As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, I was raised in the suburbs of Connecticut during the 90s and 2000s in a town called Waterford, right next to the small city of New London.
This is one of the honest outlook on technology and development. Great writing, too. Off topic: people worry about AI taking over writing, but this kind of thinking and writing (personal reflection) is very hard for AI take over, at least on the near future. What do you think?
Great article! Do you have some cognitive dissonance about Pfizer? They abandoned your home town, exemplifying zero sum thinking….but they also make vaccines for Covid, which is your techno-optimist inspiration.
Like, maybe their decision to abandon New London is part of the same ruthless mindset that makes it possible to build the future. Is it OK breaking a few eggs to make that glorious omelet we’ll all enjoy….someday?
Fair question. I don't think so, though. My minor point would be that the technical innovation behind the COVID vaccine came from BioNTech, with Pfizer providing operational support and financing.
More importantly, I think Pfizer, along with the rest of the biotech industry, has really progressed in the last 20 years in terms of how they think about the world. Part of that is that technology has progressed rapidly since then, and part of that is their outlook has grown a lot. I don't think the Pfizer of today has the same zero-sum mindset of the Pfizer of my childhood.
Excellent question. I think it was a combination of looking to avoid New London specific taxes and also looking for an excuse to lay off people anyways. It was right after their merger with Wyeth, and they were looking to "eliminate redundancies".
There definitely have been interesting fictional futures floating around for quite a while that include significant progress. Iain M Banks' "Culture" novels, for instance. Babylon 5, arguably. And of course various iterations of Star Trek (though the movie ones kind of turned darker). It does seem like in the past decade there's been a big upsurge. "The Expanse" has a kind of grittiness and a view in which a lot of people still live very difficult lives, but tech has expanded the scope of options and we've collectively muddled through. For All Mankind is maybe my favorite example of a series that is making the builders and do-ers the protagonists.
It's a bit more niche, but I also would recommend The Talos Principle and its sequel to anyone that's interested in utopianism as a theme. (The first game starts out pretty dark, but stay with it, the canonical ending of the second basically is the achievement of a post-scarcity society, and then the second of the three DLC chapters has some philosophical exploration of what the means -- what should people _do_ once freed from the idea of shortage, want, necessity? I'd recommend actually playing the DLC chapters out of order, putting that second one, Isle of the Blessed, last.)
Great suggestions! And I thought about including Star Trek in the piece, but I have to admit I'm only familiar with it from the movies. My dad tried to get me into it as a kid, but it always felt a little too cheesy for me. I should try again one of these days...
I have a lot of affection for it, but yeah the original series feel very dated. A decent bit of TNG and DS9 stand up, although they show the issues of having a LOT of episodes every season. There's filler. Babylon 5 is one of the early shows in the transition to having more power vested in the showrunners and writers to do extended narrative arcs -- the beginning of the "peak TV" era. (Though B5 is also very uneven at first -- there are some real stinker episodes in the first season. But then seasons 2-4 are just _spectacular_, and while s5 is marred by some problems with having moved networks and lost some cast, it's still a fairly satisfying conclusion. DS9 also turned into a good long-arc show, partway through its run.)
The recent series Strange New Worlds captures a lot of the feeling of the old shows. (Discovery was decent as well, although its final season was a bit disappointing.)
This is one of the honest outlook on technology and development. Great writing, too. Off topic: people worry about AI taking over writing, but this kind of thinking and writing (personal reflection) is very hard for AI take over, at least on the near future. What do you think?
I hope you'll get better soon.
Just letting you know that I share your "vague yearning to create a better future" 🫶
Great article! Do you have some cognitive dissonance about Pfizer? They abandoned your home town, exemplifying zero sum thinking….but they also make vaccines for Covid, which is your techno-optimist inspiration.
Like, maybe their decision to abandon New London is part of the same ruthless mindset that makes it possible to build the future. Is it OK breaking a few eggs to make that glorious omelet we’ll all enjoy….someday?
Fair question. I don't think so, though. My minor point would be that the technical innovation behind the COVID vaccine came from BioNTech, with Pfizer providing operational support and financing.
More importantly, I think Pfizer, along with the rest of the biotech industry, has really progressed in the last 20 years in terms of how they think about the world. Part of that is that technology has progressed rapidly since then, and part of that is their outlook has grown a lot. I don't think the Pfizer of today has the same zero-sum mindset of the Pfizer of my childhood.
<3 hope your cold resolves quickly
From Waterford to Groton it's a 15min drive... why bother laying off their senior staff anyway?
Excellent question. I think it was a combination of looking to avoid New London specific taxes and also looking for an excuse to lay off people anyways. It was right after their merger with Wyeth, and they were looking to "eliminate redundancies".
There definitely have been interesting fictional futures floating around for quite a while that include significant progress. Iain M Banks' "Culture" novels, for instance. Babylon 5, arguably. And of course various iterations of Star Trek (though the movie ones kind of turned darker). It does seem like in the past decade there's been a big upsurge. "The Expanse" has a kind of grittiness and a view in which a lot of people still live very difficult lives, but tech has expanded the scope of options and we've collectively muddled through. For All Mankind is maybe my favorite example of a series that is making the builders and do-ers the protagonists.
It's a bit more niche, but I also would recommend The Talos Principle and its sequel to anyone that's interested in utopianism as a theme. (The first game starts out pretty dark, but stay with it, the canonical ending of the second basically is the achievement of a post-scarcity society, and then the second of the three DLC chapters has some philosophical exploration of what the means -- what should people _do_ once freed from the idea of shortage, want, necessity? I'd recommend actually playing the DLC chapters out of order, putting that second one, Isle of the Blessed, last.)
Great suggestions! And I thought about including Star Trek in the piece, but I have to admit I'm only familiar with it from the movies. My dad tried to get me into it as a kid, but it always felt a little too cheesy for me. I should try again one of these days...
I have a lot of affection for it, but yeah the original series feel very dated. A decent bit of TNG and DS9 stand up, although they show the issues of having a LOT of episodes every season. There's filler. Babylon 5 is one of the early shows in the transition to having more power vested in the showrunners and writers to do extended narrative arcs -- the beginning of the "peak TV" era. (Though B5 is also very uneven at first -- there are some real stinker episodes in the first season. But then seasons 2-4 are just _spectacular_, and while s5 is marred by some problems with having moved networks and lost some cast, it's still a fairly satisfying conclusion. DS9 also turned into a good long-arc show, partway through its run.)
The recent series Strange New Worlds captures a lot of the feeling of the old shows. (Discovery was decent as well, although its final season was a bit disappointing.)