When I was a child, outdated visions of the future seemed comical.
Now I think it’s having a vision of the future that would seem comical to a child. The future will be like the present only more so. This isn’t the end of history, only the end of the future. “The cultural smog of the internet” is a product of (and a producer of) this causal and aesthetic flatland.
William Gibson groks this, although I can’t find the quote just now. Damn. Knowledge clearly isn’t flat enough yet.
(The title is a quote from the ageing punk character Blank Reg in “Max Headroom” - “Remember we said ’no future’? Well, this is it…”)