The not very evenly distributed future
[ by Charles Cameron — feeling a little more Bladerunner, are we? ]
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Here are a couple of tweeted news stories with relevant quotes below each of them, from one day’s mid-morning twitter feed — with thanks to fine scholars Stephen O’Leary, master of apocalyptic rhetoric, and Thomas Hegghammer, master of Jihadist culture and folkways:
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One: Nature
Read it and weep: https://t.co/Xur5LthgNX @hipbonegamer
— Stephen D. O'Leary (@StephenDOLeary) March 3, 2018
After Hurricane Maria, 300,000 Puerto Ricans fled to Florida, and disaster experts estimate that climate and weather events displaced more than 1 million Americans from their homes last year. These statistics don’t begin to capture the emotional and financial toll on survivors who have to dig through ashes and flooded debris to rebuild their lives. [ .. ]
Climate change is going to remap our world, changing not just how we live but where we live. As scientist Peter Gleick, co-founder of the Pacific Institute, puts it, “There is a shocking, unreported, fundamental change coming to the habitability of many parts of the planet, including the U.S.A.”
In the not-so-distant future, places like Phoenix and Tucson will become so hot that just walking across the street will be a life-threatening event.
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Two: Culture
Hand Grenades and Gang Violence Rattle Sweden’s Middle Class https://t.co/8ngWH2ApUD
— Thomas Hegghammer (@Hegghammer) March 3, 2018
In large cities, hospitals report armed confrontations in emergency rooms, and school administrators say threats and weapons have become commonplace. Last week two men from Uppsala, both in their 20s, were arrested on charges of throwing grenades at the home of a bank employee who investigates fraud cases. [ .. ]
Illegal weapons often enter Sweden over the Oresund Bridge, a 10-mile span that links the southern city of Malmo to Denmark. When it opened, in 2000, the bridge symbolized the unfurling of a vibrant, borderless Europe, but in recent years it has been more closely associated with smuggling, of people, weapons and drugs.
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Are these two tweets, taken together, the encerroaching wave-front of William Gibson‘s “future already here — just not very evenly distributed” beginning to distribute itself a little more evenly?
Let’s backtrack forty years, with benefit of hindsight:
