Thursday, August 16, 2007

The Retrofuture and the Meaning of Life

The more I think about it the more I pine for the retrofuture. The sad fact of the matter is that thanks to the Internet we really are living in what could easily be called the future, the only problem with this is that this future sucks. we are in the future but we have lost all sense of wonder. we have no frontier to explore, no new worlds to conquer.

This is the true failure of our age, not only do we have no new frontier, no new lands to colonize, no way to spread the human race out to the myriad worlds of tomorrow, we have lost any desire to do so. Talking with people I hear no wish to move out to mars, All I hear are gripes about how much it may cost, that is, on the rare times they think about it at all.

People are content with the world as we know it, admittedly they all want a few small changes, but in all they are happy with the stagnant shape of the world, they merely argue over texture. I deny such feelings, I don't want to be confined to a spheroid only 24,901.5 miles across. I want the endless galactic spaces promised to me. I want the world of tomorrow Circa 1950. I want to fight Nazi's on the moon, I want to live in a self contained unit in the asteroid belt, I want to farm on Ganymede.

The Internet has made the world succumb to our collective human will. Thanks to the instant speed of communication we are approaching what may easily be called the first global human culture. so, when you are discontent with this culture where do you have to go? unfortunately we do not have such a place, it just doesn't exist anymore. we are all bound by the chains of our gravity well, and I at least, wish to escape.

Let us not forget the Human beings were not meant to be enslaved, not even by the laws of physics. The retrofutureyearning of the human spirit to reach out for whats next. We are called on the same mission that our parents failed, not merely to unite the earth, but to spread ourselves out to the rest of the universe.

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