Visions Explained

Image by H Graem © 2005

The visions posted on this blog are viewed through a figurative telescope peering two hundred years into the future. The visions hold the potential - whether desired, needed or feared - to be part of our human existence two centuries from now. 

The future will retain much of the present. Therefore, certain visions might relate to preservation and enhancement of the best found on the planet today. Such visions could include new approaches to sustaining our planet's wilderness and wildlife. Other visions relate to a frontier. Such visions could encompass better ways to evolve cities or new knowledge stimulated by planets discovered orbiting neighboring stars. 

Function

H Graem © 2005

Visions can motivate people to change the status quo. They should excite the 'human soul'. ‘Gloom and doom’, although sometimes useful in showing the need for change, will seldom move enough people to actually implement change.

People respond to visions that depict an attractive future for themselves and their children. The possibilities embraced by those visions must be both optimistic and exciting. The future must be perceived to be desirable.

Technology is key to the implementation of most of these visions. If technological progress falters,  most of these visions will not come to pass. For instance, if sufficient alternative non-carbon sources of cheap energy fail to arise,

Why 2200?

Characteristics of vision-making leaping forward to the twenty third century include:

• not dependent on current social trends or the state of scientific knowledge,
• parochial decisions based on who will ‘win’ or ‘lose’ are less likely,
• no immediate threat to living persons from implementation of the visions,
• visions valued for their innate qualities, not on their 'realism’ in relationship to current borders, politics, trends, technology or land ownership and development patterns,
• further expand the implications of certain trends evident today,
• eliminate possible obsolescence in the near future if the vision fails to occur due to an overly optimistic time frame (Witness the 1968 movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey),
• It's fun!

 

Creative Destruction

Lonely Horses
H Graem © 2004

Visions of the future can be both uplifting and depressing, depending on one's perspective. A single vision can prompt different reactions from different people. As spoken by Joseph Schumpeter, innovation, the bringing to life of human visions, produces 'creative destruction'.

The concept of the automobile brought a vision of excitement and new freedom to many people at the beginning of the last century. It also brought relief from horse pollution of our city streets. To blacksmiths, wagon makers, buggy whip makers, stable owners and hay farmers, it brought the loss of occupation and livelihood.

There is always the unintended consequences of innovations with major impacts on society. Digital photography brought to the photographer a new freedom and outlet for creativity. It also destroyed one of the great corporations of the world, Kodak, and brought the photo printing business to its knees.