There will be many different perspectives and narratives, but how do you think the general consensus will be like about Trump, conspiracy theories like flat earth, anti-vaxxers, QAnon, and our response to Covid?
Both serious and comedic answers would be appreciated.
The decade where the US stopped being the global hegemon and the rise of China w/ Xi leading the ideological charge
2010s US history will be weird because its kind of just the government failing to deal with the economic and foreign policy blunders we did to ourselves
I agree with your point more than OP's I think, but at the same time other countries may voluntarily start to follow the lead of the PRC if they hold their current trajectory a bit longer.
Instead of tactical pressure from the Chinese government, it will be implicit pressure to change simply by falling behind the rest of the world, similar to how social democracies formed in Europe on the doorstep of the USSR
Historians will lump the 1980s through 2020 together as one time block, called either the neoliberal period or mockingly called "the end of history."
The covid pandemic gets put into the next block, as the inciting incident for the end of US hegemony and start of the labor rebellions.
(All of the above is like a high school history level of detail. Better histories will talk about all the shit that lead to where we are, instead of just "because pandemic.")
mockingly called “the end of history.”
I'll definitely call it this in my history book.
Sonny in my day we had machines that could fly hundreds of people in the sky!
We had ice any time we wanted it!
We had fresh blueberries in December!
I dunno, I was just going to start an aquafarm or something. Kids need their vitamins.
I'm all about the aquaponics. Let's meet up post-collapse and set up a tilapia farm.
I'm interested in how the past decade in technology will be remembered.
Cell phones are largely a matured product at this point and it doesn't seem like they'll be earth-shatteringly different in the future. The only major hardware drawbacks they have are blue light, poor repairability, and terrible ergonomics/accessibility (I want there to be a renewed interest in chorded keyboards or old blackberry-style form factors in the future). These are all fairly petty issues compared to the nightmares in the software side of things. The hardware folks of the world have done alright.
Computers are no longer a novelty for business interests and rich kids and Doom and LimeWire, but instead an inaccessible and unreliable core function of daily life that gets people depressed and addicted to social media. Boomers still get made fun of for not engaging with that bullshit for some reason. Dot com busted for a reason, technology won't save the world, help grandma with her bullshit passwords.
chorded keyboards
I first used a personal computer in 1985. It was a Mac. I asked my friend how to use it and he opened up the drawing program and simply said "Draw with it." I complained I didn't know how to do anything so he so grabbed the mouse and he said "I'll make a circle." I couldn't believe how simple and intuitive things were. The mouse and Apple's GUI blew my mind.
I can't believe how years have turned to decades and other input systems never replaced the qwerty plus mouse combo.
I want a chorded keyboard phone with a replaceable battery and an e ink screen :(
other input systems never replaced the qwerty plus mouse combo.
Not for lack of trying, though. Voice inputs, tablets for handwriting, and other things have been around forever but a big part of why the qwerty keyboard remains is that it's a really efficient design.
why the qwerty keyboard remains is that it’s a really efficient design
I can't speak to that because I don't know a thing about how good/bad the alternatives are - but a few things are still odd to me....
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Instead of one input thing - there are two things - a keyboard and the mouse.
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A qwerty keyboard is pretty big
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On desktop - you can't do input standing up or laying down using a traditional keyboard + mouse.
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Maybe it's still waaaaaaay too expensive but there's no heads up entry either. I mean using glasses as a mouse or whatever.
To use a very old fashioned word - everything seems oddly hidebound.
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I’ve been playing the fun game of thinking through how you’d describe current events in that textbook passive voice the way you’d describe like Roman history and it’s really floored me with how insane the modern moment is. The US is already in an a terminal state of collapse. Sure that doesn’t mean much to us in day to day life but when you’re a high school student learning about the last days of the American empire you’ll learn about 2008 or maybe the 80s and 90s as the last hurrah and not bother with the fine detail history of which states kept their vital infrastructure running the longest. And either way you’re just going to memorize a three word answer as to why it all came down rather than grasping all the insanity. School kids will learn the word financialization and move on, shit like QAnon will just be a fun fact blurb in the textbook margins. I mean really how much do you understand about how the Holy Roman Empire formed out of the corpse of Rome? I know I don’t know shit and I imagine that’s how people will feel reading about this point in history. Just a bunch of confusing mess before the next big thing really takes off
I always like to fantasize about the alien archaeologists that will survey earth in the future, and what amazing conclusions they might come to looking at our artifacts. Like, clearly humanity choked on its own fumes because they refused to stop producing sex arses
yeah that is the only story from the Evergiven blocking the Suez that survives
we're really in a new era of diplomacy. cold war diplomacy is out. monopolar neoliberal diplomacy is out. china really is doing some good shit, this new era of diplomacy is all about soft power
I find it almost comical the way that nuclear weapons and industrial globalization are pulling US/China relations to peace despite the bloodthirst of the American empire
