This artistic depiction of three envisioned futures for earth has been getting passed around several blogs lately. It's a large image, but definitely worth taking a look at, because the stereotypes it presents are pivotal to our understanding of our place in the context of history. Before reading further, I suggest looking at the three futures, and think about which one you would want to live in.

Now, the reason I'm writing this entry is because I found Ran Prieur's recent comments about it to be intriguing enough that I thought I'd throw on some thoughts of my own.

With his fairly surprising remarks, Ran again reminds me of why I would classify him as an intellectual and spiritual trailblazer.

I have a confession to make: I like #1 [the "worst case" ecological disaster] the best! It's the messiest and the most free. In #2 [technotopian scifi future], there's a sign saying "No ground vehicles in this sector," which means the streets can be legally occupied only by flying cars and you have to buy one to go anywhere. In #3 [ecotopia] people can walk in the roads. But only in #1 can plants grow in the roads. To me #1 is the fun future because I could go anywhere and do anything. Want to gather car doors and old power lines and build a house? Climb that wall? Look through that building? No one will stop you!

The real worst case scenario is the techno-"fix" the way it would really be: the entire Earth looks like present-day Phoenix, covered with pavement and strip malls and ugly houses, except there are no cracks. All life -- plant, animal, and human -- is totally controlled. I'm aiming for the opposite, a world with all the wide-openness and chaos of #1, and all the greenness and human community of #3, and only enough of #2 to make things messier.

A few years ago, I would definitely have been in the camp of looking forward to #2. Advancement of technology, represented by the flying cars and big fancy slick buildings, seemed like an ideal worth pursuing to me. It would mean the end of pain, suffering, sickness, and conflict, to be replaced by ever more beautiful and dazzling human creations, faster travel, a unified human race, an ability to transcend and evolve to the stars. I was transfixed by Gene Roddenberry's vision.

Then, bits and pieces of this wonderous new future began to arrive -- not just projected to be developed sometime within my lifetime, but available here and NOW. Gigabytes upon gigabytes of data storage -- an amount that seemed huge even when I was in high school -- became standard. Suddenly, it became possible to access virtually any piece of information without leaving the bedroom, store entire music collections in the space of a few cubic centimeters, and traverse massive virtual 3d worlds with near-photorealistic rendering. Everything we technologists thought we wanted, at least in the realm of computer advancement, was made available to us. (Other areas have progressed significantly too. Just because I'm emphasizing the computer/internet aspect here doesn't mean I'm ignoring other developments; I just don't want to write about it all night before getting to the point.)

But in the case of this observer, something in the milk started to sour just a tiny bit. Long story short: With time, I came to recognize that the technotopian future as bringer of true human fulfillment was more of a mirage than an oasis.

When I looked at the image a few days ago, I instantly gravitated toward #3, the ecotopian future. I love the fresh produce stand, the people walking in the road, riding their bikes, pulling their wagons, drinking from the fountain, and playing instruments in the forest. I would certainly be willing to give up my car to live in a place like that. My movies? Maybe. My computer? That's harder. I suspect I'll get to that psychological spot eventually, but I don't think I'm there yet.

Though I did not initially have the same reaction he did, Ran's thoughts have inspired me to think harder and deeper about it. His objection to both of the bottom 2 images seems to be about the degree of control, or "order" imposed in both of them.

I definitely share this reaction to the second one. Roads full of cars are hostile to humans, whether the cars are flying or just rolling down the road at 70mph. If you're outside the cars, their noise and speed makes you feel like roadkill-in-waiting along a big stretch of noisy nothing. If you're inside one of them, you're trapped in your own little bubble, unable to communicate effectively with people in any of the other bubbles, and the only directions you're able to go are set in place by predetermined lane markers and concrete dividers, your ability to move at all constantly subject to the whim of stop lights and rush hour traffic. No wonder there's so much road rage! Making cars fly would not help any of that.

As for a "controlled and orderly" eco-future.... Frankly, I'm torn. Like I suspect Ran is, I'm weary of the degree to which doing anything of substance outside the narrow confines of the dominant control systems is effectively prohibited in the present U.S. (or any "civilized") culture.

Increasingly, the system seems to want to divide our lives as follows: You're allowed to sleep and watch tv at point A. You're allowed to work at point B. You're allowed to shop at point C. You're allowed to traverse between these points, so long as you do so without straying outside the designated lines.

No, we're not completely there yet, but as more and more "property" becomes "private", and any area that isn't marked No Trespassing becomes subject to increasingly harsh restrictions (i.e. "no sleeping", "no swimming", "no climbing on or around", "public park -- closed after 10pm", etc etc etc), we approach the asymptote of subliminal totalitarianism.

Sure, we might eventually get the Patriot Act repealed, but even if we did, the joke would still be on us. Because even if all of us are theoretically "free" in the eyes of the law, we're bound either by territorial regulations or owners of whatever ground we stand on at any given moment. (Think spending years to pay off a mortgage to own property will be a solution? Think again. But even if most American neighbors and city councils weren't a bunch of garden-hating fascists, it would still be a trap, because then your "freedom" would be confined to an acre or two. You can be "free" so long as you stay within the bounds of your little plot of land, and never leave. Hah!)

I have digressed, but I am coming back to the point.

A question to ponder: Is the Ecotopia depicted in the image any more "free" than the present way of life in America? I draw a distinction between genuine freedom, and living in a more aesthetically agreeable prison. Are any of the three futures more or less "free" than we are now? Libre.

Ran votes #1 as having a greater degree of freedom, but I'm not so sure. Since he makes the assumption that the land in #1 is still habitable by humans (otherwise he wouldn't be able to be there to enjoy it), what's to say there isn't a gang with knives hiding in one of the abandoned buildings, waiting to come out and bully anyone who enters the vicinity? It seems that Ran's assumption of #3 being less restrictive is predicated on the apparent sparseness of the human population. If there's no people around to enforce established rules or make new ones up to push you around, then you can do whatever you want. So maybe what Ran really wants is less people? (Hmmm... maybe I'll email that question to him.)

Even in our present world, if you can find a place where nobody is around to enforce them, the rules can be ignored. Yes, ubiquitous GPS tracking and RFID tagging has the potential to make this much harder, but right now, at 1am, I could go out to one of Lincoln's officially closed-at-night public parks, sit at a picnic table and meditate, and as long as I don't try to draw attention to myself, the chances of being found by a cop in the short term are pretty tiny. (But again, if I tried to do anything constructive in a material sense, like removing a small patch of the monoculture grass and planting a vegetable garden in its place, my work would certainly be destroyed by the authorities long before anything sprouted from the soil.)

It may also be that Ran's issue isn't so much with the density of the human population, but the concentration of that power. Let's say there are vicious gangs in the disaster future. Would those be better or worse than the near-monopoly of force currently held by the state? Most people (myself included), conditioned by years of propaganda, would probably tend to believe life under the state would be easier than fending off roving attackers in a chaotic land. But is it really, or are we just fooling ourselves?

If you and your friends fend off a nasty gang in the post-apocalyptic future, then they probably won't bother you anymore. But in our world, if by some magic stroke of luck, you manage to fend off a police drug raid, then you'll likely have the national guard or some other insanely armored monstrosity to contend with. Then you're either dead or in jail for a long time. Which is the better deal?

I reach no firm conclusions, except this: All of these imagined futures, along with both their inspiring and loathsome characteristics, are fantasy. Fantasy can be useful. Fantasy can be fun. Fantasy can also be a trap for the mind.

I submit that the bicycling treehouse ecotopia, as well as the free and wild wasteland, are every bit as unrealistic and absurd as Gene Roddenberry's vision of the 24th century. Buying into any of these images with the expectation that eventually reaching them will bring about happiness makes disappointment inevitable. At the same time, I'd rather not discard them entirely either.

Here's what I'm going to do, and I'll invite any of my 5 readers to try it too. Rather than looking at the image you prefer, and thinking of it as something to be brought about sometime in the next century or two, why not look around at the present world, and try to see things that resemble whatever you like about your chosen image.

For example, I fancy the ecotopian world, with a small smattering of Ran's chaotic realm of unpredictable wildness, and maybe just a small dab of techno-fun so long as it doesn't dominate the scene. So my assignment is to go about my life, and find similarities in my world to the ecotopian-with-a-dab-of-wild-techno paradise. Then, simply embrace and appreciate those moments and experiences. (Heehee, I'm already looking forward to going to Open Harvest tomorrow. At least it has some of that ecotopian fruit.)

If you're into the total techno-fix, then hell, I say go there! Walk around inside Best Buy and look at all the flatscreen tv monitors. Relish it.

I like to think of the painting as a way for us to highlight the parts of life we value. A lens through which to focus our attention on our present.

With that, I'll sign off of this overlong piece of wandering madness. Mad props to bouncing, sgalvin, and the x13-ites for getting the database back in working order again. That's all.