Spanner Interlude 3: Four Visions of the Future

← ...from previous

Chaos Angel Spanner
Interlude 3: Four Visions of the Future

The future according to the United Corporations publication, Taking Command of the Limitless Future:

1. The naysayers may be right, and Earth’s resources are limited and running out. The answer is above us, in space, where the resources are limitless, in our solar system and beyond.
2. Environmentalism may be correct in saying that modern consumer civilization is exhausting the carrying capacity of Earth’s limited environment. The rational solution is to go out and find new frontiers beyond Earth, expand throughout the solar system, and reach beyond to the stars, where Man’s potential is infinite.
3. Some economists insist that the commercial potential of Earth has already been reached, and that the coming population decline will signal economic decline. We believe that we can reverse the decline by reaching out to new civilizations and creating new markets beyond our small neighbourhood of the universe.
4. Those companies that make the limitless future a reality for Mankind will be the ones that dominate it.

The future according to the Foundation for the Advancement of Advertising’s latest report, Advertising the Future in the 21st Century:

1. Advertising has entered the greatest period of evolution in its history. New technologies and new methods exist that even the industry’s pioneers could never have imagined.
2. For the first time, modern technology has evolved to the point where subliminal advertising can achieve its maximum effectiveness. New advertising technologies such as the Subliminator™ and the BlipVert™ promise a new age of limitless profit.
3. The companies that can exploit the possibilities of these new technologies first and fastest will be the profit superstars of the new age of advertising. They will control the future.

The future according to the Future Economy Institute’s newest publication, Preparing for the Post-Planetary Economy of 2050 and Beyond:

1. The population of Earth will expand beyond the planet’s surface, to a growing number of new orbital colonies. Plans are already being drawn up for the first of them.
2. Man will expand beyond Earth to new frontier of the solar system. Venus, Mars, Titan, and Europa will be terraformed into new homes for billions.
3. Asteroids, meteors, and comets will provide humanity with a limitless supply of the materials that are running out on Earth itself.
4. Interstellar spaceships will take a new generation of pioneers beyond the solar system to create a new human empire among the stars.
5. Infinite prosperity is just around the corner. Those companies that best take advantage of the new possibilities will be the industrial superpowers of the Space Age. The future belongs to them.

The future according to modern science fiction:

1. Tyrannical government of, by, and for corporations.
2. A thriving and lawless black market and punk underground.
3. Social chaos. Violent revolution.

The business community has published its futures since the New York World’s Fair of 1939-40 brought the Future according to Hugo Gernsback, the man who gave science fiction its name, into tangible realization, brought to you in the spirit of the Five-Year Plans by General Motors and General Electric.

The prophets of the noir future wrote their predictions as commercial entertainment products during the second half of the twentieth century. At the end of the previous century, Herbert George Wells, the true father of science fiction, warned of invisible madmen, alien invasions, vivisectionist chimeras, and the future degeneration of Man. Their future is the one that has come to pass.

on to the next... →

Back to Chapter 4 index...
Back to Chaos Angel Spanner table of contents...

Copyright © 2011 Dennis Jernberg. Some rights reserved.

[Revision 2, 6/24/11: All new material.]