Welcome to The Future! (Please enjoy responsibly.)
August 14, 2014 7:59 AM   Subscribe

Congratulations on winning our sweepstakes! We’re pleased to welcome you on a most-expenses-paid, open-ended trip to The Future, where you will enjoy fantastic technologies, abundant luxuries, exhilarating freedoms and opportunities, an inexhaustible supply of entertainment, and other truly ludicrous privileges. Offer may expire without notice. Please take advantage while supplies last. Prizes may not be exactly as described; some may be replaced with others for logistical reasons, but the approximate value remains the same. For example, instead of squirrels, you may receive additional birds. Bartering of prizes is allowed and encouraged.
posted by hapax_legomenon (10 comments total) 5 users marked this as a favorite
 
On the contrary: this is not the future, it's the past. This cheerily, delusionally complacent techno-utopian ideology is like a reborn version of the 1890s' blinkered official forms of public optimism, showing up right on cue to go along with this terrible new Gilded Age. As if all the unprecedented horrors of the Twentieth Century had been forgotten, and all the inequities of the present wished away into a little asterisk deep in the fine print — just a little caveat that won't affect us, only other people somewhere else who don't really matter. Enjoy the status quo, everybody!
posted by RogerB at 8:42 AM on August 14, 2014 [6 favorites]


Offer may not be valid in: Sub-Saharan Africa, Indian Subcontinent, Central Asia or South-East Asia.

Check with your local government or warlord.
posted by leotrotsky at 8:44 AM on August 14, 2014 [3 favorites]


with additional doting provided by trained servants

It's like David Cain just barely glimpsed through the facade into the underlying bedrock of unending exploitation and toil, but ew grody that's so boring and sad to talk about, so let's forget about it and move on, look at all these nice websites
posted by theodolite at 9:07 AM on August 14, 2014


So where's my flying car?
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 9:18 AM on August 14, 2014 [1 favorite]


The footnotes "make" the piece (for certain values of "make").
posted by hapax_legomenon at 9:24 AM on August 14, 2014


I enjoyed this. Thanks for posting.

Where's my free education?
posted by theora55 at 9:35 AM on August 14, 2014


Where's my free education?

We're all students permanently enrolled in the School of Hard Knocks. Unfortunately we don't get to choose our subjects or change the syllabus.

And dropping out gets you nowhere.
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:55 AM on August 14, 2014


Unfortunately we don't get to choose our subjects or change the syllabus.

Also, the test comes before the lesson.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 11:10 AM on August 14, 2014 [2 favorites]


You guys are FUN!
I'm probably a Poor by former middle class standards. But I still have access to much of this. Yes, I do spend a good penny on partaking of the medical wonders described. And yes, I can’t afford to go very often in one of those flying machines. (“Did you fly through the sky IN A CHAIR?” – Louis CK., Everything’s Amazing)
But clean water at the turn of a tap, or indoor plumbing, edible plants and “game” shipped from distant locations, the ability to talk to you fun guys or enjoy vast sums of music and literature instantly on a tiny thing I can hold in my hand? All that is amazing, and would've seemed like miracles or blasphemy everywhere just 150 years ago.
I often think how my grandfather was born before the Wright Bros.’ first flight and lived to see the moon landings and space shuttle. And just yesterday I was indulging in some writerly speculation on what changes in tech, medicine, entertainment, etc. might occur in less than a century, the lifetime of someone born this year.
So maybe that’s why I got some amusement out of this.
posted by NorthernLite at 2:13 PM on August 14, 2014 [5 favorites]


from the piece: "Most of the expense has been paid by generous benefactors, hailing from previous generations, as well as today’s."

Wrong. A lot of our current relatively-lavish lifestyle is made possible by Future Generations who will live with the damage we've caused and (in some cases) try to repair it.
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:26 PM on August 14, 2014


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