💫 #003 For Future Reference
Into a new time | Cassettes tapes comeback | Colonial art restitution | Inequalities in the future | The future is now
Everybody has already heard this: the choices you make in the present determines your future. And we can add to this equation the fact that reflecting on how far we’ve come can help us imagine how far we can go.
With the world hanging in limbo at the moment, today’s collection of stories explore the three important dimensions of time: past, present, and future.
But first, I won’t start this without inviting you again to check my Spotify playlist: What future? - today’s issue is to be accompanied by the song My Past Just Crossed My Future. Enjoy it!
Off we go: into a new time
The home-staying is lasting longer than we expected. But with the possibility of vaccination on the horizon, I often find myself thinking about the meaning of transitioning from living in the pandemic to what comes after.
Our struggles to adapt to what will be a ‘new time’ is the topic of this comic strip by Emily Flake for The New Yorker. It is suggestive of how much, and how quickly, we can change and develop new versions of ourselves in times such as these.
💫My take: Times of struggle can pave the way for new ways of life. Collectively, and at different times, we’ve been urged to reconsider certain priorities and to pay more attention to what we do today - as they will be remembered later on.
The way things used to be
There’s always someone saying ‘back in my day, things were much better’. In fact, there’s a wave of nostalgia that is coursing across the globe, with people longing for the way things used to be. And thanks to technology we can now recall the past and experience nostalgia like never before!
No, I’m not talking about the polaroids or the vinyl revival. The new old thing to love are cassette tapes, and they are making a comeback. Many artists are actually putting out their material on tape - Lady Gaga, Dua Lipa, BTS, Björk…, and sales of cassettes boomed with a 103% increase in 2020.
But if we’re talking about 21st-century cassette tapes, please meet It’s OK: the world’s first cassette player that is compatible with Bluetooth 5.0 headphones or speakers!
💫My take: Not sure whether cassette use makes a definite turn back into the mainstream or will at best remain niche. But there’s something that throwback experiences and old aesthetics/formats bring and digital and streaming experiences don’t: a sense of tangibility.
Bring back my past
A more critical conversation continues to take place when it comes to revisiting the past. And that’s exactly what I thought when I read last week that Germany will begin returning a ‘substantial’ number of artifacts known as Benin Bronzes from its museums to Nigeria in 2022.
In fact, calls for the restitution of artifacts taken from Africa by European colonists have become louder. And restitution debates in countries like France, Belgium, the Netherlands are being accelerated by fierce political activism. See, for example, the case of Mwazulu Diyabanza. Fined and sent to jail for entering museums and forcibly removing African artifacts, he wants western governments to return everything.
The claims made by this Congo-born activist instantly reminded me of this powerful scene from Black Panther. You might have seen it already, but please take another look:
💫 My take: Museums will urgently need to acknowledge the importance these artifacts hold for their original people, as discussions on racial injustice/Black Lives Matter have renewed demands for rebuilding cultural heritage.
The future is just not evenly distributed
Reflecting on the discrepancies and inequalities carried from the past, I couldn’t help but remember William Gibson’s famous quote: the future is already here - it’s just not evenly distributed.
This powerful quote alludes to the fact that the things that will constitute the normal experience of those living in the future already exist for some today. Just think about anti-aging engineering techniques that make the rich become almost immortal, while some populations in some countries struggle to access basic care.
In fact, writing to The Guardian earlier this year, Matt Shaw argued that today’s “future” is almost completely invented by a tiny minority of ultra-wealthy individuals and private-sector companies. That poses the question: are we prepared to live in a world conceived by Elon Musk?
💫My take: It’s hard to clearly identify which elements of the present will become more widespread in the future. But we should ask those who are imagining the future how it can evolve from today in a way that it doesn’t exclude, isolate, or exploit.
Is the future happening now, then?
Well, in some cases, the future is actually past. Pop culture and literature are full of stories that are set in the future that’s already in the past. And there's no better example of that than 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Funny enough, when it was released in 1968 Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece depicted a future in which humans interacted and depended on personal digital assistants. Sounds familiar today, right?
Although Siri and Alexa are not as murderous as HAL 9000 (thankfully), many people have reported voice assistants often doing things that they are not supposed to do! This article explores the dark side of AI voice assistants.
💫My take: AI will continue slowly infiltrating our daily lives. But to put your mind at rest (for now), it will be a long time until scientists are able to equip AI devices with one of humanity's most critical abilities: the creative thought to imagine future possibilities and anticipate what our fellow humans will do tomorrow.
Now that you reached the end of this, I wanted to thank you again for finding your way here. If anything you read here made you feel inspired about tomorrow, please share it with your network, for future reference.
Also, feel free to say hi to me on Linkedin and follow me on Twitter. And let me know whether one of these stories has shifted your perspectives about anything.
See you next time,
Rodrigo