Newsgroups: workspace.recycling_the_future


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Subject: recycle the future
From: pit@contrib.DE (Pit Schultz)
Date: 26 Jul 1997 04:11:01 +0200

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recycle the future

back in the 80ies when everything was prepared to be wrong
(globalisation, transnational capital, postmodernism,
privatisation, white socks and white lines, dreams of
independence, eco-fascism...) it was cool to have
'no future'. Baudrillard, the prophet of this time declared
the collapse of the future, its disapperence into a
hell of the neverending end. and the past was about to be
replaced by the language games of information society
very soon. what was unbearable for technoscience was
simply unpredictablitity and uncertainty.

Then, after the disapperence of the second world, there
was too much future, too many possibilities, the boost
was enourmous, future was now. the speed of change was
almost absolute, at least in East Europe. rational
relativity was almost breaking down, everything seemed
possible. for a moment the ruling systems had no chance
to overcode the flow of desires, there was a too-much of
presence, and therefore a need for collective discharge,
like raves. later on future became a buzzword in advertisment
of political parties, companies, museums. 'we are the future'.

now, in the late 90ies, while the biggest part of humanity
is still suffering the cultural and political paradigms of
the 80ies, the construction of future needs another update.
future is strategic field to prepare certain sets
of possibilities to be virtually 'there' when the competitor
starts, future is sensitive for disturbance because it is
completly based on information. the ones who control the
narratives of the future control the people. serious fiction
is the story behind the cultural politics of the net and
the illogical motor of global casino capital. what we may
need today is a hybridity of both further figures, something
has to come to and end and something else has to stay. nothing
will come because everything will be there already. a hybrid
concept of time which lets the model of irreversibility
(the arrow of progress) and the model of circularity (the eternal
repetition) create a dynamic of overlapping and enfolding
time-worlds. and as all imagination, in the moment this future
comes true one will need anotherone.