While reading examples raised in the first article, a question pops up: why are future imaginations always dark and pessimistic? Our ‘future’ is filled with natural disasters, running out of resources and pollutions together with the disappearance of social structure.
In the serial drama Black Mirror, many episodes depict how high technology improves people’s quality of life in the beginning. But almost every one of them turns out to have a heart-broken ending, full of irony, suspicion and critics.
The negative imagination of human nature terrifies me more than the physical ones. It seems that the accumulation of human intelligence, wisdom, and culture doesn’t have the power to restrict or improve people’s behavior anymore. Society and moral rules are eroding because of all kinds of crimes and violence.
I understand the motivation behind all these can be warning people today that we spare no effort to achieve sustainability and not rely on technology too much. Still, I’m looking forward to reading some fiction with bright and harmonious expectations.
Wang Huiquan 3035637515
You started off your essay with a good question: why most of the future cities are depicted as grim and bleak? To situate your argument, I would suggest seeking reasons behind such interpretation. Where have the suspicions come from? Relating this concern to Walter Benjamin’s scepticism toward modernity could be worthwhile as well. Take information technology, for example, and narrate them through the “Black Mirror”. How has technology affected our lives, for better or worse? Maybe it would also be more meaningful to read this future image through M. Christine Boyer’s perspective on cyber-cities.