[lambdasquirrel]

In immigrant circles, we lament this notion that the first generation works its ass off, the second generation studies its ass off, and the third generation parties its ass off. I think that what we see in cinema is kind of linked.

America post-WWII worked and studied its ass off. Then it defeated the Soviets. You ask people today though, what they think of the future, and I think that the picture is bleak not merely because of the economic malaise, but because people don't know what to strive for.

In a competitive sense, who are we fighting? Our ostensible enemies are (1) the lunatic fringe of Islam and maybe also Christianity, and (2) China/India, depending on who looks more fearful in any given year, except the West also trades and intermarries with those cultures. I think the kicker is that Westerners don't even fetish after Chinese and Indians the way they used to.

Now in a purely constructive sense, what does the future hold? Well we've already seen that the tech industry simply isn't providing jobs for most people the way that manufacturing did. And why should it? Lets face it, our culture is not one that really values math or science or engineering. Most of you weren't popular when you were kids, am I right? It's not nice to hoard all of the pie, but it's not easy to share it on these terms either. The best programmers are supposedly 10x-100x better than the average ones, so even if more people did get into tech, they'd probably be discouraged and see it to be insurmountably difficult, and they might be right.

Tech has increased the productivity of workers in the West, but it has not necessarily increased the well-being of the average person, and that's what cinema was originally made for. It is a mass media. It caters to the common man, and the common man probably thinks better of the past than the future. I think it isn't surprising then that the latest Star Trek actually feels strangely like a retro-future, or that the tech in it is just shiny polished toys. I think that's the real danger here, that in tech, we will simply just relegate ourselves to making shiny toys for people, and all they do is consume. That's probably not the path to a healthy future for our society.

It may be instructive to look at a series like Firefly, or even BSG. When people are feeling down, they want to be empathized, and Firefly assuages that in a way. In the future, even if things all go to hell, some people will still make it out, by the ties they share and their ingenuity.

[nazgulnarsil]

>but it has not necessarily increased the well-being of the average person

2000-2010 was the greatest decade in all of human history for upraising the standard of living of the human race as a whole. The attitude in this entire comments thread sickens me.

[AJ007]

Human history is a story of people nostalgic for the past, believing things are going to hell, oblivious to improvements.

When I was born two big countries had nuclear weapons pointed at each other with the very realistic possibility of exchange. Everything we built could be eradicated in an hour or two. We are quite better off.

[gizmo686]

I'm reminded of a history class I had relatively recently. We were talking about the cold war, and the issue of modern terrorism came up. My history teacher made the point that, looking back, many people are nostolgic because in the cold war, the president could pick up the phone to the soviets and talk to someone rational.

I doubt anyone at the time thought that.

[nknighthb]

> When I was born two big countries had nuclear weapons pointed at each other with the very realistic possibility of exchange.

The only time at which that hasn't been true was a brief period during the early-mid 1990s. India and Pakistan are not small countries.

[smokeapotamus]

`Do not ask, ``Why were the old days better than these?'' For it is not wise to ask such questions.' (Ecclesiastes 7:10)

[lambdasquirrel]

Besides that this completely missed the context, that we are talking about the American mass media, and American nostalgia, I'd argue that time will have to tell on this matter. 2000-2010 started well for most of the world, but major faults were revealed in the global economic system. We may well look back on this time period much as we would with the Roaring 20's. What if most of the growth was fake? What if it really were all just financed by deficit spending on the part of the West, and that China, India and the rest of the developing world cannot uphold their current levels of infrastructure, let alone their level of prosperity?