I was a teenager in Southern California in the late 1950s at the height of the California Car Culture. I distinctly remember the fact that all the important trends in automotive styles and technology originated with the people I knew or knew about, mostly in the Los Angeles area. Detroit slowly tried to catch up, … More Confessions of a Reformed Technophile
Ideologies defend the status quo; utopias propose perfect futures to replace the difficulties of life in the present. Strangely, sometimes the two get all mixed up together. That is the case today. The corporatist culture frames a utopian future as its ideology used to justify “staying the course” of the present globalized economy of endless … More The Ideology of Utopian Dreams Confronts the Looming Dystopian Future
I have not read much science fiction. But the sci-fi books I have read usually fall into the “post-apocalypse” variety, such as The Road, Earth Abides, Parable of the Sower, World Made by Hand, and most recently, The Handmaid’s Tale. I read these stories out of my interest in what is likely to happen in … More What about how? What the sci-fi novels all miss
Looking forward into the future is no easy task. It is hard to decide what to believe will happen next, and nearly impossible to predict a few years or decades down the line. So many variables, so many viewpoints, so many things are just not the same as we had expected them to turn out … More Dystopia, Utopia, or Drift?
Robert MacNeil Christie, Author 