From: John Marlow (johnmarrek@yahoo.com)
Date: Sat Jan 13 2001 - 00:58:14 MST
> But why was the renascence of a red-blooded,
> fundamentalist capitalism not
> foreseen? Why, indeed, did Huxley in Brave New World
> (1932), Orwell in
> Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) and Clarke and Kubrick
> in A Space Odyssey (1968)
> have so little to say about economics, given its
> centrality to human life?
> Why, in effect, did they assume that technology or
> planning would take care
> of economic issues?
>
**Because economics is boring and reading about it is
no one's idea of a good time.
john marlow
--- Randy Smith <randysmith101@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Why did Sci Fi fail to miss all the important
> developments of the future?
> And analysis, etc...
>
>
> From (this URL may be in 2 pieces):
>
>
http://globalarchive.ft.com/globalarchive/articles.html?id=010106001370&query=kubrick
>
> An excerpt:
>
> >>
> But why was the renascence of a red-blooded,
> fundamentalist capitalism not
> foreseen? Why, indeed, did Huxley in Brave New World
> (1932), Orwell in
> Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) and Clarke and Kubrick
> in A Space Odyssey (1968)
> have so little to say about economics, given its
> centrality to human life?
> Why, in effect, did they assume that technology or
> planning would take care
> of economic issues?
>
> The answer, I think, is that none of them imagined
> that the clock could be
> turned back. Converts to the market often imagine
> they are embracing a new
> philosophy. In reality, they are old fogies who are
> uncritically recycling
> ideas first popular in the 17th and 18th centuries.
>
> That was the era when the leading philosophers,
> influenced by Newton's
> mechanistic physics, created the myth of the
> atomistic individual that
> undergirds the market ideology. The intellectual
> history of the 19th and
> early 20th centuries is largely one of a heroic
> struggle to demonstrate the
> flaws in that superficially appealing story.
>
> [Comment: is randism et al supported by the
> hardwired respect we as social
> animals have for the alpha beast? Hero worship etc
> ...]
>
> Huxley and the others never conceived that
> politicians would again become
> slavish adherents to a framework of ideas that had
> been found wanting by
> leading philosophers and sociologists.
>
> Taking the long view, they were probably right,
> which is not to say that
> their totalitarian fantasies were realistic. Our
> ultra- individualistic,
> market-led society is probably a historical
> aberration. It will evolve into
> something different (dare I say something more
> advanced?), even if we avoid
> an economic or environmental calamity.
>
> Looking forward 50 or 100 years I find it hard to
> imagine that societies
> will continue to place so much confidence in brash
> young traders and
> round-the-clock casino-style financial markets. I
> doubt they will accept our
> wealth differentials or the psychological stress and
> social upheaval
> generated by unrestrained competition.
>
> If I believed there were any point in futurology, I
> would predict a more
> sane, stable and just form of social organisation.
> There is something called
> progress and we won't be constrained by an 18th
> century template forever.
> >>>
>
>
> What's old is new....(meet the new boss, same as the
> old boss...)
>
>
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