@2many2no
There are a few days and a few events and changes from the 1960’s that just about everyone who is alive and healthy now, and who was 5 years old or over at the time, still remembers.
The reason I don’t remember the 60s is I was born late '68. Does that still count as me being a “wild child?” Have I been cool all these years and didn’t even know it?
@Al_Coholic I think it was the last time Americans on the whole really believed they could personally change the world. The passion and activism of the 60s gave way to the cynicism and ruthless self interest of the 70s and that mindset is still pervasive today.
@moondrake, I’d phrase it differently - you had the postwar consensus into the early '60s, that broke up over civil rights and Vietnam, and the US wound up being kind of at war with itself. Then in the '70s a lot of unexpected chickens came home to roost, particularly stagflation, the Oil Embargo, and the so-called “import invasion.” That led to a lot of fear and the idea of scarcity, that there wasn’t enough to go around so you had to fight for your own share, the ruthless self-interest you talk about. But there were a lot of very different groups with very different aims in the '60s, and many of them continued to be passionate and successfully active right through the '90s. They just didn’t necessarily represent Americans on the whole (though they usually claimed they did!)
I was born in March of Nineteen-hundred & Sixty-Eight, so, “Yes”, I was alive in the 60’s. The only problem is that after thinking about it, I know exactly what my mom & dad were doing during the “Summer of Love”. Thanks Meh!!
@rtjhnstn Exactly! Graduated high school in '64, right in the middle of the '60s. Old enough to appreciate and enjoy everything that was happening, late teens through early 20s.
@rtjhnstn - Depends what you mean by “appreciate.” I was a child IN the '60s, which is probably the exact opposite of a child OF the '60s, but it was a great time to be a kid - you could run around without parental subervision, there wasn’t this obsessive child-security stuff, and there were toystores EVERYwhere.
@aetris Yeah, I was born at the start of the 60’s, and by the time I was 7 or 8, me and whatever crew of kids I was running with and our dogs would be out the door right after breakfast, hit up whoever’s house was closest en masse for lunch, and return home at dusk in time for dinner. Our range was wide, widened by our active imaginations that remade houses and fields into ancient civilizations and alien landscapes. Our parents never knew where we were; we climbed trees, jumped off roofs, explored caves, swam in snake infested ponds in the woods, and lived to tell the tale with skinned knees, poison ivy welts and a broken bone here and there to prove our adventure readiness.
It was an age of serious issues and serious self-delusion on every side.
Remarks about another agree that seemed full of promise and ended in disillusion and tragedy, that would seem to apply to the 1960’s:
Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive
But to be young was very heaven
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
@f00l Seriously, layoff the coffee. You left out the Buzz River Letters and the Greening of America. As with anything else once the Vo-Tech people started growing long hair and smoking dope it all went to hell, those are the same people that have been energized by the current Republican party. The results are predictable. This is now a crotch and stomach society, you take care of one then take care of the other fuck everything else. Just as God intended.
Technically The Greening Of America was published in 1970, I think.
True, but the fog didn’t go away till about 73 or so so 1970 was still part of the 60s. Then it was Disco and fucking yuppies. and Jim Fixx and then Jim Fixx having a heart attack while running. I’ll not say poetic justice.
@f00l Maybe Cranky1950 meant all that “Back to Eden” stuff? Although there was also the whole “green revolution” of plant genetics and increased agricultural yields.
Ah, OK, I hadn’t actually heard of the Reich book. I may take a look at it - although I read that Rozak one many years ago and thought it was kind of simplistic. FWIW I wound up getting to know a lot of people a bit older than me who went through high school, college, and the military at that time and all I can say is that there were a lot of very different viewpoints in those days.
@f00l - All this interests me because there was all this stuff in the forefront of the '60s that didn’t lead anywhere and all these things in the background that actually determined the future. Who knows who W. Edwards Deming was, and the role he played in Japanese industry, which led to all those transistor radios people were listening to in the '60s? Guess where all THAT was going? Who knows who Enrico Mattei was and the role he played in the creation of OPEC, and where all THAT led? Who knows who became Governor of California in 1967 and where all THAT led? The future was trotting along in plain sight in the '60s, but everyone was LOOKing the wrong way.
Good stuff. Yeah opec. Yeah the dissolution of the British Empire. Yeah all that tech and invention.
But even if we didn’t continue the visits by humans to the moon, or the counterculture at anything like that extreme, and the Vietnam War was a complicated horror and failure, those events shaped us.
there was much that was invisible to those who didn’t follow tech or engineering or economics or global politics. And much was invisible to anyone whose thinking was narrow.
Most of us were kids. I was. I was concerned about books, horses, philosophy, music, friends, cars, freedom, intellectual and emotional survival, as I conceived of those issues then. I was a kid. I was self-indulgent, and my perspectives were extremely narrow and were bound to the logic of the rather young and immature.
ARPANET, for instance, was a sixties product. Gosh. I wonder if anyone ever did anything with the possibilities that opened up?
@f00l - There were lots of different things that had a big impact on some people, there always are. Our family dog got run over in 1966, that had a HUGE impact on me.
What I’m talking about, though, are the Future Shock things, the paradigm shift stuff where it was a different world afterwards. Remember in the ‘60s there was that scary place called Red China where they all ran around waving Mao’s little red book? There were people who thought they would try to invade us, or that the wisdom of Mao would change the world or whatever. We call it corporate China these days, it’s where they manufacture our iPhones - ya dig? That happened because of corporate Japan, and that happened because of Deming. Vietnam is now the place that makes our sneakers. Yes, lots of guys died or were maimed and traumatized there, but even while that was going on Mom and Pop America got up the next morning and drove the family station wagon to the ol’ 9-5. One morning Mom and Pop America drove the ol’ station wagon to the ol’ gas station and discovered there was an oil embargo and you had to wait in line and the prices went up and maybe they even ran out of gas! A generation changed its mind about the nature of reality on that day. And THAT happened due to Mattei, and OPEC, and the Six-Day War. When was the last time you saw a station wagon?
There are some kid’s memories of the sixties. And they are the things that happened that created the future.
And that gets really complex.
Most adults won’t spot most of those. let alone kids
I sure didn’t see all that then. Neither did most of the most prescient political and economics types.
But that little one I mentioned
Technologically, the engineers owned the sixties. But I did sure didn’t know that.
ARPANET
It made something or other of itself, on the end. In fact is still doing it.
The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was an early packet switching network and the first network to implement the protocol suite TCP/IP. Both technologies became the technical foundation of the Internet. ARPANET was initially funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the United States Department of Defense.[1][2][3][4][5]
Deming is best known for his work in Japan after WWII, particularly his work with the leaders of Japanese industry. That work began in August 1950 at the Hakone Convention Center in Tokyo when Deming delivered a speech on what he called “Statistical Product Quality Administration”. Many in Japan credit Deming as one of the inspirations for what has become known as the Japanese post-war economic miracle of 1950 to 1960, when Japan rose from the ashes of war on the road to becoming the second largest economy in the world through processes partially influenced by the ideas Deming taught:[4]
Better design of products to improve service
Higher level of uniform product quality
Improvement of product testing in the
workplace and in research centers
@f00l - Um, thanks I guess, I actually knew most of that, it’s what I was talking about. Not your station wagon, though. Happy trails.
I don’t want to belabor the point, but I think that the future is always being accurately predicted by SOMEone. The challenge is identifying the correct prediction in the fog of fashion, passion, and I like to have a third thing that’s either alliterative or rhyming but can’t think of anything because it’s still too early. But fwiw I think the engineers and statisticians are usually pretty good guides, and it’s worth taking a little time to try sussing it out, or the future can be mighty painful.
I don’t always agree with Cranky1950, but I’m a little concerned about your coffee intake. How much would you say you’re drinking at 4 AM?
@f00l - Um, thanks I guess, I actually knew most of that, it’s what I was talking about.
Sorry I it didn’t make it clear. I linked to Deming because I didn’t know enough. Not because you didn’t.
I should have credited you for bringing him up.
And also linked for the other people who weren’t familiar with him. I figure that’s many of us.
Please put in a link and more info to Mattel and OPEC history. Seriously. Discuss this a little. I know v little.
Incidentally: OPEC history mighty be in part perhaps responsible for the growth of the shale oil and fracking industries. If the US had retained economic control of the oil supplies in that re region, there might have been lower prices and less incentive for new tech.
I don’t want to belabor the point, but I think that the future is always being accurately predicted by SOMEone.
I would agree that it is predicted by someone in part. Perhaps overall the CIA forecasts night be as good as sound as any. For those would have access.
But only in part. Way way way too many variables to go further than “in part” either by the method of statistics or the method of data gathering and tested judgement. It’s always gonna be “in part”, tho I expect certain uni’s and governments and corporations to get much better at it as we go.
Basically, we lack the methodology to predict in full, or anything close to it. And we lack on a deep level. The lack is built into our languages. All of them. Including the mathematical ones. And possibly built into our thinking. And possibly built into the universe we can perceive or conceive of.
The challenge is identifying the correct prediction in the fog of fashion, passion, and I like to have a third thing that’s either alliterative or rhyming but can’t think of anything because it’s still too early. But fwiw I think the engineers and statisticians are usually pretty good guides, and it’s worth taking a little time to try sussing it out, or the future can be mighty painful.
For the best predictions the general public can access, the engineers and economists and scientists who deal with prediction are a good start.
If you have favs, please share.
I also like alliteration and stupefication and negation and positronation and procrastination. Those are all quite nice.
; )
I don’t always agree with Cranky1950, but I’m a little concerned about your coffee intake. How much would you say you’re drinking at 4 AM?
None. Stayed up to finish some stuff and watch the Senate vote and listen to some vote aftermath commentary until I got sick if it.
Am serious. Please talk more about Deming and Japan, and Mattel and OPEC history
@f00l - I’m not really getting my point across which is nothing unusual for me… but although I think the history of OPEC, the Pacific rim economies, Reagan etc are all fascinating I know not everyone does (and anyone who does can of course Google them…) What I’m really trying to convey is that there’s all this man-bites-dog stuff in the media, pop culture or whatever, that distracts people from the obvious trends that’re actually going to determine the future. Those trends may be technical and thereby boring for many but they can be critically important. The ‘70s was a particular example of future shock that had a huge negative effect on society imho - I don’t think the fog burned off in 1973, I think a new fog smothered it. Watergate and Black September are examples of things where you’re right, things like THAT aren’t easily predictable, there are certainly explosive wild cards. But the politicization of the oil supply, increasingly sophisticated competition from Japan, the rise of the Republican right, those were easily identifiable and should have been in the forefront of the predictive analytics of the day or whatever. The same sort of stuff is going on today imho, I don’t want to get too specific because I’m not interested in flamewar controversies but I think there are a lot of pretty obvious trends in national and international politics, economics, natural science and elsewhere, that are going to bring some uncomfortable changes. Just sayin’!
Right now many of us are fascinated by the national and world political scenes. And plenty of knowledgeable persons are looking at world economics and social and technical change.
Bit there may well be something in the corners of society or politics or tech; or something right in front of us that’s so obvious we don’t even notice it; that will be a dominating force for social, economic, political change.
If you have any fav futurologists, esp those not allied to or identified with a particular hot button political pov, please mention them.
@f00l - I’ve gone on too long here already, but it seems to me that Chinese economics, the ambitions of Russia and Iran, and realignment here, to name a few (and let’s not forget predictive analytics itself) are moving in directions likely to intersect in predictable ways. Futurologists are a whole other kettle of fish, I’ve always found them entertaining but not particularly trustworthy. But I’ll look for that Reich book!
If you remember the 60’s, you weren’t there.
@2many2no
There are a few days and a few events and changes from the 1960’s that just about everyone who is alive and healthy now, and who was 5 years old or over at the time, still remembers.
@f00l most of the pictures are good but the moon pic with the rover in the background, I believe is from the 70s.
@f00l Thanks to history classes, I recognize everyone except her:
Who is she and why is she notable?
@jqubed I believe the image was offered as an example of “mini-skirts”.
Well, let’s say that they remember LEARNING those things ABOUT the '60s. But the things we remember FROM the '60s are more:
@jqubed You don’t remember that one time a lady walked up a hill in the 60’s?
@medz That’s actually the last time a lady walked in Central Park until 1983.
@jqubed Leslie Hornby, in later years she played Clark Griswold’s fantasy paramour in Christmas Vacation.
@cranky1950 - There’s no way that’s Twiggy.
@aetris
@jqubed
@Zebenite
That moonshot pix came up on Google in a 1969 moonshot search and was so labeled.
Was in a hurry and did not verify so you may be right.
@jqubed
@Pavlov
That pic of the woman in the very short blue outfit was a pic I’ve remembered all these years.
from a Life Magazine (I think) photo essay on miniskirts?
It was from a photo essay on miniskirts from some magazine anyway .
@cranky1950 that is a bonkers photo.
@UncleVinny That was a semi-popular poster at the time. My speech instructor had that in her cube.
@aetris
@cranky1950 I’m getting a 403 error on this picture.
@f00l @Zebenite That’s correct, the rover didn’t fly until later missions and was only on Apollo 15, 16, and 17, first flying in 1971.
@cranky1950 - That’s not Twiggy either!
@cranky1950 THAT’s Twiggy.
@aetris study for an bfa you learn to objectify. The eye never leaves.
@cranky1950 - That’s very interesting - I DO have a BFA. And an MIS. And too much time on my hands, evidently!
@UncleVinny
I had forgotten the VP candidate.
My yard (my parents’ yard) had one of those signs. In Texas.
Which was unusual. Other kids would ask me about it. I would shrug.
@f00l I read a whole phat book on the '64 campaign, but don’t remember anything about Miller.
Shrugging – it’s 33% g’s!
/giphy mostly Gs
@f00l also was a soda drink named after this candidate – Goldwater
@AttyVette
Now that you mention it, I remember that. My parents had some.
Look at all of us 80’s kids in the poll!
The reason I don’t remember the 60s is I was born late '68. Does that still count as me being a “wild child?” Have I been cool all these years and didn’t even know it?
@mollama Hey, me too. Late '68er.
Is this because the blankets are from the 60s? They have this pattern that I sort of associate with my grandparents.
Sounds like it sucked. Glad I wasn’t there.
@Al_Coholic I think it was the last time Americans on the whole really believed they could personally change the world. The passion and activism of the 60s gave way to the cynicism and ruthless self interest of the 70s and that mindset is still pervasive today.
@moondrake, I’d phrase it differently - you had the postwar consensus into the early '60s, that broke up over civil rights and Vietnam, and the US wound up being kind of at war with itself. Then in the '70s a lot of unexpected chickens came home to roost, particularly stagflation, the Oil Embargo, and the so-called “import invasion.” That led to a lot of fear and the idea of scarcity, that there wasn’t enough to go around so you had to fight for your own share, the ruthless self-interest you talk about. But there were a lot of very different groups with very different aims in the '60s, and many of them continued to be passionate and successfully active right through the '90s. They just didn’t necessarily represent Americans on the whole (though they usually claimed they did!)
I was born in March of Nineteen-hundred & Sixty-Eight, so, “Yes”, I was alive in the 60’s. The only problem is that after thinking about it, I know exactly what my mom & dad were doing during the “Summer of Love”. Thanks Meh!!
Groovy, man.
/youtube white rabbit
i mean…aren’t the first two poll answers the same?
Nope. I was born in 1980.
:waits for Meh to sell Regular Show merchandise:
I needed to be born in the late 40’s to “appreciate” the 60’s.
@rtjhnstn
Not at all.
It helped to be a teen-ager before the decade ended tho.
@rtjhnstn Exactly! Graduated high school in '64, right in the middle of the '60s. Old enough to appreciate and enjoy everything that was happening, late teens through early 20s.
@rtjhnstn - Depends what you mean by “appreciate.” I was a child IN the '60s, which is probably the exact opposite of a child OF the '60s, but it was a great time to be a kid - you could run around without parental subervision, there wasn’t this obsessive child-security stuff, and there were toystores EVERYwhere.
@aetris Yeah, I was born at the start of the 60’s, and by the time I was 7 or 8, me and whatever crew of kids I was running with and our dogs would be out the door right after breakfast, hit up whoever’s house was closest en masse for lunch, and return home at dusk in time for dinner. Our range was wide, widened by our active imaginations that remade houses and fields into ancient civilizations and alien landscapes. Our parents never knew where we were; we climbed trees, jumped off roofs, explored caves, swam in snake infested ponds in the woods, and lived to tell the tale with skinned knees, poison ivy welts and a broken bone here and there to prove our adventure readiness.
@moondrake
I miss all that freedom.
But it’s not the same social world, for kids.
: (
Ok enlightened droobies, Who’s the band leader
Hugh Masekela?
@aetris He’s certainly the featured player.
@cranky1950 1967 apartheid Johannesburg it was illegal for blacks to congregate.
It was an age of serious issues and serious self-delusion on every side.
Remarks about another agree that seemed full of promise and ended in disillusion and tragedy, that would seem to apply to the 1960’s:
Emphasize self-delusion.
@f00l Seriously, layoff the coffee. You left out the Buzz River Letters and the Greening of America. As with anything else once the Vo-Tech people started growing long hair and smoking dope it all went to hell, those are the same people that have been energized by the current Republican party. The results are predictable. This is now a crotch and stomach society, you take care of one then take care of the other fuck everything else. Just as God intended.
@cranky1950
Coffee - that’s the only drug I can still abuse with some impunity!
You’re cranky and mean!
No coffee.
@f00l ![enter image description here][1]
[1]: ;![enter image description here][1]
[1]: ;
@cranky1950 LM
Technically my examples were meant to be only a small sample.
Technically The Greening Of America was published in 1970, I think.
Technically America didn’t so much “go green” as “go greenhouse gases”.
Technically that “greenhouse gassing of America” story did not belong principally to the 1960’s.
Technically I mention all this because I’m an asshole. Or something.
Technically if I go without coffee, as you suggest, I’m going to be more cranky than you.
Technically, I remember many portions of the 1960’s. Including some portions that … involved late nights and mind and experiments and music.
@f00l
1: ;
@cranky1950
@cranky1950
Be cool, man. Be cool.
@f00l
True, but the fog didn’t go away till about 73 or so so 1970 was still part of the 60s. Then it was Disco and fucking yuppies. and Jim Fixx and then Jim Fixx having a heart attack while running. I’ll not say poetic justice.
@f00l Maybe Cranky1950 meant all that “Back to Eden” stuff? Although there was also the whole “green revolution” of plant genetics and increased agricultural yields.
Ah, OK, I hadn’t actually heard of the Reich book. I may take a look at it - although I read that Rozak one many years ago and thought it was kind of simplistic. FWIW I wound up getting to know a lot of people a bit older than me who went through high school, college, and the military at that time and all I can say is that there were a lot of very different viewpoints in those days.
@f00l - All this interests me because there was all this stuff in the forefront of the '60s that didn’t lead anywhere and all these things in the background that actually determined the future. Who knows who W. Edwards Deming was, and the role he played in Japanese industry, which led to all those transistor radios people were listening to in the '60s? Guess where all THAT was going? Who knows who Enrico Mattei was and the role he played in the creation of OPEC, and where all THAT led? Who knows who became Governor of California in 1967 and where all THAT led? The future was trotting along in plain sight in the '60s, but everyone was LOOKing the wrong way.
@aetris
Good stuff. Yeah opec. Yeah the dissolution of the British Empire. Yeah all that tech and invention.
But even if we didn’t continue the visits by humans to the moon, or the counterculture at anything like that extreme, and the Vietnam War was a complicated horror and failure, those events shaped us.
there was much that was invisible to those who didn’t follow tech or engineering or economics or global politics. And much was invisible to anyone whose thinking was narrow.
Most of us were kids. I was. I was concerned about books, horses, philosophy, music, friends, cars, freedom, intellectual and emotional survival, as I conceived of those issues then. I was a kid. I was self-indulgent, and my perspectives were extremely narrow and were bound to the logic of the rather young and immature.
ARPANET, for instance, was a sixties product. Gosh. I wonder if anyone ever did anything with the possibilities that opened up?
I was mostly going my own youthful memories.
@aetris You know Nixxon and Kissassger were responsible for the formation of OPEC don’t you.
@f00l - There were lots of different things that had a big impact on some people, there always are. Our family dog got run over in 1966, that had a HUGE impact on me.
What I’m talking about, though, are the Future Shock things, the paradigm shift stuff where it was a different world afterwards. Remember in the ‘60s there was that scary place called Red China where they all ran around waving Mao’s little red book? There were people who thought they would try to invade us, or that the wisdom of Mao would change the world or whatever. We call it corporate China these days, it’s where they manufacture our iPhones - ya dig? That happened because of corporate Japan, and that happened because of Deming. Vietnam is now the place that makes our sneakers. Yes, lots of guys died or were maimed and traumatized there, but even while that was going on Mom and Pop America got up the next morning and drove the family station wagon to the ol’ 9-5. One morning Mom and Pop America drove the ol’ station wagon to the ol’ gas station and discovered there was an oil embargo and you had to wait in line and the prices went up and maybe they even ran out of gas! A generation changed its mind about the nature of reality on that day. And THAT happened due to Mattei, and OPEC, and the Six-Day War. When was the last time you saw a station wagon?
@aetris
A few hours ago. I own it. It’s great.
There are some kid’s memories of the sixties. And they are the things that happened that created the future.
And that gets really complex.
Most adults won’t spot most of those. let alone kids
I sure didn’t see all that then. Neither did most of the most prescient political and economics types.
But that little one I mentioned
Technologically, the engineers owned the sixties. But I did sure didn’t know that.
ARPANET
It made something or other of itself, on the end. In fact is still doing it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET
Established 1969
Map in 1973.
Speaking of Future Shock
Published in 1970
The seed of the book came from an article Toffler published in 1965. So he probably spent the last half of the sixties writing the book.
1st wikipedia reference and source note:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Shock
@aetris
I had heard of Deming but knew little of him.
Of course. There just to be someone like that. A techie and an tech and management evangelist, in an influential position.
For those who want to know more:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming
@f00l - Um, thanks I guess, I actually knew most of that, it’s what I was talking about. Not your station wagon, though. Happy trails.
I don’t want to belabor the point, but I think that the future is always being accurately predicted by SOMEone. The challenge is identifying the correct prediction in the fog of fashion, passion, and I like to have a third thing that’s either alliterative or rhyming but can’t think of anything because it’s still too early. But fwiw I think the engineers and statisticians are usually pretty good guides, and it’s worth taking a little time to try sussing it out, or the future can be mighty painful.
I don’t always agree with Cranky1950, but I’m a little concerned about your coffee intake. How much would you say you’re drinking at 4 AM?
@aetris
Sorry I it didn’t make it clear. I linked to Deming because I didn’t know enough. Not because you didn’t.
I should have credited you for bringing him up.
And also linked for the other people who weren’t familiar with him. I figure that’s many of us.
Please put in a link and more info to Mattel and OPEC history. Seriously. Discuss this a little. I know v little.
Incidentally: OPEC history mighty be in part perhaps responsible for the growth of the shale oil and fracking industries. If the US had retained economic control of the oil supplies in that re region, there might have been lower prices and less incentive for new tech.
I would agree that it is predicted by someone in part. Perhaps overall the CIA forecasts night be as good as sound as any. For those would have access.
But only in part. Way way way too many variables to go further than “in part” either by the method of statistics or the method of data gathering and tested judgement. It’s always gonna be “in part”, tho I expect certain uni’s and governments and corporations to get much better at it as we go.
Basically, we lack the methodology to predict in full, or anything close to it. And we lack on a deep level. The lack is built into our languages. All of them. Including the mathematical ones. And possibly built into our thinking. And possibly built into the universe we can perceive or conceive of.
For the best predictions the general public can access, the engineers and economists and scientists who deal with prediction are a good start.
If you have favs, please share.
I also like alliteration and stupefication and negation and positronation and procrastination. Those are all quite nice.
; )
None. Stayed up to finish some stuff and watch the Senate vote and listen to some vote aftermath commentary until I got sick if it.
Am serious. Please talk more about Deming and Japan, and Mattel and OPEC history
@f00l - I’m not really getting my point across which is nothing unusual for me… but although I think the history of OPEC, the Pacific rim economies, Reagan etc are all fascinating I know not everyone does (and anyone who does can of course Google them…) What I’m really trying to convey is that there’s all this man-bites-dog stuff in the media, pop culture or whatever, that distracts people from the obvious trends that’re actually going to determine the future. Those trends may be technical and thereby boring for many but they can be critically important. The ‘70s was a particular example of future shock that had a huge negative effect on society imho - I don’t think the fog burned off in 1973, I think a new fog smothered it. Watergate and Black September are examples of things where you’re right, things like THAT aren’t easily predictable, there are certainly explosive wild cards. But the politicization of the oil supply, increasingly sophisticated competition from Japan, the rise of the Republican right, those were easily identifiable and should have been in the forefront of the predictive analytics of the day or whatever. The same sort of stuff is going on today imho, I don’t want to get too specific because I’m not interested in flamewar controversies but I think there are a lot of pretty obvious trends in national and international politics, economics, natural science and elsewhere, that are going to bring some uncomfortable changes. Just sayin’!
@aetris
Sounds pretty good to me.
Right now many of us are fascinated by the national and world political scenes. And plenty of knowledgeable persons are looking at world economics and social and technical change.
Bit there may well be something in the corners of society or politics or tech; or something right in front of us that’s so obvious we don’t even notice it; that will be a dominating force for social, economic, political change.
If you have any fav futurologists, esp those not allied to or identified with a particular hot button political pov, please mention them.
And thanks.
@f00l - I’ve gone on too long here already, but it seems to me that Chinese economics, the ambitions of Russia and Iran, and realignment here, to name a few (and let’s not forget predictive analytics itself) are moving in directions likely to intersect in predictable ways. Futurologists are a whole other kettle of fish, I’ve always found them entertaining but not particularly trustworthy. But I’ll look for that Reich book!
I may have missed it, but I don’t recall seeing anything here about the launch of The Pill, and believe me, it made a huge difference.