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What the Future Fiction of 2015 Revealed About Humans Today (vice.com)

Posted by samzenpus on from the better-days dept.

An anonymous reader writes: There were a lot of stories told about the future in 2015. More than usual, maybe. Big budget blockbusters, hefty, idea-rich novels, and epic, dystopian video games—there was complex, stirring speculative fiction dripping from every media faucet we've got. And it spoke volumes about our anxieties about the present. In 2015, those anxieties are, apparently, concern the rise of science denial, climate change, total collapse.

9 of 179 comments (clear)

  1. Let me guess... by penguinoid · · Score: 4, Funny

    That humans today are still terrible at predicting the future?

    --
    Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
    1. Re:Let me guess... by EmeraldBot · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That humans today are still terrible at predicting the future?

      This one's a given. People overestimate what happens in 50 years, but underestimate what happens in 2. Personally, I would be quite interested to see what 2018 will be like, though I suppose in 24 months I'll find out. After all, just three years ago, we didn't even know about PRISM...

      --
      "Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
    2. Re: Let me guess... by Areyoukiddingme · · Score: 4, Funny

      You mean http://goatse.cx.

      Ordinarily I have no use for stupid fucking hashtags, but.... #kidstoday

      The irony was irresistible. You couldn't even make it a live link...

    3. Re:Let me guess... by silentcoder · · Score: 3, Insightful

      > and pointless infra projects
      That simply isn't true, if anything the exact opposite is true. America's buildings, bridges and other critical infrastructure is crumbling and falling apart. You're risking millions of lives every day with unmaintained infrastructure.
      If anything - you can't manage even the most basic infra projects required to prevent disasters !

      Infrastructure projects are not sexy, they aren't politically appealing - and they don't attract donor money. What corporation is going to give you campaign finance because you "promised to patch the crumbling concrete of a bridge in your town" ?

      Whatever the reason may be, despite the fact that infrastructure projects would not only have short-term employment benefits but the much more important benefit of actually keeping the stuff your entire economy depends on to function working past the end of the decade - they aren't being done.

      I haven't read the book - so I can't say how accurate the rest of your description of it is, nor how much modern America really reflects that - but this claim was simply outright provably and factually incorrect.

      --
      Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
  2. Drama people by Kohath · · Score: 4, Insightful

    tell dramatic stories about a dramatic future. Stories about a future where a guy goes to work and installs software on computers for an insurance company don't get made into movies.

    And Hollywood continues to turn out lots of bland, unimaginative, formulaic movies that are less and less compelling relative to TV and video games.

    1. Re:Drama people by serviscope_minor · · Score: 3, Informative

      Stories about a future where a guy goes to work and installs software on computers for an insurance company don't get made into movies.

      No, I disagree that this is insightful.

      A large amount of spec fic, especially sci fi (not space opera though) is to examine the *present* and the human condition (literally the title, summary and text of TFA). What does your supposed story say about the present or human condition? Does it bring any new insights?

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
  3. Alternate Title by Kunedog · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Watch Us Try to Spin as Many Science Fiction Works as Possible into Supporting All the Progressive Talking Points We Were Planning to Cram Down Your Throat Anyway"

    Getting repeatedly called out on thinly-veiled, agenda-driven clickbait like this is exactly why Motherboard Vice censored its comment sections.

  4. Basically people are cowards. by EzInKy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Maintain the status quo, that is what people today and people of yesterday are all about.

    --
    Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
  5. Re:Analysis of Star Wars: The Force Awakens by tburkhol · · Score: 4, Informative

    Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens was basically a demake of the original Star Wars. It's not a shot-for-shot remake, obviously, and it's not a reboot. But it is basically the same fucking story and it's got tons of scenes and settings that are found almost identically in the original.

    Hardly surprising. If you look closely enough, most stories are the same. They used to teach the basic plots in grade school English, because the formulas for "good" stories have not really changed since Euripides.