culture

The Future Was Never What It Was

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

“The Future Isn’t What It Used To Be” has been a saying for a while. In a time of resource-sucking hallucinating AIs, climate change, and ad-saturated social media, the saying seems more relevant. We’re not getting the future we expected, want, or needed.

As I muse over this, I think the problem is that we had expectations as opposed to asking what we really needed. We wanted a future that was past and present.

Let’s take the Cybertruck, which is one man’s vision of a futuristic vehicle. The Cybertruck – for whatever valid critiques may be made of it – a deliberate creation, from its tech to the low-poly appearance. It’s something out of past science fiction, shoehorned poorly into current technology The thing is it turns out what we want isn’t, well, that vision or its janky implementation.

Or Microsoft’s Recall feature, which records what you’re doing for some kind of recovery purpose, all while basically being a security nightmare. A cybersecurity writer noted that maybe this is just what you get when an aging group of leaders keeps forgetting things. Is it evil opportunism, or just people thinking of a future that solves only something they might think of?

I could of course go on, from wasteful AI today to cuecat in the past and so on. A whole lot of people are inventing, selling, and sometimes just lying about how they’re making the future we want or expect. Which really means what too many people wan tis a future based on old videogames and movies and current ill-thought-out-needs.

We’re not humanity wants or needs because it really seems we’re not trained to think about that.

We look at what we want, and assume it’s for everyone. We look at our childhood media fixation and figure it’s how it should be. Even when people are lying their butts off trying to make “number go up” they’re justifying it with such explanations. I’m pretty sure enough supposed “leaders” of the tech world have been justifying things so long they actually believe it.

I’d feel kind of better knowing I’ve been lied to more, but am really starting to feel a little too much kool-aid has been drunk. A lot of that kool-aid came from 80’s direct-to-video.

And right now people’s egos and money are on the line in these various bad tech decisions, so they’re not going to reverse without some pretty hard bumps. Delusion, short-sightedness, and personal income and reputation are pretty compelling. Besides The Market doesn’t reward you for insight and the news doesn’t fawn over you for saying what a dumbass you were.

I’m starting to think being able to make the future (and make it better) is sort of its own skillset. Clearly a business degree doesn’t help you. But neither does a writing degree as you might just create a new mental straightjacket. Designing a future that works doesn’t necessarily come from pushing around numbers and making pretty words.

But it’s a skill we desperately need right now, and maybe recognizing it is a start.

Steven Savage

The Alarms Made Us Deaf

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

I give up on cautionary Science Fiction.

I was having a discussion with my good friend and author Serdar about cautionary SF. The more we discussed it the more I realized we haven’t listened to it, and have become numb to it.

We’re heading towards not-AI-but-close in control of techbros while everyone has our data. The Forbin Project and assorted Cyberpunk novels warned us, and no one paid attention.

Ecological disaster? Been done. What, am I going to read another book or watch another movie, maybe get depressed at a rewatch of Silent Running? I can just look outside, I mean I’m in California?

Political meltdown? Been done, albeit crappily many times, over and over again. No one listened, and a few people think social collapse means we all wear more leather and ride motorcycles.

People sounded the alarm in fiction over and over again and it’s gotten old. The old messages are still relevant in all the classics anyway. We’ve become numb because everyone said what had to be said, and they keep saying it, and worse not in new ways.

Besides, for a cautionary tale I can just read the news. We’re in a constant life lesson we’re pretty bad at learning.

So you want to save the world, change the world, protect the world. Good, someone has to because too many politicians are ignoring the world burning down and would-be geniuses are creating cell phones for hamsters. You’re probably not doing it with cautionary SF as, well, it didn’t work and the messages are oversaturated. That’s if people even listened as opposed to deciding your Hellish Futurescape is cool.

Maybe try a vision instead.

Give me fiction of a better world and the struggle to get there.

Give me a dream of better, of kinder, of smarter, of what we deserve. Give me something to fire my feelings and my imagination and my soul. Kindle a flame with your words and your images and your dream – and let me share that dream.

Give me a blueprint, something, to get there. A signpost might be all I need, or a compass, or a basic map. Set me off, I’ll figure the specifics on the way there.

Yes, maybe give me caution. But do it in a way that keeps me on the path and heading for that future.

We heard all the alarms. They’re still going off. We can’t hear them very well.

But show me where to walk to a place worth going to, and maybe I’ll hear them again, warnings on my journey to something worth traveling to.

Steven Savage

Light The Ugliness On Fire To Warm Ourselves

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

The latest news about our oncoming future of AI generated soulless media has got me and my creative friends talking. We’re swearing, too, but the conversation is quite intelligent between the occasional profanities

My good friend Serdar notes in an excellent post that you have to drive out ugliness with beauty. If you keep showing off the ugliness, the awfulness of things, it creates pathologies, a tunnel of crap, even if its in mockery. Trauma tourism of our culture is still traumatic after all, and we hunger for actual good stuff – so make something good damn it to squeeze out the ugly.

I agree with him for the most part, but sometimes you can use the ugly.

Now in my own work, even that which responds to trends (like some worldbuilding books), the goal is to get people to write good things. I want something that adds to the wonderful of the world.

But you’ve also noticed some of my sarcasm or parody here, or in my fiction. It occurs in some of the more experimental art and writing I do (currently) under pen names. There is a part of my work that uses the terrible and sad things of the world as fuel, and I think that is valid – when done right.

There is value in mockery, and parody, and response. From Mark Twain to Dave Barry, Terry Pratchet to Chuang-Tzu, people have made works both timeless and calling out people and organizations and ideas that need to be skewered. Sometimes you create beauty by giving the ugliness a good drubbing- hell, no small amount of Punk music fits this category.

The problem is this is really hard to do. If you’re going to make beauty from ugliness, then you best make sure you’re up to the task and you want to do it. Not everyone is, and that’s fine – for instance Serdar and I have different backgrounds and inclinations. Or in short, I’m the sarcastic and parodic one, meaning our friendship is sort of a Road movie that happens very slow.

As the sarcastic one, here’s what I think makes a response-to-ugliness work as actual, positive, creative work.

First, it has to timeless in its own ways. There’s little value in speaking to the event of the moment without context or depth. The more the thing you’ve decided to “take on” is connected to the big picture, the better. I recall an essay in the Chuang-Tzu on warriors (albeit one clearly written by one of his followers) that had me outright laughing at the end, even though the tale was perhaps two thousand years old.

Secondly, a work of mockery or parody has to be relevant, and this is the paradox that affects many a writer. You have to know the subject matter enough to make what you create more than just saying “see how dumb that is!” I mean I can watch many videos mocking an unwisely-constructed electric truck that seems designed to kill people. But in-depth understanding is valuable because then I understand.

Third, such work has to be human. Ridiculing something or someone is easy, any bully can do it. I want to understand people, their reactions, their experiences. Ever read a good essay or book on the economic impacts of some horrible government choice on real people and felt it? That’s what you want. That’s what art does – it gets the mind and heart going.

Finally, it has to be actually good. You can’t rely on someone else being terrible to carry your work. I learned this lesson from podcasts and youtube videos that did critiques. The truly good ones have good hosts, providing smart analysis, and were people I’d listen to or watch if they spoke about good things.

If you create beauty out of ugliness, you need depth to really do something that will squeeze out the ugliness. For all he took on, the late Sir Terry Pratchett’s books are things of beauty, even when addressing issues from racism to economics. Any ugliness is but fuel for beauty – in the right hands.

If you can’t do that or don’t want to, then fine! We all do our parts to make the world a more beautiful place – and that’s needed today more than ever.

Steven Savage