Angling for American Futurism
February 26 2008 / by bibelnieks
Category: Social Issues Year: General Rating: 12
Futurism. I first heard the word some years ago in an aluminum
boat in the middle of Saranac Lake
in upstate New York. It was about eight in the morning and the
three of us had various degrees of hangover and body odor to
contend with. With the thrown lines of shining filament laid down,
my eyes 
turned to the mist on the water and my ears to the early
morning twitters in the wood. With the second canned
light-beer of the morning, we three turned to conversation, and
it was then that I had my first encounter of futurism:
Apparently the NBA was going to be made up of men and women sitting in a dark room; wires would be attached to their brains, remotely instructing the movements of agile robots performing amazing feats of agility and prowess that could only, literally, be imagined. Teleportation (through material manipulation at the super string level) was inevitable – so was a universal intellect that housed something approaching the omnipotence of God.
The future of fishing, however, was the most disconcerting of all possible scenarios that day, with fish of my own choosing simply jumping into the boat in reaction to my brainwaves. The doctrinal Moore’s Law was cited along with other literature that was, as far as I was concerned, written in Greek. By the fourth beer I was a confirmed Luddite, the futurist was exhausted, and our ever-amiable third retained the composure of a high school science teacher as conversation turned to parties of the past.
The future has come some way in the intervening years.
