Our Dull tomorrow: The Latest Issue of Time Hails the Death of The Future Take a look at the September 8th issue of Time, a special report entitled What's Next- Our fearless forecasts in the worlds of Science, Medicine, Tech, Sports, Design, Movies and More.[Click here to see it online] The "Look into tomorrow" theme is certainly not a novel one, but what's so telling about America's favorite magazine's take on tomorrow is how close tomorrow is from now. Managing Editor James Kelly writes, " we decided to avoid fanciful long-term projections of what life might be like in, say, the year 2050...we decided instead to focus on the near future, to look at the trends that will make a difference later this year and in 2004." That's right. The future is next week. While groups like Daniel Hillis' Long Now Foundation urge to think of things on a cosmic scale of thousands of years, we have become a culture obsessed in quarterly, even weekly future. James Gleick chronicles this trend in his book, Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything, but the latest issue of Time seems to transcend mere overcaffinated myopia. In fact, in 104 pages, James Kelly seems to be telling Time readers that future, or at least the vision of the future as ultimate cultural carrot that drives society forward, is gone. The first half of the magazine is filled with full page spreads of the recent bombing in Najaf. Looking like an eerily familiar post-apocalyptic scene, men yell and struggle to pull bodies out of dust soaked cars. Rubble fills the streets and a man cries into his t-shirt. This could be last year, two years ago, the Middle Ages or Armageddon. Time folds in on itself in Time. Afghanistan is back (as if it ever went away), conspiracy theories about Saudi Arabia and American politicians smiling and riding motorcycles (John Kerry, to be precise) all seem to exist without any real historical context. This might be the now, but when sandwiched between a cover about the future, these events already look hazy and dim. With the war on terrorism a war that can never be won, it seems that the future, past and present have all collapsed into rubble, leaving us to sift through the eternal now. Once we get to the actual section on The Future, we don't find flying cars or even new gadgets. Instead, we meet Irma Zandl, a media consultant who's job is to spot the latest trends. Her guesses: iPod DJ parties, Latin Flava, and Burlesque. Burlesque, of course, as my savvy readers know, is so last year it hurts. She describes the people who set trends as 'alpha consumers' and then describes the process by which, creative original ideas are commodified and transformed into bland, soulless, politically harmless trends to sell to shoppers. Happy Future! Then there's a nice article that you've read thirty times already about the security risks this country faces and then a little dazzle article about NASA's new Martian golfcart. Shiny Future! What else does the future bring? Chinese basketball players (again!), talking dolls (again!) and cyberspace and real space will blend according to the perennially unbuilt Asymptote (who's most public project, a virtual Guggenheim was cancelled after the dot com crash wiped out funding). Brad Pitt will star in an epic- actually, The Epic- The Iliad and in the music world, black people will get back to their roots while white people will be more soulful and sensitive. The eighties are back in as a fashion-style. In short, it's last year all over again. Or 1955. Or 2050. Welcome to Tomorrow- Everyday.

posted by Japhy at 9/09/2003 12:10:00 PM || #