The Futurist

Endings and Reincarnations

Today is exactly 15 years after the start of this website.  Since that time, just about every blog that was active then, has been discontinued, unless it is the blogger's full-time career now.   On top of that, futurism is a very exclusive niche, as surprisingly few people are curious about the future beyond superficial information.  However, the accelerating rate of change, and ever-growing size and power of the ATOM, mean that the trends we discuss here are appearing in more mainstream topics.  Among the many technological changes since then, that was an era of 4:3 screens instead of 16:9, and of blogging rather than social media (let alone video-based social media).  Even converting this website to 16:9 messed up the old articles, and when faced with a choice of reformatting all of them manually, or leaving them as is as a relic of their time, I chose the latter.  Note that the more recent ATOM publication is 16:9.  

A lot has come and gone in the elapsed 15 years.  Consider the case of Singularity University.  It began in 2009 on the reputation of Ray Kurzweil, who at the time was easily the most high-profile Futurist in the world, with a respectable track record of predictions.  However, detached from Kurzweil's direct involvement, the institution quickly migrated away from any actual futurism, and built itself around a model of low-tech, in-person learning, where a single one-week program costs $15,000 (which is even more expensive than nearby Stanford University).  A few famous critiques outline how that operation practices virtually none of what it preaches, and even this was before a spate of scandals did further damage to its reputation.

Hence, there is now a vacuum in this niche, even though the rate of change continues to rise, which naturally means more organic demand for futurism.  Furthermore, if the ATOM has enabled a medium that is more flexible, far reaching, and monetized to reach full maturity, it would be appropriate for me to produce content there, under simple ATOM principles (again, in contrast to Singularity University, which is in fact the whole point of embodying one's futurism).  High-traffic YouTubers have an income stream that is very ATOM-efficient in terms of taxes, location independence, affiliate marketing, and network effects among YouTubers.  This, combined with the structural decline in the university model of learning, as we often discuss here, makes the window of opportunity obvious.  

I believe I have the material here, as well as through my experience teaching at Stanford University and speaking at large conferences worldwide, to singlehandedly create the premier YouTube channel devoted to this subject.  Over the recent holiday period, I just brainstormed a list of video topics for which I already have 10-20 minutes of tight content in my head, and the list quickly grew to over 300 titles.  The list is a superset of what is written here, since there will be more current, mainstream topics interspersed along the way.  On YouTube, all existing content is either very simple and caters to average people, or is just a recording of an esoteric talk at a conference, and not made for YouTube.  The chasm in between is unpopulated.  The YouTube channel has a better chance of being synergistic with my other professional activities, which this website was not able to rise to, traffic-wise.  

This is one of those things where I am surprised and bit annoyed that this did not occur to me years sooner.  When this website began, I was 32, whereas now I am 47.  While YouTube wasn't established in 2006, suffice it to say that for video purposes, a 32-year-old is always going to be more telegenic than a 47-year-old.  Or at least I should have began in 2015 when I was writing the ATOM publication, or in early 2016 when I posted it.  Then again, almost all of the best instructional videos on YouTube about how to undertake each aspect of creating a channel all seem to have been posted in the last 12 months, and I might not have thought it was easy to do, until recently.  It is definitely not too late, certainly for this niche. 

My goals for the channel are simple.  Among those are that I would like to eventually reach 300,000 subscribers, and 1 million hours of cumulative view time.  There will be little traffic until after the first 100 videos are posted, after which traffic rises exponentially.  I will have to put in over a thousand hours of work, and $4000+ in sunk costs before seeing anything, but as this replaces many other activities, including a lot of to-and-from transit, perhaps the net is less.  

The other factor is the greater 'immortality' of video.  Since we expect a Technological Singularity in about ~41 years (give or take), a large body of video has a greater chance of still being watched by people around at that time, even if I am gone, and even if Google/YouTube is not the platform then.  I absolutely think it is essential that people at that time know who the early leaders in this subject were.  

I still have to learn the first thing about editing videos, which is necessary even for hiring other editors, but I am to begin uploading videos in February.  

The future of this website will be determined at a later date.  To keep comments active, Typepad charges $60/yr, which is trivial, but I have to see how relevant this website remains in relation to the YouTube channel.  The high-quality, page-length comments that some contribute are more suitable here than on YouTube.  

Let's see what happens.  I hope all readers over here migrate to the channel when I post the details of it.  

Until that time, see you in the future!

 

Changes

It is the end of an era here at The Futurist.  As long-time readers know, this has been a blog of two individual bloggers who did not distinguish themselves from each other.  This was a worthwhile experiment at the inception of the website in early 2006.  But now, the goals have changed.  The technology blogger will be the primary blogger here, taking a slightly different direction for this site.  The political blogger has, for the most part, retired from blogging, and has discontinued participation in some of his other online communities (such as anti-misandry).  

The technology blogger has been working on a related project of much more comprehensive scope, and will be linking it here to The Futurist.  Hence, this blog will be primarily devoted to technological and economic topics, with very little political content going forward.  Both bloggers will write under their real names.    

From Imran Khan (the political blogger) :

Many of my fans from the anti-misandry sphere have wondered why I drifted away from there in 2014.  Well, it was a combination of several factors :

1) My Work There Was Done : The predictions in The Misandry Bubble were solidified and part of the DNA of the 'androsphere'.  Existing bloggers keep up with current events and parse the news through the anti-misandry filter, but my contribution was just comments, after The Misandry Bubble over 6 years ago.  Over time, much of the content in the androsphere trends toward repetition.  When 2020 arrives, we will do an assessment scorecard of the predictions made a decade prior.  

2) Not Enough Activism : Anti-misandry ideas have spread to the mainstream through the effort of some great bloggers (like Dalrock and PM/AFT).  But too many of the other participants do far too little beyond Internet commenting.  I mentioned this in The Misandry Bubble about 'Why There is no Men's Rights Movement', and this continues to be true.  I even invented a strategy and campaign uniquely tailored to operate within the constraints of anonymity, cost, and decentralization that were needed for any real Men's Rights Activism, but only half a dozen men did the legwork despite everyone hailing it as highly effective.  To this day, there is minimal activism beyond about five key people, while far smaller causes immediately manage to get the apparatus of activism established. 

3) Too Much Infighting : The blogs I commented at do an admirable job of attracting and keeping civil commenters.  But elsewhere, some major figure in the androsphere is in an acrimonious battle with another almost every month.  The reasons are usually just poor communication between the two parties.  For a community of just 300 or so active participants that is up against an evil that outnumbers and outspends them by a ratio of several million to one, there is too much wasteful infighting among people who agree on 90% of their views.  Such a 'movement' makes little real movement.

4) Too Much Anger Towards Average Women : As The Misandry Bubble states, the hierarchy of misandric zeal is Hardcore 'Feminist' > Mangina > Average Woman.  The average woman does not seethe with a desire to harm any and all males the way a full-time 'feminist' does.  The average woman just wants to side with whoever is winning, which is an evolutionary mechanism that helped women survive.  I always maintained that ordinary women were being harmed by 'feminism' just as much as ordinary men, since what average women value most has been taken away from them by 'feminists'.  As I have maintained, it is impossible to harm one gender without harming the other.  

Some parts of the 'sphere have too much anger towards average women, and too little towards the sleazy men who think groveling to 'feminists' will improve their social status.  These 'manginas' are universally hated by normal men, normal women, and even hardcore 'feminists', yet do most of the heavy-lifting that keeps the hate-cult going.  If there is an Achilles heel that can be attacked to bring the edifice down, it is these manginas.  The inability of Men's Rights to focus on the weakest target ensures a lack of progress.  Speaking of manginas....

5) Too Many Neo-Nazis : The androsphere has been infested by a strain of Neo-Nazis (describing themselves as 'white nationalists') who are both racial supremacists and economic leftists.  Their views are wrong on both of those counts, but that is not even the worst thing about them.  They are antithetical to the notion of Men's Rights since they believe that a woman of their race is far more valuable than a man, to the extent of being a goddess.  It is apparent that any ethno-centric ideology will default to an obsession with fertility rates, and since women are the scarcer reproductive resource, such ideologies invariably become nothing more than fertility goddess cults.  This is true, of course, of any ethno-centric ideology, not just whites.  In fact, it is a testament to white maturity that 'white nationalists' never get any real traction among their own population.  This is precisely why whites are successful - they do a better job marginalizing their own degenerates than other groups do.  

My debates with the Neo-Nazis were funny.  I would routinely point out that 90% of American whites are just not racist, and they would counter that they indeed are, contrary to my observation.  In other words, I would insist that their group is not racist, which they see as a bad thing (as it explains their poor recruitment), leading them to insist that more whites are.  And I am not just brown, but a Muslim too.  

Remember that 'white nationalism' recruits only the least successful white men, almost entirely due to their desire to obstruct a white woman's choice to date outside her race.  This is leftist protectionism demanded by uncompetitive actors, nothing more.  The coup de grace I apply in such debates is to point out that there is almost zero female participation in 'white nationalism', despite it being an ideology wholly dependent on white women having more babies.  The hilarity of an ideology built around higher reproduction nonetheless finding itself to be 98-99% male is self-evident.  Women have a natural radar that steers them away from loserdom, and manginas (whether general or Neo-Nazi) always create this effect.  

Since the ideologies of Neo-Nazis and 'feminists' have substantial overlap, Men's Rights cannot advance without a purge of these Neo-Nazis.  Over time, this purge will happen, but my time is better spent elsewhere.  

6) The Futurist has a Different Destiny : My technology co-blogger has created something of grand purpose, something so profound that it has a higher significance.  It is valuable enough that this website should be devoted exclusively to it, without tangential distractions, given that he is more of a political moderate than I.  

For these reasons, my participation in the androsphere has drawn to a close.  The Misandry Bubble will remain where it is, but it should be seen as a time capsule of predictions, to be opened 10 years hence from original publication.  

 

Welcome to The Futurist

Welcome to this new addition to the blogging universe, The Futurist, on this day of January 24, 2006.

The goal of The Futurist is to analyze current trends to make future predictions, specifically more complex predictions that require the convergence of multiple trends.  These tend to be the predictions that most others get wrong, as they are only projecting one trend forward, with no accounting of multi-trend convergence.  

There are two co-bloggers here, one with a more technological bent, and the other with a more political (an Independent who leans right) bent.  We will not distinguish between the two of us, in terms of who posted what, and which person is commenting.  Among many experiments, one will be if two different minds can create a unified, superior output.

We may alternatively comment as 'The Futurist' or as 'Genghis Khan', abbreviated as 'GK' (an inside nickname here).  

Thank you, and may we produce content that you find compelling.