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How to Avert a Digital Dystopia
Why we need to start challenging the prevailing conversations around tech
“What I find [ominous] is how seldom, today, we see the phrase ‘the 22nd century.’ Almost never. Compare this with the frequency with which the 21st century was evoked in popular culture during, say, the 1920s.”
—William Gibson, famed science-fiction author, in an interview on dystopian fiction.
The 2010s are almost over. And it doesn’t quite feel right.
When the end of 2009 came into view, the end of the 2000s felt like a relatively innocuous milestone. The current moment feels so much more, what’s the word?
Ah, yes: dystopian.
Looking back, “dystopia” might have been the watchword of the 2010s. Black Mirror debuted close to the beginning of the decade, and early in its run, it was sometimes critiqued for how over-the-top it all felt. Now, at the end of the decade, it’s regularly critiqued as made obsolete by reality.
And it’s not just prestige TV like Black Mirror reflecting the decade’s mood of incipient collapse. Of the 2010s top 10 highest-grossing films, by my count at least half involve an apocalypse either narrowly averted or, in fact, taking place (I’m looking at you, Avengers movies).
