West Whim

Unthinkable Futures

via dailymeh:

This list of unthinkable futures — probabilities we tend to dismiss without thinking — was published 15 years ago in the Summer, 1993 issue of Whole Earth Review. Our intent was less to correctly predict the future (thus the silliness) and more to predict how unpredictable the actual future would be.

Hence we find such unlikely predictions as “a new profession, meme-inspector, comes into being” and “manufacturers of underwear finally realize that men have different-sized balls”, along with their more scifi-inspired cousin predictions. And we find Brian Eno (and not Jason Kottke, who merely quoted it) predicting a change in art:

A new type of artist arises: someone whose task is to gather together existing but overlooked pieces of amateur art, and, by directing attention onto them, to make them important. (This is part of a much larger theory of mine about the new role of curatorship, the big job of the next century.)

Tumblr, thy kingdom come.

Mmmm, I would like this job, please — I want to be a meme-inspector. I already iz a teme machine.