The Future Can Be Evenly Distributed … If We Want It To Be

by M. Christian

The future is here. It’s just not widely distributed yet. –William Gibson

I’ve been thinking a lot about this quote.  Like a lot of people, I first interpreted it as the father of cyberpunk making a statement against income, and technology, disparity: that only the wealthy could afford the future.

But then I began to rethink that supposition.  First of all, how could the future be here, in the present?  Making this subjective, I like to think of a present future as being a current environment where someone from the past would find few places of reference: a place where old, and flawed systems have been replaced with new perspectives.

it can’t just be just about technology.  After all, everyone has friends or relatives who can afford the newest [fill in the blank] yet are clueless in how to use it to affect their lives for the better.  

Home automation falls squarely into this camp.  Yes, the wealthy can spent serious bucks getting their intelligent personal assistant to do everything from turn on their lights to play their favorite music, but does it make any real shifts in how they live?  At it’s core this tech is basically just a more elaborate way of flipping a switch or scrolling through a playlist.

This means that for many people with too much money to spend on technology they are still basically living as they have been for decades.   Read more “The Future Can Be Evenly Distributed … If We Want It To Be”