[WHOOSHING SOUND]
Here's an idea.
We live in the future.
Just not the hoverboard one.
[MAN LAUGHING OFFSCREEN]
[THEME MUSIC]
Where are the flying cars?
Where is my jet pack?
And why on earth do I still need to eat and sleep?
How have we not solved these problems yet?
Demands and questions made of science
by people wondering when the future will arrive.
A common lament, this is not the future I was promised.
It's tough to say anything was promised.
Most signifiers for the future, even a dystopic one,
come from a generally Western complex
of media that can sometimes make it
seem like we are standing on the great precipice of destiny.
But really, progress is slow and mundane and woefully irregular.
I mean, we all know the William Gibson quote.
We are living in some future.
I mean, I guess insofar as we're not
stuck in some perpetual present, but that is a much lengthier
conversation.
The question is whether we are living in the future,
and I think the answer to this is yes,
even given the regrettable absence of hoverboards.
And no, this does not count.
I'm talking about this.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
SINGER: (SINGING) Blast away.
For one thing, if having a pocket computer that
can play games, contact your friends and family,
access practically infinite knowledge,
and sound the club horn whenever you want
isn't future enough for you, I don't even know how to deal.
[AIR HORN BLARES]
But I think there's more to living in the future than just
available technology.
In my mind, one lives in the future when
there is significantly distributed
and operable opportunity and a wide understanding that
allows one to plan for and effectively construct
an even further future.
Which is a thing we're bad at.
It's why it took us so long to stop wandering around just
hoping to find food.
It's why credit cards exist and are so successful slash awful.
Planning ahead is hard, but lots of us think lots about it
and try valiantly to do it, socially, environmentally,
economically, culturally, scientifically,
and we always have.
Which is potentially why this framework is super boring.
If living in the future means being
able to effectively construct one,
that means we've maybe been living
in the future for a while, which I think we have.
As we've slowly figured out how and why to construct and work
towards eventualities as a species, a set of cultures,
and a global community, we've gotten better at it.
We've maybe always lived in the future.
The question is, when do we become good at it?
Not quite sure we're there yet.
The future's arrival then isn't signified
by some piece of technology or scientific capability,
but by a set of attitudes and practices
of which that scientific capability might be one result.
Alive!
[CHEERING]
When you put it that way, it might sound kind of obvious.
Another and maybe less obvious question
is, what happens to that perpetual present
that we may or may not be stuck in when
we get better and better at constructing our own futures?
I don't mean this in that vaguely spiritual sense of,
(HIPPIE VOICE) you gotta just, like, live in the present, man.
(NORMAL VOICE) But more like, what happens, if anything,
to now when it is increasingly fodder for later?
There are, of course, degrees and domains
to this question in science and economics.
Can one ever be too concerned about the future of things?
Is one ever not building on past knowledge
and hoping their knowledge will eventually be built upon?
The practice of all of these things and history
and art and politics is all about work done now
so it may be extended or responded to later.
But where constant recording, documentation, reporting,
analysis, and responding were at one point
clinical practices reserved not exclusively
though mostly for institutional spaces, distributed technology
and an understanding of what it can be used to do
has made those things part of the everyday process
of living for so many people.
Their personal and social lives, relationships, and past times.
And OK.
Stipulated, for a while now, you could
have been the type of person to obsessively document
and catalog their life.
But today, that's less of a type of person
and more of just a thing people do.
And I think it goes without saying,
but in case you're new here, I will say it anyways.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing.
Of course, there are bad uses of any technology.
But at this point, I hope we are bored
to death of non-nuanced griping about personal experiences
of the world that involve devices.
[AIR HORN BLARES]
But for all of the red-faced frustration that it causes,
the griping does imply something interesting.
That for those who gripe, something
is happening to "now."
Not the global now of our present cultural historical
moment-- though something is definitely
happening to that-- but the personal individual nows
of the people who are self tracking, tweeting,
and taking Instagrams instead of living in the moment,
or whatever.
That gripe, it seems, is that the precious now is
deconstructed or disrespected.
That our experience of it is somehow
ruined in the presence of sharing, documentation,
or editorialization empowered by the network.
We talked a little bit about this
in our mobile phones versus reality episode.
When you're at a concert taking a photo,
are you really experiencing it?
And that is something that only the person taking the photo
can answer.
Either way, correct or not, this moment
does change based upon the chosen method of experience.
It must, otherwise this conversation wouldn't happen.
Maybe it's that the practice of documenting and sharing
creates a separate concurrent now.
Not a better or worse one, just another one.
Maybe it's that there is the physical now happening
at the concert or the dinner party,
and then there is the now in images,
represented by photos and text.
And some people, believing those two nows
to be mutually exclusive, see the first
as being cheapened for what is ostensibly the ability
to return to it later at some future point,
in turning now into later.
And so maybe that's what all of this is,
the collecting and collating of our present
experiences so that we may return to them in the future,
and through that, the construction
of some potentially upsetting dichotomy of the present.
But I don't know.
I mean, I rarely return to my Instagrams, tweets, Vines,
videos.
Is it instead that I'm doing it for the attention?
Maybe.
But, I mean, my impulse to post this photo from the Country
Music Hall of Fame wasn't, whoa, look where I am.
It was more like, here's this thing for you, if you want it.
Maybe what happens to now in the face of distributed
documentation and editorialization
is that instead of creating a dichotomy,
or several distinct nows, the resolution of the one
big now is increased.
We get to see all, or I guess much more
of what now is, a multiverse of all
of the actually possible nows.
And that in the eyes of the gripers, that now is less so.
Because it is so often coupled with "here,"
a private kind of a local experience
spoiled by hyper connection.
If true, this could be one explanation for FOMO,
or the Fear Of Missing Out.
With now at such a high resolution,
the pressure to navigate to the correct or most fulfilling
sector is could potentially really high.
From this perspective, now isn't a time and a place,
but a choice and an imperative.
Which maybe it always was, but today, right now,
now also has an audience.
[MUSIC - VAN HALEN, "RIGHT NOW"]
What do you guys think?
How do you determine whether or not we live in the future?
And has the idea of now changed in response
to available technology?
Let us know in the comments, and of course--
[AIR HORN BLARES]
VOICE FROM PHONE: Please subscribe.
(SINGING) She loves you, good comments, more than me.
Let's see what you guys had to say about country music.
First things first.
I talked with Peter over at GoVERBaNOUN
about Idea Channel and creativity
and educational content on the internet.
And he just published the interview
in three 20 minute long segments.
So we'll put links to that in the doobly-doo
if you want to check it out, which you should.
I had a lot of fun.
And second, I am going to be getting
on a plane in about 36 hours to go to Phoenix.
So I hope to see some of you at Comicon this weekend.
We'll put links to information about the meet-up
that I'm going to be doing with Joe Hanson
from It's OK to be Smart and Jamin from Game/Show,
and also the panel that we're going to be
doing on Saturday evening.
So, yeah.
Links to that stuff down there,
OK.
On the comments.
So Ace0fSwords in t in the subreddit
talks about how catharsis is maybe
an important factor of enjoying sad country music,
but that aspiration is also a big part
of the general enjoyment of music.
And this makes me think about stuff
that TheSomeday42 and Jake Dockter
wrote about how the kind of message that country music is
putting together might be one that you
don't want to aspire to, that you actually
want to actively avoid.
Or, an aspiration for something that doesn't really exist,
because in modern America, when 1% to 3% of people
could be considered farmers or people who
work the land-- this message, this life of being
a salt of the earth kind of person
that popular country music sells,
it's kind of a simulacra.
Like, it doesn't really exist, and so that
leads to some very strange creations of meaning.
HogsInDavis on the subreddit talked a little bit
about the rap and country exclusion
that is popular when you ask people what kinds of music
they like.
That it's popular, or maybe it was at one point
more popular than it is now, to say that,
oh, I like all kinds of music except rap and country.
And this is something that I actually
wrote a little bit about on Tumblr,
so I'll put a link to that in the doobly-doo.
But the other thing that came up that like John Ohno and a bunch
of other people brought up is the idea of classicism,
that there is a kind of classicist attitude
towards country music in that it is seen as a low music, which
I think is really interesting and I think
has some relationship to this topic
of how people view themselves as enjoyers
of certain kinds of music and the reason
why people might say they don't like rap or country.
Keith Buckson wrote a comment about how
the meaning of something is very, very much connected
to its roots and that you can't have this full meaning
or understanding of it unless it has a connection to where
it came from, whereas Cesca Peay-- whose name I'm probably
destroying, so I'm sorry-- sort of talks about wanting to enjoy
certain kinds of music, country music
among them, by divorcing it from its roots.
Because the roots are what are unattractive about it.
So there were a lot of really great conversations
in the comments both on YouTube and on the subreddit
about navigating this tension here
between wanting to like something,
but knowing where it came from and maybe being excited or not
about that.
John, we were making sure that (VOICE CREAKING)
you were paying attention?
That is a lie.
This is embarrassing.
We all feel very bad and kind of dumb.
SeanTheOriginal, challenge accepted.
I hope you brought your unicorn.
Song number one, Kacey Musgraves' "Biscuits."
Song number two, Sturgill Simpson's "Voices."
Song number three, Alison KL Krauss' "Outside Looking In."
Song number four, Charlie Daniel's "Devil
Goes Down to Georgia"? "When the Devil Goes"--
I always forget what the actual title of it is.
And song number five, Johnny Cash's "Ain't No Grave,"
which contains religious imagery,
so you probably should have said no religious things.
So we'll go with "Folsom Prison Blues," which
has a gun in it, which is another thing that you probably
should have put on the list.
So we'll say "Get Rhythm When You Get the Blues."
And your unicorn.
Zxjacko and srpilha both write really,
really great comments about the idea of whether
or not the present or the future changes the meaning of the past
and sort of pull in some ideas about genre theory
and how we make meanings.
So we'll put links to these and all of the other comments
in the doobly-doo.
This week's episode was brought to you
by the hard work of these heartbreakers by the number.
We have a Facebook, an IRC, and a subreddit.
Links in the doobly-doo.
And the tweet of the week comes from DoctorFumetts
who points us towards Taylor and Francis' free collection
of papers about comic books and graphic novels that are up
until the end of August, I think it is.
And I took a look at some of this morning,
and they look super rad, so I'm so excited that these
are available.
And they are free, so check them out.
It looks great.
And, hey.
In case you were wondering, this episode of Idea Channel
was brought to you by Squarespace.
Squarespace is an easy way to create a web site, blog,
or online store for you and your ideas.
Squarespace features a user-friendly interface,
custom templates, and 24/7 customer support.
To try Squarespace, go to squarespace.com/ideachannel
for a special offer.
Squarespace.
Build it beautiful.
[THEME MUSIC]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
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