We no longer even have a vision of the future. Things that are futuristic too belong to the past – like Blade Runner, Tron, Robocop, the music of Vangelis, Wendy Carlos and Kraftwerk. Futurism is an activity of the past, and tragically spells out our inability to imagine our own future from a culture disjointed from cultural time.
There is a running joke in the Road Runner cartoons when Wile E. Coyote, the archetypal ravenous fool, runs off the cliff in pursuit of his prey. Each time, he is at first unaware that he has run out of road and keeps running on air, and doesn’t really fall until he realizes what happened. The mute troublemaker holds a sign: “yikes!” We’re there, folks. Sometimes this mid air moment occurs in slow motion, could take years even. But, you know, gravity. Even Icarus fell.
A Fragile Dignity 