Last Sunday, June 21st, was very busy. Fathers' Day. US Open. World Cup. Locally, the Tall Ships in port. And, most significantly, the summer solstice officially shuffled in at 4:24 in the morning. The first day of summer has the most sunlight (and right now we're blessed with a lot of it here), and the North Pole is facing the Sun directly. We're going to ignore the Druid impersonators/cosplayers who gathered at Stonehenge and other sites to wear tablecloths and bang pie plates together, or whatever it is they do to make the evening news.
On the Fathers' Day front, I was in the grocery store when I saw a young millennial (aren't they all?) picking out a couple of bunches of flowers. I said, 'Interesting choice for a Fathers' Day gift.' He looked at me blankly and said, 'They're a Father's Day gift.'
I'd really like some insight into that relationship.
For some reason, while listening to 'news' that the war with Iran was entering its fifth month, the perpetual war in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four popped into my head. Being a diligent sort, and not remembering the name of the countries at war (c'mon, cut me some slack! I read Nineteen Eighty Four long before 1984), I hie myself (hie is a new entry on my favorite words list, along with fraught) off to Wikipedia, where, before finding what I'm looking for, I read Great Britain, now known as Airstrip One, has become a province of the totalitarian superstate Oceania, which is led by Big Brother, a dictatorial leader supported by an intense cult of personality manufactured by the Party's Thought Police. The Party engages in omnipresent government surveillance....
The two countries at war are Oceana and Eurasia… no, wait, Eastasia–it changed during the course of the story. At any rate, Oceana is constantly racking up victories, inflicting many casualties on the enemy, and yet the war never ends.
The guys.
I've been seeing lots of groups of guys on the street today, a Tuesday morning. Walking dogs, joggers, a random, spontaneous gathering of guys chatting for a serious length of time. Some are escorting young 'uns, others dogs, but they're all off devices, talking to each other.
This is something I've been seeing with women for a long time. Sure, there are the singles, dedicated runners/joggers, walkers with or without dogs, moms pushing strollers. But as often as not, women are out in groups of two to five, chatting, laughing, emphatically making a point. So nice.
The guys are all ages, too, from just out of college to golden agers. I don't know what to make of it. Vacation? Retirees? Stay-at-home dads? Hybrids or work from homers? Actively looking for work? Have the idle rich invaded our neighborhood?
Anyway, it's nice to see. I can't clearly hear what they're saying. The tone drifts through the door, but it doesn't seem to be idle chatter about sports, lawns or barbecue (although some of those mesquite v. applewood smoke discussions can get heated). Maybe after all this time, men have finally discovered what women have known for a long time, that there are benefits in bonding and sharing.
The future.
Apparently (unnoticed by me) The Wall Street Journal has been running a series of columns called USA250. The one I noticed was called How we will entertain ourselves in the future.
The future, for those of you who like to know these things, is 2046, or twenty years from now, and no, I don't know how they settled on that date.
The Journal asked 'a panel of entertainment experts' to weigh in. I have no idea what one of those is or does, or what the qualifications are.
Not that I particularly care, because I probably won't be around at the time, but the list is sad. Also wrong. The first thing that struck me was, of the 13 items mentioned (all of which are individual fantasies), not one mentions work, which currently occupies at least a third of our lives. The amount of work we do and where we do it may change, but we will still work. It's been a thing for a while, and how-what-when-where-how we work will impact how we entertain ourselves.
Here's where the sad comes in.
- Consumerism. Almost all of the activities described require devices that themselves require absorption in video games with thought interaction, meta worlds, virtual reality, and brain implants. Only two items mention something we can do right now.
- The death of creativity. With the exception (maybe) of board games and enjoying outdoors, everyone describes working with prepackaged entertainment. In this world, nobody writes, sings, draws, paints, or adds anything to the world's store of creative expression. I'm betting in this collective vision, all the software is AI generated.
- Other peoples' fantasies. Everything described here is what Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk have been developing. It's their worlds—we just get to hang around in them.
- Isolation. With the two possible exceptions, everything is stay at home, alone, with everything piped in, even to the point of being hooked up to feeding tubes.
- The death of reading. There are other signs that we may be entering a 'post-literate' phase, including falling book sales, but none of the thinkers/forecasters mention reading as an activity. Ironically, I not only read this piece, but did so in a 'dead-tree' format.
Or, can you say 'dystopia' or vision of hell?
I think there's another reason for me not to worry. Of the items on the list, easily half weren't in existence 20 years ago except maybe in the minds of some crazed Trekkers. We were a couple of years after the introduction ipod, movies were at a Blockbuster or delivered on DVD by mail, a year ahead of the iphone, fifteen years ahead of VR, eighteen years ahead of AI, streaming was just beginning, and fifteen years ahead of pandemic-inspired homebasing, all of which figure prominently in the experts' vision of the future.
In the next twenty years, there will be more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
We will enjoy all sorts of new things we can't imagine. Plus there will be pushback, already being felt in some AI and VR circles. VR is already yesterday's news. Folk will grow angry, frustrated, and most importantly, bored. AI will be a support commodity that no one will care about.
And so it goes.
Revelation.
A paragraph, a sentence, a clause, a phrase, a word, can be or mean anything. Such is the power of metaphor.
Convenient, but...
Men's Journal announces Archaeologists Discover Ancient Roman Necropolis Beneath New Hospital Site.
It probably doesn't make any difference, but it's not a good look or a selling point for the hospital to be able to say 'burial sites on grounds available.' Any decent ghost-hunting show will tell you that.