2027: The Coming High-Tech Medieval Age

Takichi Kaneko, in 1934, said that it's an absurdity, it is laughable, to speak of such a pending disaster as the end of the world.

We are discussing the end of humanity, or we are discussing the end of civilization, or we are perhaps even discussing the end of some this or that empire that we mistakenly believe to identify with.

The end of the world will come when the sun expands and engulfs it.

Now, is it truly a surprise that our discourse relates economic tragedy with an ecological one? That we actually behave as though a marked downturn in the market can somehow be compared to the death of nature? We're so enamored with our vastness and resource that we have forgotten the lark and the sparrow.

So I say, come, Armageddon, come, you horsemen.

Let us speak these things no more.

To put it bluntly, I don't think that humanity's future is going to be cursed by some tech overlords who are able to control every biological detail of our bodies or by some total collapse into extinction.

I don't think we're going to achieve some kind of singularity.

I don't think that we're going to cease to exist entirely.

I think that personally that we're going to meet somewhere in the middle.

And I've got a few reasons for why I believe this, but the closest thing to how I imagine the future is known as Dieselpunk.

Dieselpunk is a concept based on the diesel-based technology of the interwar period through to the 1950s with this retro-futuristic technology and a sort of post-modern mindset.

And retro-futuristic is an awesome mid-sized word that combines retro, which means backwards, to the word future, which means obviously what's to come.

It's a word that's based on modern but changing notions of the future.

It builds on futurist fevered visions of space colonies with flying cars and robotic servants and interstellar travel, all the things that we're talking about having in 2026, right? And it places it in a place where futurists took their promise for granted, because even though this is what we've been promised, it's not apparently what we're getting.

I mean, obviously, right? Like it doesn't seem to be working out that well.

And we're just continued to, you know, be encouraged to wait because it will eventually come.

But everything is sort of backwards now.

At the same time that we're being told that we are living in the future and that we will very soon be in a place in technology and science that we can't come back from because we've advanced too far.

Retrofuturism took its current shape in the 70s when technology was rapidly changing.

From the advent of the personal computer to the birth of the first test tube baby, this period was characterized by this intense and rapid technological change.

And look at what we've got today.

We've got cell phones that are basically supercomputers in our pockets.

We're dabbling with AI implants and we're also doing like CRISPR designer babies at this point.

We've gone out of the era of the test tube baby.

Takichi Kaneko, in 1934, said that it's an absurdity, it is laughable, to speak of such a pending disaster as the end of the world.

We are discussing the end of humanity, or we are discussing the end of civilization, or we are perhaps even discussing the end of some this or that empire that we mistakenly believe to identify with.

The end of the world will come when the sun expands and engulfs it.

Now, is it truly a surprise that our discourse relates economic tragedy with an ecological one? That we actually behave as though a marked downturn in the market can somehow be compared to the death of nature? We're so enamored with our vastness and resource that we have forgotten the lark and the sparrow.

So I say, come, Armageddon, come, you horsemen.

Let us speak these things no more.

To put it bluntly, I don't think that humanity's future is going to be cursed by some tech overlords who are able to control every biological detail of our bodies or by some total collapse into extinction.

I don't think we're going to achieve some kind of singularity.

I don't think that we're going to cease to exist entirely.

I think that personally that we're going to meet somewhere in the middle.

And I've got a few reasons for why I believe this, but the closest thing to how I imagine the future is known as Dieselpunk.

Dieselpunk is a concept based on the diesel-based technology of the interwar period through to the 1950s with this retro-futuristic technology and a sort of post-modern mindset.

And retro-futuristic is an awesome mid-sized word that combines retro, which means backwards, to the word future, which means obviously what's to come.

It's a word that's based on modern but changing notions of the future.

It builds on futurist fevered visions of space colonies with flying cars and robotic servants and interstellar travel, all the things that we're talking about having in 2026, right? And it places it in a place where futurists took their promise for granted, because even though this is what we've been promised, it's not apparently what we're getting.

I mean, obviously, right? Like it doesn't seem to be working out that well.

And we're just continued to, you know, be encouraged to wait because it will eventually come.

But everything is sort of backwards now.

At the same time that we're being told that we are living in the future and that we will very soon be in a place in technology and science that we can't come back from because we've advanced too far.

Retrofuturism took its current shape in the 70s when technology was rapidly changing.

From the advent of the personal computer to the birth of the first test tube baby, this period was characterized by this intense and rapid technological change.

And look at what we've got today.

We've got cell phones that are basically supercomputers in our pockets.

We're dabbling with AI implants and we're also doing like CRISPR designer babies at this point.

We've gone out of the era of the test tube baby.