A generationIn 1997, when Things will only get better, “Wired” magazine handed a question to the primitive optimism of this era: we should expect 20 years of peace, prosperity and progress, because the new era of consensus politics and technological progress has smoothed the rough edges of our militant creatures . Used to be.Hidden in this panacea is a small list: 10 things Can Going the wrong way makes the originally shining future bleak. Like looking at the fucking mirror.
“The tension between China and the United States may escalate into a new cold war,” they said. Can I tell you what we thought of collective consciousness in the 90s? Um. The cold war is no problem. We did the last one without problems.
“New technologies proved to be a bubble. They will not bring about expected productivity growth or huge economic growth.” This may be the least insightful prediction, because even if it turns out to be completely correct, it does not touch what else will happen. The side of things-wealth is ruthlessly concentrated in the hands of evil geniuses with new technologies, or the fact that we will immediately give up all the meaningful things in our lives and ping-pong between e-mail and doom scrolling. But just because we mainly did not anticipate surveillance capitalism does not mean that we have no illusions.We used to Very Worrying about the millennium bug, I know this is because my mother stored a lot of bottled water to prevent a computer malfunction in the water treatment plant. She still has.
They say that European integration may stagnate and the entire European project may break down. So, bah, at least that didn’t happen. An obstructive and stubborn country collapsed from it, and the rest seemed, if any, stronger.I can’t represent the entire 90s here, only myself; one of my worries Europe It was in 1997 that they might all regret joining the euro because their previous currencies were so beautiful and dramatic, especially the lira. I want to make it clear: I was not nine years old, but 24 years old.
Climate change, terrorism, and pollution can all have potentially destabilizing effects. Here is a glimmer of success: our main concern in the 1990s was that it would take a long time to reach agreement on whether climate change existed, so much so that we were all willing Still dying in controversy. It is true that we may end up arguing about other things, but at least we have reached a consensus on this point.As far as I remember, we are not that worried about terrorism because of the imminent story Is Unabomber 96 attacks. Since there is no propaganda machine funded by the right to spread the fear of insane white men, it does not seem to be a daily concern.
Energy prices may soar, and those who do not want to change at all may have strong social and cultural opposition: both aspects are good, although the energy aspect is now particularly prominent.You want to know what we talked about a lot of In the 90s? Will wind farms kill birds? I did not minimize the bird-related issues. But this does show that we did not really think ahead.
Finally: “An uncontrollable plague-modern flu or similar epidemics-spread like wildfire, killing more than 200 million people.” In fact, there is no lack of cultural anxiety surrounding epidemics. There are BBC miniseries and feature films about modern smallpox. Danny Boyle’s authoritative post-apocalyptic was released in 2002 28 days later. One of the many recent lessons is that it does not help ordinary citizens in the pandemic. What you want is to worry the government, maybe make some contingency plans.
In that carefree decade, we did talk about a problem: anxiety at the end of the century; worry that this completely abstract thing, the century, will end, it will definitely end, this may be a bad thing.
To be honest, we don’t deserve vision; we use it for these stupid things (except for people who work at Wired).
