Dude, where’s my 22nd century? – On the Burnout of Future Images

We, however, are preoccupied and tormented by the haunting of what was and by the eternal Long Now.We are so burnt out from surviving the present (and the lingering past) that considering what could be seems but a naïve hobby – one that, ironically enough, few of us have time or energy for.

By adding the interaction of completed and noncompleted time into the time-flow equation of the historical process (and thus to its relation to the future), Polak introduces the idea of social change as a push-pull process “in which a society is at once pulled forward by its own magnetic images of an idealized future and pushed from behind by its r... See more

As the individual experiences an ever-growing sense of acceleration provided by technological developments (new media and the “speeding up” of the infosphere) alongside a general decrease in security of past provisions and expectations (read: precarity, freelance positions, housing shortages, and increasing wealth disparities coexisting with rhetor... See more

One holds onto an aspiration for back to normal (although the desirableness of that version of the present has come under question as well) and thinks of recent events as mere hiccups and minor diversions in the greater scheme of things.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4 in January 2020, Gibson attributes this loss of interest in the future to a loss of belief in it. Too burnt (out) by disappointment from both what is and what could be (which when given brief thought only appears to be no better than dealing with today), our lack of imagination (our lack of image-making, of boundary-drawing,... See more

From a cultural perspective, Fisher contrasts the cultural energy of the 20th century with the languors of the 21st: While 20th century experimental culture was seized by a recombinatorial delirium, which made it feel as if newness was infinitely available, the 21st century is oppressed by a crushing sense of finitude and exhaustion. It doesn’t fee... See more

An overlap between the experience of temporality in the contemporary condition of burnout and time-flow in relation to social change has emerged. There is an intervention to be done, one that speculates on how these two apparently separate concepts have begun to overlap, revealing potentially exciting qualities in one another.

Both the harsh whispers of the Puritan work ethic and the desperation of children not to disappoint their parents (neither new nor insignificant) emphasize that in exploring their own future, humans have always been stalked by a sense of doing the forbidden.

Perhaps the drawing of a boundary across the infinite unknown intensifies the already burnt-out state of our lives, and is asking too much of those merely trying to survive.