Cool Hunting

After reading William Gibson's Pattern Recognition and watching David Cronenberg's Videodrome, I am almost certain the next big thing is going to be profoundly sexual. But that may be a warped standpoint. My hopeful guess is that the next big thing is going to be an interest in human alteration. The only thing stopping us now seems to be ethics, but as soon as some twisted underground scientist gets his black rubber gloves and circular eye protection ready, the world will be ready for that kind of thing. What kind of thing exactly? Well, I have a few thoughts on the matter.

First and foremost, we find ourselves wanting to look younger and younger and live longer and longer. This is a bizarre dilemma, as youth enhancing products end up making a person look older when compared to their younger looking peers. Some people seem to fall into the uncanny valley, looking almost human enough to be human, but just a hair too un-human to be real. Even robots are looking more convincing these days! (Warning, video is terrifying.) So what's next? Well, we could all be robots. Or we could master the art of gene manipulation. Harvard Scientists have already reversed the gene that makes us age, and my guess is that they'll eventually have to try it on humans.

If that isn't the next big fad, I think we'll probably still be a pretty entertainment based culture. Entertainment has always taken a stranglehold of everyone, dating back as far as written language will tell. Those next-gen graphics look pretty amazing. I've read somewhere (though I can't find the link for this) that 'they' are in the talks of making fully immersive gaming systems, dwarfing the Xbox Kinect in quality and fluidness. Maybe instead we can just download our mental selves into some new persona, like in James Cameron's Avatar. And if we're more interested in movies by that point, I'm sure Cameron will come up with some way of keeping us awed in just the theatres. I wouldn't be surprised if both scenarios end up together. (Suppose for a moment an Avatar video game in 2020 could completely and physically immerse any player. All those depressed internet kids might never have to leave Pandora! )

Really though, who knows what the next big thing is? 2012 is just around the corner, and if we're not going through a rebirth of knowledge, then we're probably going to all be fried in some crazy electrical field, or the like. That would be just my luck. Graduating college then getting punished by the earth itself just for being born at the wrong time. Why me?