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Storytellers need to finally start taking responsibility for the world they are inventing. #BladeRunner2049 #GhostInTheShell2017
We aren’t just doing movies, games, TV, VR. W SciFi narratives, we are creating cultural visions of the future that will bleed into reality
This shit becomes real. Look at Minority Report’s surveillance state dystopia. Ohh cool, you have world-built that?!?
Technological innovation without humanitarian evolution always = dystopian future. We’ve been fetishizing dystopias for too long.
Black Mirror cautionary tales have a role to play - but it’s clear that they are stories of what we really DON’T want.
Most of dystopian Sci Fi is clearly not that tho. We keep designing futures devoid of humanity the future becomes devoid of humanity.
We must think what kind of ideologies the stories we tell will empower. We MUST think what kind of tech we will inspire to be invented.
We MUST think of geopolitical & sociocultural context into which our narratives & world design will land & what they will tacitly ‘approve’
I am mad as hell for all the amazing future characters & designs that we could have that we just never have.
Women, PoC, LGBTQI, differently abled folks just never get the opportunity to be the heroes they are in the real life.
Our future depictions lack behind our present reality. Just think of gender/family/youth depictions. The shit’s stuck in the 50s
Think of the lack of any advanced environmental/regenerative action in any of these future worlds & how it holds back this world
Think of total lack of creativity as a means to hack urban fabric & human experience in these Sci Fi worlds & why that vision is toxic
Futures where the only thing we do is kill each other or try to escape from being killed are fucking damn toxic
Futures where poetry is not even a distant dream anymore but dead altogether. Are toxic of how we think of what it means to be human today.
What is the message of the 3 scenes where PoC where featured in #BladeRunner2049? Grossly racist depictions barely anyone even notices
Hindi, Korean, Japanese writing floating in the Sci Fi city but none of the people of those cultures actually given a voice. That’s toxic.
We appropriate your culture but we do not want your people. That’s as colonialist as a message gets for the future we make. It’s NOT ok.
These futures we design have effects on actual peoples lives, today. In how people are seen or not seen to have a say for a future we build
The shit we normalize, the shit we grow humanity accustomed to. The shit we do not question in these future narratives that become ours.
Eg the environmental destruction as the only fate for the planet earth. So we keep building economomies that in no way can coexist w nature
So we keep designing tech for the sake of tech for the gadgetry of it all & continue being unable to have a convo on how tech is but a tool
So we keep postponing the discussion on what is the responsibility for each of us to engage with the future we will be inhabiting
Nostalgia is poison but so is tech fetishism. We need new future narratives more than ever before.
Don’t be complicit with racist, sexist, ableist visions media feeds you. Silence is violence. We all have a voice, let’s use it.
Future is ours to be questioned & to be imagined. Future is ours to be inspired. Future with color, texture, diversity, integrity.
This planet is a place of so much real-life magick. Let’s never forget that. Let’s not let anyone erase that from the future narratives.
I don’t want vanilla utopias but give me futures with something I can be inspired by. That’s what creativity is for. To inspire. Not to kill
Not to kill all hope all agency all & anything that feels like future as possibility space. We need hope that becomes action more than ever
We need futures that imagine beyond the bleakness of western perspectives. Futures beyond extreme individualism & late stage capitalism
Futures where tenderness wonder poetry are given a chance. & I’m not talking some cheesy romanticism but an actual political thought.
Because that’s what makes us human. We actually are creative emotional playful animals. & if we forget that there’s no chance we’ll survive
All I want to do is design future worlds where the plurality of humanity’s colors & cultures could actually belong in & be celebrated
Future that is post-gender, post-race, post-nation-state. Future where we are defined by what we choose not what we were born into.
& why is this important? Because if we cannot see it, we won’t be able to do it. The urgency of changing future narratives is real. Join in
Oh & last thing. Cynicism in face of this is as dangerous as it is lazy. & what it ultimately does is enabling fascism. Don’t do that.
