Optimism: Possible?

Progress has long beckoned us forward with the promise of a better tomorrow. The way we feel about that promise varies from age to age, as do our definitions of "better." Early 20th century visions of the future included all sorts of things that were easy to be optimistic about at the time but haven't quite happened -- flying cars, domed cities, personal robots. Nostalgia for these (recently) past visions of the future is called "retro-futurism." As with any ideas, there are detractors who think the old ideas are silly and not worth mourning.

The issue for this post is optimism. It is contended that people alive today share "sarcasm and irony" and are thus inclined to poke fun at shiny visions of the future, plausible or otherwise. What is your opinion?

Writing for Wired, John Browlee, author of the post below, comments on Matt Novak's original commentary (indented, with link to the full text at the end). Each has a slightly different perspective on the issue. If assigned to do so, what would you add to this discussion?

The Sadness of Retro-Futurism by John Brownlee (June 06, 2007)

URL: http://blog.wired.com/tableofmalcontents/2007/06/the_sadness_of_.html

Matt Novak, who runs the excellent retrofuturism blog Paleo-Future, has a fantastic essay up at MungBeing exploring the lost ideals of futurism that were lost with the ubiquitousness of sarcasm and irony:

There is a genuine sense of sadness detectable when you talk with people about flying cars and meal pills. Oddly enough, most people don't want meals-in-a-pill, they simply want the fanciful. We long for the world where anything is possible. We exist in a rather unique age when most American's basic necessities are met. You and I have luxuries unseen in human history and yet we want more.

I would argue that 1997 was a major tipping point for futurism. American consumer culture could no longer get behind the idea of "building a bridge to the 21st century." Such sentimentality made one vulnerable to ridicule. Even Disney, the definition of sentimentality, had abandoned the sincere brand of futurism with it's redesign of Tomorrowland in 1997, replacing the promise of tomorrow with Buck Rogers versions of how we used to view tomorrow.

I disagree with Matt's point that people no longer believe in the future in any meaningful way: the Internet is full of techno-utopians. But people no longer believe in the magic of technology. It is understandable: the average person is far more informed about the capacity for technological growth and its slowly evolutionary nature than they were fifty years ago. That's why retro-futurism is so alluring to people like me: they are technological fairy tales.

Matt Novak's complete article:The Postmodern Paleo-Future [MungBeing]