Alternative Futures IV – Chabon and Long Now
I just read a very thought-provoking article by author Michael Chabon (pdf form here) on the idea of the future. Chabon was (2 years ago, in this case) writing about the Clock of the Long Now – a project of the Long Now Foundation: a group hoping to promote better long-term thinking in many areas. What Chabon writes is very interesting to me, for all sorts of reasons. I suppose it helps that I already enjoy his books, but his insights on this issue are very good, as well as being connected to some of our earlier posting about “alternative futures”. One thing that I automatically agreed with is that our imaginations lead us into our pursuits and inventions. Chabon makes the intriguing point, though, that “the future” – as it has come to be pursued – is really rather archaic (if you can call the 1950s that).
There is an oddness in realizing that, having done everything the “future” of the past wanted to accomplish (minus infinite food supplies and personal rocket packs), we are yet confronted by the same difficulties – and yet more deeply, perhaps we have lived out our past’s version of the future and now don’t know what to do next. There is no more future of the past to live out. So as we see the power of the imaginations of those from envisioned the future before, it should inspire us to re-envision for ourselves that future.
But part of the problem now is that “the future” previously envisioned hasn’t amounted to the utopia imagined – it’s just gotten filled with all of the gadgets and systematization we “always wanted”. The Clock that the Long Now Foundation is making reminds Chabon (and many others who think about this project) to take time to imagine life 100, 1,000, or 10,000 years from now. The incredible thing is, this can sometimes produce only a blank slate – forcing us to realize just how little vision we actually have, and how much “the future” of 60-year-old sci-fi is really a function of the past and present, rather than something we’re actively and creatively thinking about.
Tags: alternative futures, chabon, futurist, Long Now
