An upward redistribution of certain undesirable futures

Natural filters applied

Like all supplicants of literary cyberpunk, I’ve devoted a decent amount of armchair time to parsing the oft-quoted William Gibson-attributed maxim, “The future is already here -- it’s just not very evenly distributed.” Despite having some serious attribution issues, it is a favorite of technology optimists and a mainstay of douchebag keynotes for all sorts of industry conferences. It is generally interpreted as some version of the following -- that human progress realized in “the future” is generally technology-enabled and that those on the lower socio-economic rungs have less access to the technologies (the Internet, ubiquitous computing, etc.) with which “the future” manifests. A footnote would point out that, yes, many technologies have been distributed down the socio-economic ladder as they have become cheaper to manufacture at scale.

There are other futures, though, largely outside of the experience of the global upper and middle classes. From Bhopal, to disappearing shorelines in the South Pacific, to the corrupt water supply in Flint, to mountains of e-waste in East Asia, the distribution of futures of ecological disaster has disproportionately occurred among the poor. Obviously, these have none of the desirable qualities of the tech-utopias promised by Silicon Valley firms, but they are indeed a whole class of futures that are equally anthropogenic, often enabled as they are by production of the desirable technologies driving the aforementioned virtuous futures.

The onset of smoky, particulate-laden air that settled over some of the wealthiest cities in North America over the past two weeks prompted many to comment on the unprecedented nature of the environmental conditions. Briefly, Seattle had the worst air quality in the world, several times worse than that of Beijing, New Delhi, etc. While it is a significant event that bodes poorly for fire seasons yet to come, it is important to acknowledge that poor air quality is a daily reality for many people around the world. Beijing will have poor air next week, and the week after that. Seattle, Vancouver, and Portland will recover and forget about their temporary misfortune until next fire season.

At the end of the day, we, the globally fortunate, are simply getting our overdue apportionment of this particular, non-virtuous future. We will not learn what we need to from this experience, and that is, of course, shameful and regrettable.