“It’s easy to imagine the end of the world, but we cannot imagine the end of capitalism.”

Why is it so difficult to see outside the box we’ve currently put ourselves in?

The author of this article imagines four possible futures based on combinations of scarcity or abundance of resources and a hierarchical or egalitarian social structure. Like all fictional utopias and dystopias, these postulations are not meant to accurately predict the future, but to point toward extreme potential end points of our current path. He draws heavily on science fiction to guide him, including the works of Cory Doctorow, Charlie Stross, Orson Scott Card and Star Trek.

For more fictional future takes, see my Dystopian Reading List.

 Four Futures

Related articles

• Utopia by Charles Stross (readmorebooks.wordpress.com)

 Out of Neal Stephenson’s Imagination Came a New Online World
The author Neal Stephenson’s reputation for prescience about the online world is well earned, even if he regards it lightly.

Here is Neal Stephenson’s piece for the World Policy Institute, in which he describes his Hieroglyph theory: Innovation Starvation | World Policy Institute

Image via Wikipedia

This is an older essay on my books blog, but I still quite like it, and the classics never go out of style. Please read and let me know what you think of: Frankenstein: The First Science Fiction Novel? on Books Worth Reading.

In brief: The classic theme, and warning, explored in Frankenstein is that man should not play god. The dawn of the Industrial Age brought with it fear of what man and machines could accomplish, and the unforeseen consequences they could have. There is also a theme of the monster as isolated, without an identity, adrift in a world where he can make no connections and life has no meaning for him. Again, this poses a warning of the dehumanization that technology can bring. These themes resonate throughout the science fiction genre even today.

The reviews:

• A Gift Upon the Shore by M.K. Wren
• The Eye of the Heron by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Where Late the Sweet Birds Sing by Kate Wilhelm

I appreciate what SF Mistressworks is doing to highlight science fiction written by women, a strong interest of mine. Please check out the rest of the reviews while you’re there.

This hyperbole makes me weary. It is not really appropriate to proclaim the death of anything until you have actually viewed the corpse. But I often find that articles making such proclamations have very little in the way of real evidence to back up their predictions. Instead, they tend to reach for the worst conclusions based on scant evidence and overblown fears. I’m ashamed of these fine publications for succumbing to wild speculation just to bring in readers.

From now on, I will refuse to read an article that proclaims the death or the end of anything, unless it’s an obituary for an actual living being. I want to read about life, not death.