This is well said. Our narratives are often all or nothing, disaster or triumph, because that makes for a better story, but real life generally is not that tidy.
About 20 years ago, I started (but didn’t finish) an SF novel set in the 2020s. I called it Topia, because I wasn’t setting out to write a utopia or a dystopia, but something in between. I still think there’s some space for that in fiction; it’s certainly how things generally work out in reality.
Originally shared by Singularity Hub
What If the AI Revolution Is Neither Utopia nor Apocalypse, but Something in Between? http://suhub.co/2HvWMyB
Mm that millennial belief in radical change is definitely true. And we feel some sort of change coming — but probably it’d be like the nuclear age, of something in between. Neither destruction nor paradise. I agree with that.
Some would call that status quo, sneering.
In politics, I sense the situation being like tectonic plates folding in on another, of belief systems on that scale. The technology (in this case, social media)
has dislodged the earth. Neither uptopia or dystopia.
Very natural I think to make something like Topia. After all, paradise is too boring! And dystopia too depressing.
Everything I write, pretty much, falls somewhere in that space, though sometimes it’s more up the hopeful end with some struggle, and sometimes more struggle with some hope.