The glamour of the future is back! Unfortunately it came back on Nov. 5 via the best friend of the guy who makes your hair stand on end, Virginia. But everyone really is grokking over that booster-catcher. It's wonderful and so much fun to watch on video.
One trivial example of why the retrofuture didn't happen is the flying car. We have flying cars, called helicopters. For reasons that could have been worked out in the 1950s, the idea of having one per family was never feasible, even assuming lots of technical advance. The air traffic control problem is just insoluble.
And that's true of other elements of retrofuturism - monorails, moving sidewalks and so on. There's no technical impossibility, but they weren't good ideas.
The escape clause for all of this was supposed to be space travel. The speed of light barrier would be broken, just as the sound barrier had been. The solar system and then the galaxy would be open to us. Now its clear that even a small moon base will be a massively expensive vanity project, and no other planet is remotely habitable (compared, say, to Antarctica). TWe have to take care of the planet we have, even if that means doing without a bit of glamour.
I just read Rod Dreher's new book on "re-enchantment," and there are some really interesting parallels between the concept as he describes it and "glamour" as you describe it - they're like inverted doppelgangers. Enchantment is the sense of wonder and glory that you get contemplating the greatness of creation, but glamour is the sense of wonder, glory, and possibility that you get contemplating the achievements of humanity and the possibilities before us.
Enchantment tends to be the preferred mode of wonder for "the enemies of the future," but recognizing that the enemies of the future will always be with us, maybe those of us captured by the glamour of the future can use the language of enchantment to build a bridge and show them what the heck we're talking about.
I think that natural objects can be glamorous. Lilies are glamorous flowers, and big cats are glamorous beasts. The starry heavens, whether viewed by the naked eye or through a telescope, are exceedingly glamorous.
I hope I am among the first to submit a request to get a signed copy of “Veronica’s Summer of Silk” when it is available. I don’t know how much postage will be in that distant future, but I will begin saving up for it now. I don’t think that teleportation will be quite ready at that point.
The glamour of the future is back! Unfortunately it came back on Nov. 5 via the best friend of the guy who makes your hair stand on end, Virginia. But everyone really is grokking over that booster-catcher. It's wonderful and so much fun to watch on video.
One trivial example of why the retrofuture didn't happen is the flying car. We have flying cars, called helicopters. For reasons that could have been worked out in the 1950s, the idea of having one per family was never feasible, even assuming lots of technical advance. The air traffic control problem is just insoluble.
And that's true of other elements of retrofuturism - monorails, moving sidewalks and so on. There's no technical impossibility, but they weren't good ideas.
The escape clause for all of this was supposed to be space travel. The speed of light barrier would be broken, just as the sound barrier had been. The solar system and then the galaxy would be open to us. Now its clear that even a small moon base will be a massively expensive vanity project, and no other planet is remotely habitable (compared, say, to Antarctica). TWe have to take care of the planet we have, even if that means doing without a bit of glamour.
I just read Rod Dreher's new book on "re-enchantment," and there are some really interesting parallels between the concept as he describes it and "glamour" as you describe it - they're like inverted doppelgangers. Enchantment is the sense of wonder and glory that you get contemplating the greatness of creation, but glamour is the sense of wonder, glory, and possibility that you get contemplating the achievements of humanity and the possibilities before us.
Enchantment tends to be the preferred mode of wonder for "the enemies of the future," but recognizing that the enemies of the future will always be with us, maybe those of us captured by the glamour of the future can use the language of enchantment to build a bridge and show them what the heck we're talking about.
I think that natural objects can be glamorous. Lilies are glamorous flowers, and big cats are glamorous beasts. The starry heavens, whether viewed by the naked eye or through a telescope, are exceedingly glamorous.
I hope I am among the first to submit a request to get a signed copy of “Veronica’s Summer of Silk” when it is available. I don’t know how much postage will be in that distant future, but I will begin saving up for it now. I don’t think that teleportation will be quite ready at that point.
A great idea. I'm not sure it's popular now, but a glamorous future motivates some of us.
Would it be in direct opposition to degrowth people?