Some of the most memorable images of the future from the last century came from worlds fairs and expos. Companies and organizations, and even governments would routinely roll out images of near future technological wonders or easier lives, or both. These images were competing to sell optimism itself, so that people would trust them instead of their backward-looking competitors.
Another strain of futures images sell fear or horror to warn us away from something. George Orwell wrote 1984 to warn against communism. The TV movie “The Day After” graphically showed the aftermath of a nuclear war. Movies like Blade Runner warned of looming corporate dystopias and increasing inequality. Others like Terminator or The Matrix sold us on fear of AI, images still quite compelling today.
Add in fear of others (zombie movies), and fear of science (more zombie movies), and we find that Dystopias for Profit is a thriving business model. It seems like “doom & gloom” has captured our imaginations.
Several decades of these dystopian images have fueled a pervasive sense of hopelessness and powerlessness. The antagonist Governor Nix in the underrated retro-futurism movie Tomorrowland summed up perfectly the horrible negative feedback loop of pervasive dystopian images of the future:
"Let's imagine... if you glimpsed the future, you were frightened by what you saw, what would you do with that information? You would go to the politicians, captains of industry? And how would you convince them? Data? Facts? Good luck! The only facts they won't challenge are the ones that keep the wheels greased and the dollars rolling in. But what if... what if there was a way of skipping the middle man and putting the critical news directly into everyone's head? The probability of wide-spread annihilation kept going up. The only way to stop it was to show it, to scare people straight. Because what reasonable human being wouldn't be galvanized by the potential destruction of everything they've ever known or loved? To save civilization, I would show its collapse. How do you think this vision was received? How do you think people responded to the prospect of imminent doom? They gobbled it up like a chocolate eclair! They didn't fear their demise, they re-packaged it. It could be enjoyed as video-games, as TV shows, books, movies, the entire world wholeheartedly embraced the apocalypse and sprinting towards it with gleeful abandon. Meanwhile your earth was crumbling all around you. You've got simultaneous epidemics of obesity and starvation. Explain that one! Bees and butterflies start to disappear, the glaciers melt, algae blooms. All around you the coal mine canaries are dropping dead and you won't take the hint! In every moment there's the possibility of a better future, but you people won't believe it. And because you won't believe it you won't do what is necessary to make it a reality. They dwell on this terrible future and you resign yourselves to it for one reason, because that future doesn't ask anything of you today. So yes, we saw the iceberg and warned the Titanic. But you all just steered for it anyway full steam ahead. Why? Because you want to sink! You gave up!"
I should note that in the movie, Nix created the very feedback loop of doom images he was complaining about because of his cynical nihilism about humanity at large. He had his Tomorrowland world full of prosperity and marvels, why not let ours burn. He was selling his own nihilism via an advanced communication technology he controlled.
Sounds uncomfortably similar to the news the past decade or so, eh? Super-powerful technologists playing fast & loose with our futures? Mucking up our means of communications by flooding them with negative images and then blaming it on us? Bueller? Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?
Anyway, back to images of the future selling something. The reason images of the future work is exactly because they sell something. They plant a seed of future reality in our head and convince us to believe in it. That alone changes our behavior. Images of the future shift our thinking which changes, or reinforces, our beliefs about how things can be. They open up what theoretical biologist and complexity scientist Stuart Kauffman calls the “adjacent possible”.
In evolutionary biology, adjacent possible theory states that incremental changes to an organism can open up new complex paths to physical and behavioral development. Think some flightless dinosaurs eventually evolve into birds because the new thing they evolved, feathers, opened up a wide new adjacent possible complexity space where winged, feathered, light-boned dino-descendants could emerge. Ditto for eyes. A light sensitive spot on the skin opens up the adjacent possible space for eyes to eventually develop in their vast line of descendants. It happened independently many times across many species.
So what images of the future do is open up adjacent possible spaces for action or inaction in our beliefs. There is no certainty that a sustained effort will get us to a particular future. However, optimistic images open up possible pathways to get to better futures. Those better futures bring with them different problems, so “utopian” visions aren’t.
That is why foresight pros tend to look at the upside and downside of all scenarios, be they utopian or dystopian or somewhere in between. As I like to say, one person’s Utopia is another’s Dystopia, and vice versa. What you believe determines what future you want to buy into. Images of the future are selling the adjacent possible.
So what prompted this little discourse on what images of the future are selling? I watched this lovely little optimistic video on humanity’s future by filmmaker & musician John D. Boswell. I recommend it. The visuals are great, it shows multiple plausible pathways, and touches on some of the transformational possibilities of the future from a techno-abundance/transhumanist perspective. What I admire about it is that it does so without selecting one of them as preferable. In fact it seems to be selling what some futurists call polytopias or polyfutures, namely that we will get many different coexisting futures as humans choose different technological and social paths to change themselves or their environments.
What I love most about it is what he posted in the video’s comments:
“honestly, when I began this project, I was preparing to make a doomer-style "final warning" video for humanity. but over the last two years of research and editing, my mindset has flipped. it will take a truly apocalyptic event to stop us, and we are more than capable of avoiding those scenarios and eventually reaching transcendent futures. pessimism is everywhere, and to some degree it is understandable. but the case for being optimistic is strong... and being optimistic puts us on the right footing for the upcoming centuries. what say the people??”
I love that he tried to be Orwell, and by using foresight-like research he arrived at optimism and confidence.
I’ll buy that future.