The Form of the Future

When I’m operating under restrictions, I definitely feel constrained by them, but without those restraints, it doesn’t seem as if I my actions are actually accomplishing anything.

…the Net truly is vast and infinite. Who knows, maybe a new society we’ve never even dreamed of is already being born

I greatly enjoy Japanese anime. There is a lot about it, like many of their movies, that shows that the Japanese culture is trying to work through the entirety of its history through art (which kind of reminds me of Timothy Zahn’s Grand Admiral Thrawn). I just watched Ghost in the Shell: Solid State Society on NetFlix.

In this movie, a group of solitary elderly people are recruited to run a network to save this future world of Japan. The funny thing is that I watched it as an idea had been coalescing in my head about the future of Earth governments and societies and cultures, and the elderly were the key. I’m thinking about writing a few short stories about it, but who knows if they will ever see paper or web.

The first quote brought a question to mind: if we break down all the barriers (whether they be social, political, religious, scientific, genetic, etc.), what will we (the human race) do? What will be our purpose?

The second quote is something that people try to define as Web 2.0 or Web 3.0 (or whatever name you want to give it. I could care less what its name is.)―the future. I think the church―humanity as a whole―is still trying to absorb what has been wrought in the realm of mass communication (even communications as unimportant and ineffectual as my blog).

Just like everyone else, I have a fear of the unknown. What will the future hold?

1 comment

  1. I don’t know what the future holds anymore than you do but I can say that the future so far has done a very poor job of providing the flying cars we were promised.

    With regard to the web, I suspect we just think that future of communications (Web Next, Web 3.141, Web Whatever) holds no limits but that we’ll slam into new ones… until those are “solved.” The current limit is bandwidth; truly immersing media will require much more of it.

    I’m both frightened and excited.

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