Bruce Sterling’s State of the World 2012

“The mid-century will be about “old people in big cities who are afraid of the sky.” Futurity means metropolitan people with small families in a weather crisis.”

Future Change as Seen by American Right-wing Talk Radio (2011-12)

  1. Existential threats to the American Constitution. Mostly from “Sharia Law,” which is sort of like the American Constitution for Moslem Islamofascists.
  2. Imminent collapse of all fiat currencies, somehow leading to everyday use of fungible gold bars.
  3. Sudden, frightening rise of violent, unemployable, disease-carrying “Occupy Wall Street” anarchists who are bent on intimidation and repressing free speech.
  4. Hordes of immigrants being illegally encouraged to flood the polls.
  5. Lethal and immoral US government health-care.
  6. Radical Gay Agenda / Litigious Feminazis (tie).
  7. God’s Will. Surprisingly low-key, considering what an all-purpose justification this is.

“I’ve got a soft spot for chemtrail people, they’re really just sort of cool, and much more interesting than UFO cultists, who are all basically Christians. Jesus is always the number one Saucer Brother in UFO contactee cults. It’s incredible how little imagination the saucer people have.”

“Space Travel people. There’s no popular understanding of why space cities don’t work, though if you told them they’d have to spend the rest of their lives in the fuselage of a 747 at 30,000 feet, they’d be like “Gosh that’s terrible.”

“Transcendant spiritual drug enthusiasts. You go into one of those medical marijuana dispensaries nowadays, they’re like huckster chiropractors, basically. The whole ethical-free-spirit surround of the psychedelic dreamtime is gone. It’s like the tie-dyed guys toking up in the ashram have been replaced by the carcasses of 12,000 slaughtered Mexicans.”

Original discussion on the Well.