How to Make the Future Cool Again
Was the future cooler in the 1980s?
Yes.
Because we were on the edge of an abyss – a leap forward.
We had all the parts but they had not come together yet.
We were on the cusp of a paradigm shift.
Now the paradigm has shifted, and we are lost; treading water, moving in circles, a cargo cult recycling old ideas, looking for the next big thing.
VR/AR/XR.
Computing a love match.
Movies are the crest of ideas, just before the wave crashes against reality and leaves us stranded on a new island.
New ideas come from the borderlands between what is known and unknown.
New ideas come from myths.
We need to talk about what drives innovation.
No, it’s not economic necessity.
It’s who we believe ourselves to be.
Who matters, and what we stand for.
Our myths.
During the 3,000 years of Dynastic Egypt, technology did not change dramatically because their culture was organized around an undemocratic mythos.
Myths matter.
They literally become matter in the form of our tools; our transport and housing systems, our infrastructure, etc.
While our ability to gather and confirm facts has increased dramatically in recent centuries, our ability to ask the right questions and to comprehend the resulting answers depends on our imagination.
What we can bear to imagine.
What we can dare to imagine.
Myths are our best attempt to position ourselves in a world that is not fully known to us, that is not fully knowable to us. A world that humiliates us.
I am not making religious claims. I am summarizing theoretical physics. (Consider the Big Bang: everything came from next to nothing.)
I could say the same about every other branch of our so-called hard sciences.
We can imagine n dimensions. But we live, and die, in four.
East Flatbush, Detroit, Manchester.
What made technology cooler in the 1980s is that it meant more power to more people.
Not the illusion of control (the endless scroll, aka, the doomscroll) but actual democratic disruption.†
You don’t have to take my word for it.
Take hers:
Here is the opening track of MC Lyte’s first album:
Oh, oh my goodness
I— I can't believe it, um
I'll just take a— a— a Sony gold microphone, that's what I'd like
And a Yamaha REX50 digital multi-effects processor, yeah
And a Toshiba TX900 PCM for my DJ
Oh, he'd love it, my DJ K-Rock
And, um, that, can you take off the computer with, uh, all the cool software?
And the JBLs, the JBL speakers, oh my goodness
A four channel noise gate, I want a four channel noise gate
I'm dying for a four channel—
And a DVX compressor, oh, wait a minute, oh, I—
Forget— oh, um, just forget it
Oh my goodness
Just give me that dress, the dress that Vanna's wearing
I— I'd like the dress that Vanna's—
Oh, just— never mind, just give me the money
Take everything back, I want the money
Why would an 18 year old Lana Michele Moorer, raised in the East Flatbush section of Brooklyn, at a time when that borough was known not for its French bistros but for having the highest homicide rate in the city, why would this child of NYC’s “lost decade” dedicate her opening track to digital audio technology?
Because it meant power to the people.
Does technology mean that today?
I’ve seen young people delight at what so-called AI can do. “Time savers”.
But these kids also grew up with “side hustles”, working multiple jobs, without job security.
In other words, with less control over their time.
(What are influencers but day laborers?)
Earlier this week I shared the following on Instagram:
I understand that Stanford is not Caltech, and that Google is not JPL.
For starters, Google (or Alphabet) is still growing. Whereas JPL just shed jobs. (Privatization for the win?)
More importantly, Stanford intentionally aligned military, finance and technology.
Peter Thiel and Palantir are the fruit of its womb.
Caltech may have 2x more Nobel Laureates than Stanford, but its endowment is 10X smaller.
I think we know what matters more these days:
To fully grasp the current situation in San Francisco, where venture capitalists are trying to take control of City Hall, you must listen to Balaji Srinivasan. Before you do, steel yourself for what’s to come: A normal person could easily mistake his rambling train wrecks of thought for a crackpot’s ravings, but influential Silicon Valley billionaires regard him as a genius.
What drives innovation, from pitch decks to board meetings, are stories about who matters.
Who counts? What do we stand for?
If you want new ideas in tech, if you want to make the future cool again, you need to begin by asking these questions over and over again.
Postscript
Why is the future not cool anymore?
Global warming.
Our myths informed our tools, our tools shaped our reality and now we are stuck trying to change a reality that will doom many of us to great suffering; not because we lack the knowledge or the tools but because we are incomplete beings, guided by myths.
Myths about who counts, how much some or all lives are worth, and what we stand for.
Somewhat arbitrary 1980s Music References
O Superman – Laurie Anderson 1981
The rhythm is a perfectly mechanical abstract loop of a fragmented human voice. The titular vocal hook is played through a vocoder, creating a “de-humanized” or “robotized” chorus. The lyrics are about American modernity in the pastiche style of modern poetry. It went to #2 in the UK. How does a performance artist using minimalist modern music become pop culture? Timing.
Computer World – Kraftwerk 1981
I’ve linked above to a list of the many songs that have sampled it but you should also listen to it. I first did in 1995 and it blew my mind. To this day, few artists in any genre have achieved the purity of sound, totality of vision and tenderness that these Germans pulled off repeatedly, and especially here.
Together in Electric Dreams – Giorgio Moroder and Philip Oakey 1985
This is not a good song. It’s really not. But it’s also a great song. The anthem for the above cited movie about computerized romance.
Everybody Wants to Rule the World – Tears for Fears 1985
This is a perfect song, in every way. A stand-out moment: the vocals that blend into an elongated synth line; the human voice made eternal.
Lyte vs. Vanna Whyte – MC Lyte 1988
The sampled voices, lifted from a television, would be interesting enough but the sole melody coming from a manipulated DJ record scratch makes this a song about high-tech culture itself high-tech.
Two Nuns and a Pack Mule – Rapeman 1988
A proto-edgelord band named after Japanese Manga just as it was entering US culture, the music features a “bleach bit” guitar sound that ushers in much of the electronic music of the 1990s.
If you read this far, OMG TY!, and, what did I miss?
Herbie Hancock’s Rockit, (1983), from the album “Future Shock”? For the Lincoln Center crowd, but sure, why not! What else?
“Blue Monday” by New Order (1983), a punk rock group that didn’t know how to use electronic instruments and created a new genre? Absolutely.
The Roland 303, released in 1981, allegedly designed to simulate a real instrument, and an utter “market fit” failure until it landed in the hands of poorer (mostly Black) teens who created the future of party music?
Please send me more! Thank you!
Footnotes
*I can attest that by the time Hollywood gets its hands on an idea / trend / story, it’s “old news”. But that doesn’t mean the movies are (or, more accurately, were) behind the times. On the contrary, the movie industry’s ability to make myths allowed it to shape the future.
†The last 10+ years are so many variations of the illusion of “empowered consumers” that it’s hard to know where to begin! Take Uber. Technology empowers consumers (and workers!) to make “public” transport cheaper, better, faster. What made the rides cheaper? They were being subsidized by investors looking to arguably create an even bigger cartel than taxi medallions. You know what worked all along? So-called gypsy cabs and buses. (That’s quite the word, “gypsy”.)
‡During a gold rush, you want to be selling shovels. Or shoveling bullshit. Use AI to screen job applicants. Use AI to write your resume. Use AI for phishing. Use AI to filter phishing. Use AI to create deepfakes. Use AI to identify deepfakes. Use AI to write your emails. Use AI to read your emails.
Explain to me how we are avoiding vendor lock-in and mounting externalities?
