fair.

    I’ll probably go to Expo 2025 in Osaka this year, since I’ll happen to be there, but it’ll be hard to maintain any real optimism.

  • Xerxos@lemmy.ml
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    9 days ago

    The future does suck. I think that’s mainly because all progress we made in productivity goes straight to the ultra rich.

    Just think about what these billions of dollars could have done to our lives… We could have eradicated hunger and poverty, have a new golden age for humanity and science. Instead we have popstars in space and oligarchs controlling the politics.

    Without a new ‘French Revolution’ that gets rid of the parasites, oligarchs, 1%, billionaires we will never get to a good future.

    • slaneesh_is_right@lemmy.org
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      9 days ago

      Man when i was a kid and i stared to see these assembly robot arms, i was like: woah, when i’m like 30, people probably don’t work anymore, because that’s what the robots do.

      When i was 30 rich people crashed the economy and shrugged, and now ultra rich still try to get even richer, and kill the planet, because they don’t live that long anyway

    • Bamboodpanda@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      I just finished Ezra Klein’s new book and I thought it was great. It illuminates the history that has brought us here and gives some hopeful ideas on how we can fix it. That is, if there is anything left to fix by next year.

    • in4apenny@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      9 days ago

      Only because people misuse it. As people of Earth, born and beholden to the dirt itself, technology and science should be used to better connect ourselves with nature and help facilitate relations between all things, for the benefit of all things. Instead, we use technology and science to distance ourselves from nature, coming from the false assumption that we are somehow seperate from or above nature. It is beyond human control, always has been, and it won’t be long until the relations and environment will cut those arrogant humans down to size in what they call “a catastrophe of global proportions.” We are not special, unless discussing how especially weak humans are - weakness to provide food for ourselves and relying on reason and intellect is what makes special. Humans only survived as long as we have due to our ability to understand the relations of our world, and our ecological niche is to help facilitate those relations not just between people, but the mountains and the water and the birds. Instead we turn that mountain into gravel and call it “development”, pollute our water by using it as coolant for a factory, silence the bird songs more and more each year, and reduce human beings into “workers.” This is true whether you’re right or left, capitalist or socialist, there is no “revolution” within that mindset, only continuation. Industrialism at all costs because “science will find a way” will doom us.

      There is another way, a way that understands we have no right to take from mother nature. That wealth is meaningless unless you give it away. I dream of a solarpunk world where buildings are grown, where food grows literally everywhere, with massive urban metropolises that resemble rainforests, where cities are built to clean water instead of pollute it, where technology can genetically supercharge trees so that they grow solarcell leaves to power our homes, where education is exploration, where all animals have right to roam, where we understand our living biosphere so well we’re able to replicate that process on other planets. Why are we even considering space travel if we don’t even know how to live on our own planet? Why do we create these gadgets and gizmos only for competitive profits and not the betterment of mankind? Why do we require people to have money for food and teaching them how to obey their superiors at a workplace, instead of teaching people how to grow their own food and learning about the relations of natural things? Why aren’t we investing as much into lab-grown meat as we are into killing animals? It all goes back to our attitude towards nature, and this horrible religious mindset that thinks we are god.

  • wanderwisley@lemm.ee
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    9 days ago

    We came so close to having the beginning of back to the future part 2. But instead, we have the second half of back to the future part 2 where Biff steals the sports almanac and Marty is unsuccessful to take it back.

    • noli@lemmy.zip
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      8 days ago

      2019, the good old times when we thought that line would go up instead of down

  • Wren@lemmy.worldM
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    9 days ago

    I always daydreamed life would someday look like the cover of Somewhere in time by Iron Maiden: