In the past couple of weeks I’ve been introduced to two websites (there are probably others) that provide glimpses into the futures via a “news” format. That is, the scenarios are written in news story form, so we read about the future as the present (or to be very technical, the recent past, which is what news actually is.)
Pontus Edenberg gives us a kind of MSM view into the world that’s coming with his News of Future site. This is an attarctive and well-researched site. I especially like the tabs that let you pick which future year you want to visit. Commiserate with the MSM look and feel, these are mostly pretty conventional futures we’re looking at, here. No alien invasions. No global thermonuclear wars. No singularity. Here’s a fairly representative news bite from the year 2050:
At a press conference today it was announced that the first tourist heading for Mars will be the 38-year-old US businessman Patrick Clifford. He will leave the earth in the launching window of June 2052 and set his foot on the surface of Mars in November, together with the other 6 astronauts assigned for the mission to further explore the planet.
Contrast that with Future Fragments, a blog written in the year 2030. These fragments of the future are bit more personal than Edenberg’s news, a little more obscure, and kind of raw the way blog posts sometimes tend to be. Typical snippet:
Random inaccessible memory they call it. Eventually you were numb from the uncertainty, knowing less and less about your past, about yourself. All we knew then, though, was that something didn’t feel right. Something you couldn’t quite keep in your sights, like trying to keep a bead on a target moving just too quickly. People started to be … different, strange. Jones used to sit on his bunk, staring blankly at the same sepia-toned digiframe, the images of a pretty blonde cycling one by one in perpetual cycle. He’d done it every day since we started the programme together, staring intently before the transfers began. A look of confusion spread and grew deeper like some cancerous root as the weeks withered past. Eventually, he looked up at me, a thin needle-like tear cutting down his haunted face, and he asked, “Is this my wife?â€
I’m enjoying both of these sites quite a bit. Would be interested to know what others think. Would also appreciate being directed to other future news sites.