YESTERDAY, we began to look into potential alternate routes to the philosophical-aesthetic cul de sac that postmodernism has become, and to instead seek a more pro-active way to see the future.
Of course, some highly-paid pundits are already doing something sorta like that.
But the likes of George Gilder are really in the business of stooging for the elites, telling people with money and power that they can count on having even more money and power in the 2000s.
Gilder's futurism purports to predict a "revolution," but merely a "revolution in business" which would leave the cleverest and most ambitious corporate go-getters in charge of a world totally and unalterably under the firm control of Global Business.
They don't imagine how emerging Net-communications, digital-DIY media, and other empowerment tools could subvert big business's privileges of scale and influence. Either that, or they don't want to imagine it.
No, I think there is a real new era coming--if we work at it. I don't have a splashy book-title name for it yet, but I'm working on it.
Wired's "digital age" hype doesn't quite describe it; nor does the "chaos culture" notion promoted by rave-dance folks a few years ago.
(The right-wing-think-tank people behind Wired are too trapped in their own privileged status to support a real revolution; the rave people are seeing only the most hedonistic aspects of the revolution.)
Without wanting too much to sound like a certain late multimillionaire who sang about a future without possessions, I'll ask you to imagine.
Imagine a world in which motion pictures are made everywhere, not just in one city in the whole world.
Imagine a world that had actors but not movie stars. Imagine no more gatekeepers.
Imagine a society without a right-wing hierarchy of privilege or a left-wing hierarchy of righteousness. A world in which women are equal to men, but in which men are also equal to women.
A world without bestseller lists, Billboard charts, or box-office rankings. A world of artists, not celebrities.
A world with no master race, no master gender, no master nationality, no master religion, no master economic system, and even no master operating system.
(This is all still largely a reactive, PoMo vision, I know. But future installments will be more proactive, I promise.)
The techno-corporate futurism of Gilder, Wired, et al. is only a feeble half-step in this direction. The real revolution wouldn't be a revolution for corporations, but against them. Not new opportunities for the Viacoms and GMs, but the means toward their overthrow.
And yes, it is a revolution. But like any real revolution, some people will find it, well, revolting.
But that's a topic for another day.
TOMORROW: We escape the topic of Century 21 for a while, to look at the history of escapism.
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