Nathan's Blog

This first entry I wanted to focus on Carey/Quirk's article "The History of the Future." I was interested in their take of this topic and interested how it would be linked to our class. The first interesting thing I noticed was the future never arrives, it's always awaited. I really got stuck on this in class and really took it to a deeper level. I realized how I am always looking to the future whether it be my career or even next semester. I am always idealizing it. But the fact remains that I am always waiting. Then once I reach that point I am on to the next idealization. All things that are mentioned in the article. I agree with many of there interpretations of the future, and think it is important to look forward. But there is this constant struggle with waiting and instant gratification. The wanting of something so bad that you ignore the present. That leads me to the next part of the article that I thought was very interesting

Carey/Quirk quote "The ideology of the future can serve as a form of 'false consciousness', a deflection away from the substantial problems of the present, problems grounded in conflicts over wealth and status and the appropriate control of technology toward a future in which these problems, by the very nature of the future, cannot exist.” (p. 180). I think this is one of the biggest problems facing my generation right now. I think we all want to move into the future and explore all of the possibilities that come with the advancement of technology, but what about the current generation. The late adapters. If we forget them, we are not creating new solutions but adding new problems. The motivated tech savvy personalities are not going to mesh well with generations that are going to be working with us. That is why I think this quote really stood out for me. I really think there are a lot of us that get clouded my the idealization of the future and forget about the present. If you do that then the future will never become the present.