When I read this I felt a need to shout “YES!!” to all of this. In the past couple of weeks, as I’ve talked to people in the broader progress studies community I heard a lot of personal stories, and many of them included either influential stories (often Science Fiction books, but sometimes also historical tales of human ingenuity and invention or movies) or experiences in spaces that made possibilities real (like Disney Epcot or even museums with inspirational themes).
I’d love to hear from people in this community how these types of experiences played into their journey of being interested in scientific, industrial, technological, and human progress.
The inventor of the cell phone was inspired by the TOS communicator. There’s a lot of examples of this in engineering, I think.
I think you hit the mark with a lot of us having an underlying belief in progress independent of progress studies, and that a lot of that excitement/belief was inspired by media or culture. When I worked in sales, one of the team mottos we had was that people make decisions with emotions first, and then rationalize them later. Regardless of whether that’s how people “should” make decisions, I think it’s reasonably accurate. Creating art and media that celebrates progress, and having audiences have an emotional reaction to that media, is a great first step in getting more people invested in creating real-world progress. Disney and the other World’s Fair promoters certainly understood this, and on some level, I think everybody who pines for a Mid-Century World’s Fair does too.
Adam Ozimek had a twitter thread about a year ago where people pitched ideas for “progress studies” television shows—I wonder if anything happened to that. I stand by my pitch for a campy, positive, and fun 1632 mini-series.
When I read this I felt a need to shout “YES!!” to all of this. In the past couple of weeks, as I’ve talked to people in the broader progress studies community I heard a lot of personal stories, and many of them included either influential stories (often Science Fiction books, but sometimes also historical tales of human ingenuity and invention or movies) or experiences in spaces that made possibilities real (like Disney Epcot or even museums with inspirational themes).
I’d love to hear from people in this community how these types of experiences played into their journey of being interested in scientific, industrial, technological, and human progress.
The inventor of the cell phone was inspired by the TOS communicator. There’s a lot of examples of this in engineering, I think.
I think you hit the mark with a lot of us having an underlying belief in progress independent of progress studies, and that a lot of that excitement/belief was inspired by media or culture. When I worked in sales, one of the team mottos we had was that people make decisions with emotions first, and then rationalize them later. Regardless of whether that’s how people “should” make decisions, I think it’s reasonably accurate. Creating art and media that celebrates progress, and having audiences have an emotional reaction to that media, is a great first step in getting more people invested in creating real-world progress. Disney and the other World’s Fair promoters certainly understood this, and on some level, I think everybody who pines for a Mid-Century World’s Fair does too.
Adam Ozimek had a twitter thread about a year ago where people pitched ideas for “progress studies” television shows—I wonder if anything happened to that. I stand by my pitch for a campy, positive, and fun 1632 mini-series.