Is The Future Dead? What Happened to Optimism in Futurism

New technology was once a reminder of the boundless possibilities the future could hold.

Throughout history, the rise of new technology has shaped the way people view the future.  Art, design, film and music serve as mediums to display society’s attitudes towards technological advancements at a given time. In post-modern history, these outlooks have skewed towards the positive, envisioning an ideal world where present issues have been  resolved by the aid of new technology. However, as the Information Age has made us hyper-aware of our own existence and place in the world,  nihilistic sentiments have grown. Will we ever go back to optimistic outlooks on the future? What would that look like?

Oxford English Dictionary defines utopia as “an imagined place or state of things in which everything is perfect.'' Throughout the Cold War, the United States and the USSR were in a race to outpace each other, both aiming to achieve technological supremacy. As a result, the Space Race commenced. It was marked by an American victory on July 21, 1969 when the Apollo 11 spacecraft landed humans on the moon for the very first time. 

This technological leap was unprecedented and the culture had a fittingly strong reaction. TV shows and movies like The Jetsons (1962), Star Trek (1966), 2001:A Space Odyssey (1968) and Barbarella (1968) all envisioned a new utopian version of life, where humans become multi-planetary beings living in high-tech worlds. Fashion designers Pierre Cardin and Paco Rabanne helped bring this fantasy to real life by integrating pace Age aesthetics into their collections. 

History repeated itself in the 1990s. The Western world entered an era of peace post-Cold War and the launch of the commercial internet brought an economic boom known as the “dot-com bubble.” With the dawn of the new millennium imminent, the world was eager  to enter a new era of peace and possibility through technological advancement. 

Hot artists at the time like Britney Spears, TLC, Backstreet Boys and Janet Jackson incorporated a futuristic, ‘cyber’ look into their outfits, music videos, and performances. Films like Hackers (1995), The Matrix (1999) and Blade (1998) focused on a future filled with endless technological capability thanks to the internet. Fashion designers like Issey Miyake helped visualize the future of fashion by incorporating sleek, reflective materials in his designs. Jean Paul Gautier on the other hand captured the cause and effect relationship between the advent of the internet and a new wave of globalization, by combining “world” fashion with cyber-futuristic aesthetics, reflecting the global desire for a new millennium of world peace. However, once the new millennium hit, the dot-com bubble burst, and the Twin Towers were attacked, any remaining sense of hope for a peaceful future was killed. 

A dystopia is defined as, “an imaginary place or state in which everything is extremely bad or unpleasant,” by the Oxford English Dictionary. Once the iPhone was released in 2007, the Information Age kickstarted by the launch of the internet reached unprecedented heights. We now receive and consume information at rates that are faster than ever, affecting the way in which we see our future. Unlike in the past, we are constantly being bombarded with all of the wrongs in the world and the reminder that we on our own are not able to fix them. 

Technological advancements of the 2010s like smart devices, virtual reality and social media platforms have not cultivated the same optimistic outlook  we saw in the past. In fact, it has been close to the opposite. Films like Ready Player One (2018), The Maze Runner (2014) and Hunger Games (2012) depict dystopian worlds overruled by climate catastrophe, corrupt tech giants and cultural division. 

Though dystopian films are not a new phenomenon, they resonate now more than ever. Pop culture hasn't looked towards the future for inspiration in a long time, in fact we seem to resent it. Nostalgic remakes and sampling rule our media landscape, as current generations fear for a future full of despair and limitations. Instead they chase a past where the future looked a little brighter. 

What does all of this mean for the way we see the future going forward? As AI is gearing up to be the biggest technological breakthrough since the dawn of the internet, does this mean we are about to witness a new age of optimism for an idealized future? 

As long as we continue consuming information at the speed we currently are and remain hyper-aware of all the world's issues, this seems like a stretch. AI appears  to be creating more schisms across a variety of communities. As these technologies begin to take effect in aspects of people’s everyday lives (e.g. employment, dating, speech), we might be on track for even more cynicism than ever before.