Thomas on Farcaster

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https://warpcast.com/~/channel/thomas

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Thomas pfp

@aviationdoctor.eth

People in the early 1900s used to dream enthusiastically about the 21st century. They held ambitious world's fairs to celebrate humanity's ambitions, published glowing pop-sci articles, and wrote hopeful futuristic fiction. Who does that anymore? Who gets positively excited about what the future holds for our great-great-grandchildren? It feels like the 21st century, despite being just one average human lifespan away, already lies behind some inscrutable (and perhaps impassable) Great Filter caused by some combination of technological singularity, AI takeover, collapse of late-stage capitalism, demographic decline, societal rot, deadly pandemic, and/or climate catastrophe. It's as if nobody dares being bullish about humanity's future due to a growing collective (and largely unspoken) unease

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@aviationdoctor.eth

Bonus postcards from the year 1900 (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/En_L%27An_2000) because apparently I cannot cast four pictures yet despite being Pro™

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Garrett pfp

The present and immediate future keeps us extremely busy

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@patriciaxlee.eth

Your cast reminded me of this blog post I came across, though I don't know what's come out of it. The author's X account is private and so is the "World's Fair Company" they created. (https://worldsfair.co/) https://cameronwiese.com/blog/worlds-fair

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Nico pfp

I dream enthusiastically, especially because of Ethereum, but I don't write it much. Or at least I don't give it to read publicly. And I think I'm not the only one. But what you will see today, in socials, news, movies, novels, whatever, is what sells. Not far away futuristic dreams but scarry present or close future. Think in terms of incentive and, that's my opinion, I have no proof at all, but earning is the reason and what earns now is either dumb present reality or futuristic catastrophy and even if people have futuristic dreams they prefer putting energy in what will sell.

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Michael pfp

have you been on linkedin lately?

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kripcat.eth pfp

I think it's the not knowing. I forget who it was, but someone said on a podcast I was listening to recently. Every generation seems to feel like it's living at the most important time in history, but there's some pretty compelling evidence that our generation really is approaching the climax of the human story. The trouble is we don't know if it's the story of high sci-fi tech utopia, or a tragic tale of self destruction.

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Adam pfp

Collective optimism has sadly been overshadowed by persistent pessimism. Part of the dopamine click funnel strategy is to keep people enraged and engaged, which all the juggernaut platforms use as their playbook. It takes a lot less effort to keep people in fear than it does for them to imagine how things can be better. Having said that, the world is starved for optimistic outcomes. It just has to break through the noise to reach others.

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cyrus pfp

I wonder if anything has really changed. We still have world expos and such events today where ambitious visions are presented and designed to inspire optimism. The general optimism bias is still holding up and is as irrational as ever. I imagine that it’s also mostly the same types of people that were bullishly optimistic and hopeful at the turn of the 20th century who are now bullish on contemporary potential futures.

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Fran d’ Amore

who's not bullish on the future? although I agree a lot of people are stuck.

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𝑶𝒕𝒕𝒊🗿✨ pfp

𝑶𝒕𝒕𝒊🗿✨

Fear of the unknown

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Only the rich are bullish (or those confident they will be)

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Ako pfp

think most of the reasons you mentioned could be true, and personally, I see way more mental and emotional stress now compared to physical struggles back then. It’s not just about hope for the future. Honestly, when I look at that era, everything feels like it was on another level—music, movies, human relationships, art... There’s this weird difference that kinda makes you think it was the best decade, where people were genuinely the happiest and enjoyed life the most.

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PhiMarHal pfp

The lack of faith in the future is a crisis of faith overall. Human societies scale poorly without religion. Aka codes and rituals influencing discourse and action towards somewhat positive outcomes. Even elites who largely do not believe are swayed subconsciously by the pretense they sell to the collective whole, when that collective whole believes. In the absence of formal structure, values err, meaning is lost. We often assume our fact-based worldview nowadays is plainly superior, and point at objective wealth metrics to assert it. I'm of the opinion it's more nuanced, i.e. it's possible we increased wealth and well-being by a factor of X but end up unnecessarily wasting much of that X because of our godless behavior. It is very hard to sell hope without at least a little bit of irrationality. One could argue this is why Americans perform the best. They combine the kind of voodoo thinking you see in less advanced countries with solid infrastructure frameworks typical of Western countries.

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I blame sci fi authors flooding literature with nothing but dystopic fiction

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Ed O'Shaughnessy

I get excited by a new technology and its potential (crypto, AI, etc), but then I think: 'Ruh-roh! This is going to be abused and used against me — shit!'

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cyrus pfp

I wonder if anything has really changed. We still have world expos and such events today where ambitious visions are presented and designed to inspire optimism. The general optimism bias is still holding up and is as irrational as ever. I imagine that it’s also mostly the same types of people that were bullishly optimistic and hopeful at the turn of the 20th century who are now bullish on contemporary potential futures.

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cyrus pfp

I wonder if anything has really changed. We still have world expos and such events today where ambitious visions are presented and designed to inspire optimism. The general optimism bias is still holding up and is as irrational as ever. I imagine that it’s also mostly the same types of people that were bullishly optimistic and hopeful at the turn of the 20th century who are now bullish on contemporary potential futures.

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BIGAVE🦅🌈 pfp

maybe it’s not that hope has disappeared maybe it’s that hope looks different now. In the early 1900s, people romanticized the future because they believed in linear progress taller buildings, faster trains, flying cars. The future was shiny and mechanical. But today’s challenges climate change, AI ethics, inequality are abstract, global, and complex. They’re harder to visualize and harder to “celebrate” in a World’s Fair kind of way. Yet, beneath the surface, there are people still dreaming not always loudly, but intentionally. They’re building regenerative economies, open science platforms, AI for good, community driven tech, space exploration missions. It’s quieter, less flamboyant… but no less ambitious. So maybe we don’t need to revive the spectacle of the past, we need to reframe what future-building looks like today: less about gadgets, more about values. The optimism hasn’t died. It’s just matured.

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