{"id":25897,"date":"2014-12-31T00:01:00","date_gmt":"2014-12-31T05:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=25897"},"modified":"2014-12-24T23:56:33","modified_gmt":"2014-12-25T04:56:33","slug":"qotd-dr-johnson-on-the-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/12\/31\/qotd-dr-johnson-on-the-future\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Dr. Johnson on the future"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>At another level, futurology implies that we are unhappy in the present. Perhaps this is because the constant, enervating downpour of gadgets and the devices of the marketeers tell us that something better lies just around the next corner and, in our weakness, we believe. Or perhaps it was ever thus. In 1752, Dr Johnson mused that our obsession with the future may be an inevitable adjunct of the human mind. Like our attachment to the past, it is an expression of our inborn inability to live in \u2013 and be grateful for \u2013 the present.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt seems,\u201d he wrote, \u201cto be the fate of man to seek all his consolations in futurity. The time present is seldom able to fill desire or imagination with immediate enjoyment, and we are forced to supply its deficiencies by recollection or anticipation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Bryan Appleyard, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newstatesman.com\/culture\/2014\/04\/why-futurologists-are-always-wrong-and-why-we-should-be-sceptical-techno-utopians\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Why futurologists are always wrong \u2013 and why we should be sceptical of techno-utopians: From predicting AI within 20 years to mass-starvation in the 1970s, those who foretell the future often come close to doomsday preachers&#8221;, <em>New Statesman<\/em><\/a>, 2014-04-10.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At another level, futurology implies that we are unhappy in the present. Perhaps this is because the constant, enervating downpour of gadgets and the devices of the marketeers tell us that something better lies just around the next corner and, in our weakness, we believe. Or perhaps it was ever thus. In 1752, Dr Johnson [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,73],"tags":[686,810],"class_list":["post-25897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-quotations","category-randomness","tag-futurism","tag-skepticism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6JH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25897"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25897\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25898,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25897\/revisions\/25898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}