YouTuber Esquadrao Atari has a rather beautiful yet depressing video collage/mashup titled Magico Ano 2000 that seems to illustrate the frustration of paleo-futurism and the present day.
From the video description:
"Back in the 60's, human beings had an optmistic view of what the year 2000 would be like. Space stations, clean fuel, intelligent computers. Now it's the year 2007, and reality is not very different from the Dark Ages..."
Scott beat me to it. As pessimistic as you want to be, anyone with a firm grounding in reality has to at least admit that life is better now than it was a hundred years ago- let alone a _thousand_ (the heart of the Middle Ages).
ReplyDeleteWe haven't lived up to the dreams of the optimists, and we probably never will. There's political strife with factions that would happily turn back the clock to the Middle Ages if they could- but these are not the new Dark Ages.
And may we never let ourselves slip back into barbarism.
The only thing I'm optimistic about these days is that rock bands will someday wear space suits when they play. That's something to be optimistic about.
ReplyDeleteClever how they reversed the order - modern, then primitive. While we certainly haven't returned to the Dark Ages (though some might beg to differ when considering US foreign policy - and those video effects!), it illustrates the primary failure of futurism: The assumption that the nature of humanity (greed, violence, envy, selfishness) would somehow peel away to reveal a kinder & gentler humanity. Fat chance.
ReplyDeleteThese comments remind me of a Roger Waters song... the line goes, "who needs information, when your living underground?"
ReplyDeletePeople were happier a hundred years ago than today so life back then was better.
ReplyDeleteit is a hyperbole no doubt, but not exactly far off if certain events prove to be irreversible, aka return to another ice age....
ReplyDeleteThank you all very much for your comments; my name is Dan from Esquadrão Atari and we are always happy about getting feedback - no matter if positive or negative :)
ReplyDeleteI totally agree that, technologically speaking, life today is far better than in the Dark Ages. However, the human thinking didn´t change so much. Of course back then people couldn´t even read, and today we have cheap books and Wikipedia. However, most people don´t care about this. Everyone has access to information today, but most people still prefer to remain ignorant.
In a nutshell: technology always advances, but everytime a human being is born, he has to learn everything from scratch.
A final quote from Albert Einstein: "I don´t know what weapons people will use on World War III, but in World War IV it will probably be sticks and stones".
Is nobody going to mention that his video is nothing but scenes ripped from 2001, one of the Mad Max sequels, and an action figure of Ookla from "Thundarr the Barbarian?"
ReplyDeleteHow about some original work next time?
nice post, it's really interesting for me today, thx
ReplyDelete