What a place our future is. We call it now, now. When I was a kid it was science fiction to have a TV in your phone. To have the internet on a screen you could hold like a book. To drive an electric car. A computerized camera that doesn't need film? And this is just the everyday toolset available to the low end consumer. So much has changed in just the last twenty years that I don't call the present "the present". As far as I'm concerned we live in the future.
I used to scoff at the concept of "future shock". A guy named Alvin Toffler coined the term in 1970 with a book by the same name. Of course, this idea has been referenced countless times in pop culture. To me, the idea that someone would suddenly become overwhelmed by seemingly instant changes in society, culture, and especially technology, looked like cold war era fear mongering. As I got older, I shrugged off some of my youthful cynicism and started to really appreciate the marvels that lifetimes of research had brought to fruition. As I reveled in the wonderment I started to realize how incredibly different life is than what I had seen growing up.
One of the aspects of the future shock concept that I grew an association to over time was explored in the old Judge Dredd progs in 2000ad comics, the "futsie". A futsie, in the comic context, was someone who's sanity had been suddenly compromised by their inability to cope with the state of their world, and had become disturbed, usually with violent tendencies. Not that I'm saying I'm a futsie, but I find myself more sympathetic to that idea than when I initially read about it as a teenager. The simple fact that I'm writing this on a tablet the size of my first TV, and more powerful than my last laptop, I find to be mind boggling. The fact that I could do this in an airplane while video chatting with someone on the other side of the planet? Those are reasons I have to take breaks from writing, so I can just take in how cool this all is to the little kid I was so long ago.
Come to think of it, I reckon the futsies might exist already. There's people that suddenly just flip a switch in their head and go shooting in public, drive their kids off a bridge, quit their job sell their belongings and travel on foot. I can't really attribute any of these because I never bothered to... Oh wait I can! I may carry a little tech with me but I travel great distances on primitive means. Bicycles and skateboards to travel for thousands of miles. A nomadic lifestyle due to a complex feeling of disenchantment with the society I was thrust into. There's a life I began to live that could be easily attributed to future shock.
If you find yourself In whatever part of your town has a trainyard, you'll no doubt see young adults every now and then, 16-25 years old with brown and/or black clothes, long hair, ukeleles and dogs. Riding their way back and forth across the country like the hobos of the 1930s. Did you know how much cooler their adventures are than yours? My travels are cooler than yours too, and most of theirs for that matter, but that's beside the point. These kids live completely off the grid. They don't submit to health concerns unless its staying away from meat or turning on their side so they don't choke on vomit, but time and again they proved to hold interesting conversations about the nature of our almost sociopathic aversion to the perceived common societal norms. Nomadic sages in the current era.
Now the counter to these types are the common-folk. I don't really have a feel-good term for these people. I mean the people who live in a trailer on the side of a bumfuck road through nowhere, who might not be able to read or write and lack the capacity for deep thought, yet to them high definition satellite television with all ten thousand channels is an absolute necessity. The people who think the other side of their state is exotic, and that having come from another country is a mindfuck compared to their sedentary life. Don't get me wrong, I love these people as much as any other, they have shown me the type of warm courtesy I've seen spread out in many places. But their lifestyle of staying still and reveling in the "world" being pumped into their TV screen? That doesn't sit well with me. People with the means to go places if they spent less of their time looking for things and more looking for experience. They rely on technology to fulfill themselves.
The common folk also live in the cities and suburbs. Its not uncommon for people to isolate themselves intentionally. If you can order groceries and other supplies from your computer then there's very little preventing a hermits lifestyle. Human contact? How about Facebook, twitter, text messages, instant messages, blah blah blah. Get really lonely? Have a cyber sex session on a webcam. My step dad said that if I had a holodeck that I would never leave it, well people live on their computer now and it's not quite the same thing but their intentional isolation mirrors what he said perfectly. Take all that tech away from them for a week and they will be destroyed.
Pasties? Is that a good name for the people who suffer the opposite of future shock? I don't think it matters and I surely won't be the one to coin a term for it. I want to get these people out of their house and off the computer. Leave behind the smartphone, the tablet, the laptop, the GPS. Real life, the unprocessed, unscripted, analog version of what their television plays, is waiting outside and its quite a bit more fulfilling than living vicariously through some rhinoplastied nitwit who landed their role through some convincing felatio. An old roommate of mine is a shut in. On her laptop 14-16 hours a day, punctuated by snacks and baths, and sometimes school. "Dating" a guy 2000 miles away for the last 5 years and she's never met him. Are you kidding me? This is the kind of person who NEEDS to get out, to be forced out of their box to breath real unrecycled air. What can be done though, when this lethargic apathetic agoraphobic lifestyle is socially acceptable?
Now after considering the picture I've painted here, or at least attempted to, I think its fair to say I've more than excused myself for seeking respite from this future in which we dwell. Meeting people all across the country from town to town, I've seen everything from absolute technophile homes to rugged homesteads with the only the barest necessities. Having seen the same types of people repeated consistently, I feel that there should be more studies into this subject and possible application of knowledge gained from said studies. For now, I'll keep on traveling and researching on my own until I run out of time.
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