Blast off
Launch of a project dedicated to realistic futurism and topian thinking.
Most people have the vague sense that we’ll all be flying around on starships in a hundred years, colonizing the planets and the stars. Or… Or… even if they’re not sure what we’ll be doing, they’re certain that technology will have advanced so much that life will be very different for human beings.
I think that’s crazy.
And when I say that I believe life in a hundred…or a thousand…or even ten thousand...years will be more or less the same as it is now, I get consternation and skepticism in reply. They think I’m crazy: “That doesn’t seem right.” “Technology will advance so much.” “Look at all the change that’s happened in our lives. That’s going to continue.”
I don’t believe so. And yet, I seem to be one of a very few.
The creative world — books, movies, series, blogs — brims with futuristic ideas and stories. But science fiction is exactly that: fiction. And in most cases, it’s outright fantastical. Its stories involve elements that we know are not ever going to be possible in this universe. And even its subgenre “mundane science fiction”, which hews closer to the realm of scientific possibility, still — in every example I’ve ever encountered — violates the laws of physics in subservience to a good story.
There’s nothing wrong with that.
It’s just that we confuse science fiction and fantasy with what the future will actually be like. We don’t seem to want to think about the future realistically. Scour the internet and you’ll find virtually no stories, no discussions, no media content of any sort about normal life for normal people in a few hundred years.
But that’s what I want to think about, and talk about. I want to create discourse about what the future may actually be like. If there’s a technical term out there for this subject, I’m not aware of it, so I'm going with "realistic futurism".
I want to create a discourse about realistic futurism. I think it’s important. That’s why I’m launching Ghost of Carnot, a platform for sharing thoughts and exchanging ideas on realistic futurism.
I look forward to the discussion.
🤘
This is a really cool perspective. I'm intrigued by the idea of “realistic futurism”. It's true that most of what we imagine about the future is either super advanced or super dark, kind of like Black Mirror. We picture brain chips, digital afterlives, or crazy AI stuff, but we rarely stop to ask: what if things actually stay kind of familiar?
I’m not sure I agree that life won’t change much, but I do think you're right that not everything will be transformed. A lot of the daily life stuff might still be around, just with new tools or tech mixed in.
Excited to see where Ghost of Carnot goes!