What The Future Looks Like

Dead. I hope I’ll be dead before the Water Wars start. That’s what I spend a lot of my time thinking about. There’s an impending doom heading for this planet and I’m just hoping I’ll miss the worst of it. I’m scared for my kids and the shit they are going to have to face. I feel helpless about it all and would rather live on in ignorance. But, I can’t, I probably should do what I can. But it’s too late.

I don’t have hope.

At this time I think the world is just past the positive-feedback-loop of climate change. Maybe forty years ago we could have made changes that would mean we could have stopped the current warming and saved the world. But I honestly think we’ve gone too far. Humans have known the problems of climate change for all of my life time. But no one has really done anything about it. My evidence that we’ve known comes from rock band Testament. They wrote a song for their 1989 album Practice What You Preach called “The Greenhouse Effect”. I learnt about this stuff when I was at school in the 1980s.

See the burnt earth and the figures crucified by the inaction of the older generation. I am part of that generation now. I’ve done nothing. I’m not sure I can do something. Our world is ruled by short-termism politics and individual gain. Those in charge don’t give a shit about the future. If they did they wouldn’t keep the ruinous policies of today. We have cars, planes, lorries, ships all burning carbon based fuels. We have homes where electricity is from carbon sources. Heating is from carbon sources. This world is slowly dying and those in charge can’t or won’t see it. It’s actually beyond them.

We Are Fucked
We Are Killing Ourselves

Unfortunately for the population of this strangled planet anything done now is likely too little too late. I’m convinced we have already passed the point of no return. There are no noises of politicians actually doing anything to solve this. They sit there probably thinking the same as me – “hopefully I’ll be dead”. Here’s a list of things we can’t solve:

  • Burning carbon based fuels
  • Melting of glaciers around the world
  • Ice sheets melting
  • Thawing of the tundra
  • Plastics getting everywhere
  • Ocean life dying
  • Reefs dying
  • Acidification of the oceans
  • Warming of the oceans
  • Increased storms
  • Fresh water supplies dwindling

Ideal feedback model.svg
By Me (Intgr) – Own work, Public Domain, Link

The positive feedback has started. Any actions we take now will only mitigate the changes. We might be able to slow it down. We might be able to stop the warming at a level that means only a billion dying but I suspect that’s not going to happen. I am not hopeful about the future of humankind.

Even that megaband Metallica wrote a song in the early 90s about how the world was fucked. It’s called Blackened.

I suspect we all like to think that in the future we will live in a lovely village:

A Village
A Village

Or maybe our future is more Blade Runner? Living in massive urban areas with amazing culture and increased wealth extremes?

The City
The City

Unfortunately I honestly think our future looks more like Mad Max.

The Wastelands
The Wastelands

Now it’s time for the young to rise and claim the Earth as their inheritance and remove the ruling classes from power. To save the world needs complete revolution. A massive change in the politics. A move to more future planning and doing the right things.

My parents’ generation did nothing and they’ll be dead soon.

My generation did nothing and I don’t think I can tell you how sorry I am for that.

Worldwide revolution is needed. Government for the future.

I don’t have hope.

Future Plans

Yes, I made the title a tautology. Deliberately. Sorry.

Every now and then I create draft communications and hope to complete them at some point. There have been many that I have started but not completed. Some have died because I forgot what they were about and some have died because I simply don’t have the time to complete the communication to a good enough standard. Yes, there are standards on this site!

My current list of draft communications is:

Some of these are album reviews, which are going well but less often that initially. I’ll finish it one day.

“Advertising” may never get written because it’s about the complaints I have made to the ASA and a general rant about how terrible advertising is.

“Angels Within” is a classic take down of a bullshit magazine and website. It’ll be quite a rant but needs about two hours to complete to a decent level of shittyness.

“Flights Of Fancy” is a Fooyah investigation of the theory behind the common belief that the football at the Mile High Stadium travels further than at sea level. I have spent about an hour looking into this and I think the result will go against my initial scepticism but if that is where the evidence leads then so be it.

“Business Retreat” is a title I added but have no current idea what it is about or why I titled a communication so. I have a sneaky suspicion that it’s me ranting about Brexit. I need to rant about it. But I would also quite like the arguments to be coherent which I find difficult to express. That’s just me, I can get overwhelmed and struggle to form the best words in a good enough order to create a formal argument.

“Beat them Up” is me moaning at a news headline on the BBC and taking the article apart. It’s the education system being shat upon, surprise, surprise.

So, there, keep your eyes open or your twitter feeds running with alerts. These may or may not get written.

I’ve Seen The Future

Ok, now these are impressive. I was at the Kiddicare store in Thurrock, Essex and I noticed that the shelf tags looked quite a bit different to the card barcode things you normally get in a superstore or shop.
I looked a bit closer at these tags and was pretty sure they were LCD displays with some sort of stock count thing going on. While closely inspecting a shelf tag a store worker came along with a bar-code reader device and so I asked if the tags were LCD.

YES!

I also asked if they were radio controlled with real time stock updates.

YES! The stock tags update every five minutes.

I was so impressed with this use of tech that I nearly forgot what I went into the shop to buy. I have seen the future, and it will be.

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