When I was growing up my childhood friends would sometimes say, “I wish I’d been born five hundred years ago” or “It would have been so interesting to live during medieval times”. To me this was insanity. In fact it still sounds insane. Who in their right mind would exchange airplanes, democracy and antibiotics for illiteracy, agricultural drudgework and smallpox? I suppose my friends were doing the same thing people do when they imagine their pop culture “past lives”: so everyone gets to be Cleopatra, and nobody is ever a peasant or slave. And the Connecticut Yankees who travel back in time to pre-invent industry are men, because a woman traveling alone in those days just invited trouble.
No, I never wanted to live in the past. I wanted to live in the future.
Mostly because I had a keen desire find out what happens next. I mean, just think of the amazing things in store—space travel, AI, personal immortality. What a fool I was.
I no longer trust the future will be a glorious place. (It was a little painful to give up that belief.) I once studied history and the history of technology so I could write about imaginary civilizations with some versimilitude. And I learned that everything ends, even Rome. Even us.
So I started studying economics and politics to try to figure out how we got here, and how we might possibly get someplace else. It seems unlikely that the same irrational brains that got us into this mess will be able to get us out. I mean, people are literally not sane. Myself included. The best, the only tool we have is dangerously flawed. (OMFG!!) Which led me here....
Hope for the future? Hope isn’t necessary.
As far as RL goes, I have two X chromosomes and live in Minnesota.
When I was growing up my childhood friends would sometimes say, “I wish I’d been born five hundred years ago” or “It would have been so interesting to live during medieval times”. To me this was insanity. In fact it still sounds insane. Who in their right mind would exchange airplanes, democracy and antibiotics for illiteracy, agricultural drudgework and smallpox? I suppose my friends were doing the same thing people do when they imagine their pop culture “past lives”: so everyone gets to be Cleopatra, and nobody is ever a peasant or slave. And the Connecticut Yankees who travel back in time to pre-invent industry are men, because a woman traveling alone in those days just invited trouble.
No, I never wanted to live in the past. I wanted to live in the future.
Mostly because I had a keen desire find out what happens next. I mean, just think of the amazing things in store—space travel, AI, personal immortality. What a fool I was.
I no longer trust the future will be a glorious place. (It was a little painful to give up that belief.) I once studied history and the history of technology so I could write about imaginary civilizations with some versimilitude. And I learned that everything ends, even Rome. Even us.
So I started studying economics and politics to try to figure out how we got here, and how we might possibly get someplace else. It seems unlikely that the same irrational brains that got us into this mess will be able to get us out. I mean, people are literally not sane. Myself included. The best, the only tool we have is dangerously flawed. (OMFG!!) Which led me here....
Hope for the future? Hope isn’t necessary.
As far as RL goes, I have two X chromosomes and live in Minnesota.