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What happened to our heroic future?

techs

techs

Lifer
Gene Roddenberry must be spinning in his grave.

Every movie is about dysfunctional futures where there are zombies or apocalypses or dystopias. Same with most books.

Whatever happened to solving hunger and disease and war and just flying around in our warp ships seeking out new life?

The future isn't what it used to be.
 
It is all about the time we live in. Recession, wars, political unrest, nuclear threats, terrorism are all inspiration for the apocolyptic futures we are seeing in the movies.

Do we really believe that our society of today is headed torward or capable of any type of peaceful hamonic blissful future.
 
techs said:
Gene Roddenberry must be spinning in his grave.

Every movie is about dysfunctional futures where there are zombies or apocalypses or dystopias. Same with most books.

Whatever happened to solving hunger and disease and war and just flying around in our warp ships seeking out new life?

The future isn't what it used to be.
Click to expand...

Realism won.
 
techs said:
Gene Roddenberry must be spinning in his grave.

Every movie is about dysfunctional futures where there are zombies or apocalypses or dystopias. Same with most books.

Whatever happened to solving hunger and disease and war and just flying around in our warp ships seeking out new life?

The future isn't what it used to be.
Click to expand...

I seem to recall that all the new lifeforms those people discovered after leaving their communist utopia on earth was basically suffering through hunger, disease, war and always trying to enslave/eat/turn-into-cube those heroic human explorers?
 
it's just the times; an age of pessimism and mediocrity. we just came out of a recession (and we aren't even sure about that). also what are our most hailed technological achievements right now? iphones and facebook? lol
 
techs said:
Gene Roddenberry must be spinning in his grave.

Every movie is about dysfunctional futures where there are zombies or apocalypses or dystopias. Same with most books.

Whatever happened to solving hunger and disease and war and just flying around in our warp ships seeking out new life?

The future isn't what it used to be.
Click to expand...

The best selling story of all time has a pretty tragic ending, and it's charted for a couple thousand years. Must be trendy.
 
dighn said:
also what are our most hailed technological achievements right now? iphones and facebook? lol
Click to expand...

Robots and computers were supposed to make our lives easier. Is your life easier? All they've done is make us more efficient, so more work can be fit into a set amount of time, and on top of that, people are working more. Small computers make it easy to take the office home with you, and it's become accepted in many circles.
 
lol, visionary. Gene "envisioned" a world without money.


Gets bent out of shape for not making a financial killing off Star Trek.
 
dighn said:
it's just the times; an age of pessimism and mediocrity. we just came out of a recession (and we aren't even sure about that). also what are our most hailed technological achievements right now? iphones and facebook? lol
Click to expand...

Add to that all the people who don't understand the difference between popular technology and Science, economics and wealth, or have their finger on the cultural pulse, and you should have a fairly good idea of why sad songs say so much to people these days.
 
lxskllr said:
Robots and computers were supposed to make our lives easier. Is your life easier? All they've done is make us more efficient, so more work can be fit into a set amount of time, and on top of that, people are working more. Small computers make it easy to take the office home with you, and it's become accepted in many circles.
Click to expand...

I dissent.
 
Yeah, it's relative to current condition.

During the baby boom, we just beat the nazis, economy was booming, most everyone was in better shape than their parents were at the same age. One guy working a factory job could support a family in the burbs. All sorts of modern materials were just coming on line from oil, transistor-isation was rapidly improving electronics, Nuclear power was going to bring about 'free electricity', etc.

So we had big hopes for the future, space, etc. People didn't yet realise how bad our pollution was, etc, things generally seemed positive. (well, apart from MAD and so on).

"a spirit of bold curiosity for the adventure ahead!", as dr. strangelove phrased it. (referring to survivors coming out of mines after nuclear war, lmao).

Now, things have been degenerating for 30 years at least, with no sign of improvement. End result is presumably some dystopia, as is reflected in our films.
 
SamQuint said:
It is all about the time we live in. Recession, wars, political unrest, nuclear threats, terrorism are all inspiration for the apocolyptic futures we are seeing in the movies.

Do we really believe that our society of today is headed torward or capable of any type of peaceful hamonic blissful future.
Click to expand...

My society is, it is all those other societies that are ruining it 😵.
 
SamQuint said:
It is all about the time we live in. Recession, wars, political unrest, nuclear threats, terrorism are all inspiration for the apocolyptic futures we are seeing in the movies.

Do we really believe that our society of today is headed torward or capable of any type of peaceful hamonic blissful future.
Click to expand...


I think it's the opposite. Things are freaking awesome now, compared to almost any other time in human history. Few people in this country experience true hardship. There haven't been any scary wars with our nation at risk. We are skipping along and don't need anyone to blow rainbows up our asses to cheer us up. Instead, we're bored and could use a good scare.
 
techs said:
Gene Roddenberry must be spinning in his grave.

Every movie is about dysfunctional futures where there are zombies or apocalypses or dystopias. Same with most books.

Whatever happened to solving hunger and disease and war and just flying around in our warp ships seeking out new life?

The future isn't what it used to be.
Click to expand...


Ummmm, you do understand the meaning of "fiction" in science fiction, right? A zombie apocalypse seems far more likely than the Roddenberry utopia.
 
SphinxnihpS said:
Add to that all the people who don't understand the difference between popular technology and Science, economics and wealth, or have their finger on the cultural pulse, and you should have a fairly good idea of why sad songs say so much to people these days.
Click to expand...

the masses have always equated science and technology to the popular stuff. to be fair there just hasn't been that many groundbreaking, applicable advances that captures and rallies the people's imagination, not like the post-ww2 era with the birth of nuclear power, aerospace, computers, modern biology etc. now people have gotten used to them. the recession (?) with its high unemployment numbers certainly didn't help morale.
 
dighn said:
the masses have always equated science and technology to the popular stuff. to be fair there just hasn't been that many groundbreaking, applicable advances that captures and rallies the people's imagination, not like the post-ww2 era with the birth of nuclear power, aerospace, computers, modern biology etc. now people have gotten used to them. the recession (?) with its high unemployment numbers certainly didn't help morale.
Click to expand...

We can grow your lungs in a jar. Just because you or "the masses" aren't captivated, doesn't mean that advances haven't occurred. It is simply a perceptual problem.
 
I noticed this trend of apocalyptic movies and media too. Entertainment is an extension of our culture so there does seem to be something behind it.

Maybe it's because people are seeing our current way of life doesn't really have a sustainable future. Every ecological system is in decline, the most people in history are being exploited across the world, the financial system is inherently debt based and a house of cards. There's also a sense of growing civil unrest among those who feel sold out(currently see Istanbul).

None of those things point to a good future and our entertainment reflects that.
 
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It's not like the Star Trek vision of our future was the norm in the past eras of science fiction. Most science fiction does not assume we are in a utopian society in the future. If anything, dystopian futures are the norm and always have been.
 
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