Are Futurists Confronting Our True Challenges?
To write this post, I wanted to know the origin of the term “futurist.” Per Acceleration Watch:
The Oxford English Dictionary traces earliest English usage of the term futurist to 1842, referring to Christian scriptural futurists. The next usage occurs with the Italian and Russian Futurists of the early 20th century (1900’s-1930’s), an artistic, literary, and political movement that sought to reject the past and rather uncritically embraced speed, technology, and violent change.
In any case, the term meant very little until fairly recently, perhaps the 1990s, when people began to use the term in earnest. Now, futurists talk about Web 3.0 or 4.0 and God only knows what else. Of course, I’m just cutting up; I’m not seriously so dismissive of this bunch of very smart people…but I wonder how many of them view the coming years according to the conversation below, where a friend wrote me as follows: (more…)
I was lucky enough to see Hal Holbrook deliver his one-man show “Mark Twain Tonight!” on Saturday evening. Holbrook’s opening night was in 1954 (the year before I was born) since which there have been over 2000 performances. Let’s just make an understatement: he’s seriously good at this.
Yes, the audience is transported, but perhaps the most remarkable thing about the content of the performance is how little change there has been in our perception of the incompetence and corruption in government, which, of course, was the fodder for so many of Twain’s pithy remarks during his life.
It’s becoming increasingly important to find cars and driving habits that will reduce our dependence on traditional fuel, while limiting the amount of CO2 and other emissions produced by vehicles. Guilt-free motoring, both in terms of what our cars produce, and how much strain on our bank accounts it produces, is probably not going to happen anytime soon. However, hybrids represent one way of lowering your individual debt by investing in cars with dual electric motors and batteries. Hybrids are now a commonplace option for drivers, with all major car manufacturers producing them. 
