🆕 Never Post! Where Are My Flying Cars?: A Team Chat

Friends, what ho! An episode on an off-week? For you - of course!

We are extending our August member drive one more week to bring you an episode-long staff round-table with special guest Meghal Janardan. Recorded LIVE with chat during the Never Post Member Stream Drive, the team discusses the future tech that was made to seem inevitable - have we reached it? Will we ever?

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Never Post’s producers are Audrey Evans, Georgia Hampton and The Mysterious Dr. Firstname Lastname. Our senior producer is Hans Buetow. Our executive producer is Jason Oberholtzer. The show’s host is Mike Rugnetta.

Never Post is a production of Charts & Leisure and is distributed by Radiotopia

We rolling? Friends, hello. This is Never Post, a show for and about the Internet. I am today's host, Hans Buetow, senior producer of the show. And you, you gruesome crew, you screwly ghoulies.

It is now September, which means I've basically transitioned into a whole new season. I am in spooky season now. And when you last heard from us a week ago, we were still in a chill time summer zone. We were still nearing the end of our month long August member drive. And now here we are looking towards the future that's all spooky and weird, but it's a good time to reflect.

It's a good time to look backwards. And that's why you are hearing this special bonus episode right now. During August, we had set ourselves the goal as a show of getting 200 new members. This is important for us as a milestone on our path to sustainability. It is not the final milestone by any but it's a milestone that means that there's a much better chance that we are going be able to continue making this program through the spooky season, into the foodie season, into the holiday season, into wintery season, into the mid wintery season, etc.

So our goal was 200 members and going into the August, the final week of our memo drive, we were at an amazing 154 new members. That's 154 new people who decided to join with us and participate in our little community. And in the intervening week since you last heard from us, we added an incredible 23 new members, including two more gifted members that were gifted by incredible members of our community for folks who might not be in a financial situation to support us right now, but you would still enjoy a membership. Those are available to you. This is my reminder to you that you can email us at theneverpostgmail dot com with the subject line all caps Gift Membership to claim one of those.

While they last, send us an email. So where are we at at the August, at the end of our member fundraising? Out of the goal of 200, we are at 177 new members. It's a mere 23 members away from our goal, which just happens to be the exact amount of new members who joined us last week. And so we thought to ourselves, let's keep the fun times going into this new season and extend the drive one more week in the hopes that we can reach this goal together of 200 new members and bring this team chat out from behind the member wall for you all to enjoy.

This is an example of the kind of cool things we put back there in the members' hands. Stuff like Never Watch, our watch along podcast where we just, I guess, watch movies from 1995 together with you. You get to watch along with us as we watch and discover these amazing internet movies from 1995 alongside us. You can listen to Slow Post, which is a show I make about falling asleep. Really, we read Wikipedia to you until you doze off gently.

Post from the Field, which is field recordings, extended segments, which is long versions of stuff that we put in so that you can get more of that good stuff. So this episode, this right here, this is a team chat. This is something we recorded live while we were on Twitch with our pals in the chat during our member drive stream week a couple of weeks ago. And remember that twitch.tv/theneverpost is where you wanna direct yourself if you want to follow us and make sure you're there the next time we stream a chat like this because, spoiler, we're gonna stream something like this because it was so much fun. We will do more of these, and this recording was so much fun.

We had such a good time. I really hope you enjoy it, and I hope that it can help us close out our member drive strong. And you can be the one to help us do that. You can go to neverpo.st and become a member for a mere $4 a month. That is less than a pumpkin spice latte, I think.

I'm actually not sure about that, but I'd imagine it had to be. $4 a month. You can get access to all the fun things like this and truly and actually meaningfully make it possible for us to continue to make this program. So enough of me. Let's get to me and other people talking about cool stuff on the Internet.

Thanks for being here.

Friends, hello, and welcome to team chat. Never post member drive stream week. I'm your host, Mike Rugnetta. And today, we have gathered an esteemed group of exactly the people you would expect to discuss. What?

Well, wait one moment, and we'll tell you. First, introductions. Joining me in order of how much time I think that they have spent finely honing their craft as a Brooklyn ceramicist.

Oh my god.

Get cooked.

Ascending. Are Jason Oberholtzer, never post executive producer.

Kapow.

Georgia Hampton, never post producer.

You know what? Fair enough. But one day, I'll get you.

Hans Buetow, never post senior producer.

Wow. Honored that I made it this far in the running.

And Meghal Janardan, friend of the show and famed.

Yes.

Brooklyn Ceramics.

Very recently showcased.

A little box.

Mike Mike, where are you on that?

I mean, I live in Brooklyn. I have never touched ceramics. Okay. Not even a finished mug.

I just don't I just don't.

Touch clay

Yeah. Ever. Someone tries to hand me a plate, and I just smack it out of their hand.

Get this away from me.

Yeah. You're telling me you made this out of the ground?

Disgusting. Where the worms are?

What am I? A peasant?

Okay. What are we here to discuss? Because I think I do not remember us deciding what it is, but it I think there is quorum.

Yes. There was a decision. There was a decision. Okay. Megal, I feel like you're the one who should explain.

Yes. It was your idea.

The topic for today's team chat is going over a piece of technology from an old film TV show that you thought would exist by now.

Mhmm. The technological promises made by media when we were growing up

Yes.

And where we are in relation.

I mean, can I just say the elephant in the room is flying cars?

Well, of course. That's like that's the free space on the bingo board.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Let's just get that out of way.

I feel like there are two there are two elephants in the room. Okay. The room is very full because of both of the elephants.

The sneakers from, the sneakers from Back to Future two?

Sneakers from Back to the what everybody was is

that the other elephant? That's what we've all been thinking.

The one that I always think of, I think of flying cars first. The other one that I always think of is the matter replicator from Star Trek.

Oh. Oh. Nice. Yeah.

So was the proposed tech behind this just at a molecular level, things are things, and if we can reassemble by molecules, we can make another one of the things exactly.

Yeah. And, like, there's you know, we figured out such a way that our raw materials are no longer inextricably linked to pulling resources out of the ground. Mhmm. We live in a sort of Mhmm. Free energy post scarcity society such that we can just make whatever we want.

Yeah. We don't have to worry about, like, running out of stuff because we figured out how to either endlessly recycle or, yeah, just like pull the resources needed from the air. Yep.

And you at one point thought we might have that by now.

Or some version of it. Right? Like, I think three d printers maybe getting close, but but still very far. But, no, I feel like there's this is like a pretty common trope in sci fi. Right?

Like, the matter replicator, the the printer of, I get food, I get objects that I need, I get tools. Maybe not with the post scarcity side of it. Yeah. But at the very least, a thing in your house that, like, gives you the stuff that you need. What do

you think was the first what was the first example of that? Do you do you think it was, like, original Star Trek? They didn't have matter replicators, did they? I think of it as

being very much related to the next generation, but I'm

not sure.

I mean, that's where I think of it too. It's very much a next generation thing. But was the nineties the first time we really conceived of this sort of thing?

No way. The books have had this before, certainly.

Yeah. That's true. That's true.

I'm thinking of one in particular who does Clifford D. Simak was all over this with, like, the way station sort of thing, mostly with, people moving and replicating. But he was, like, you know, sixties, seventies, I think, particularly obsessed with this. I think the goblin reservation starts off with the idea that at a molecular level, you can replicate a living creature. And so that is how they would travel.

You walked in a door and were replicated molecule by molecule elsewhere across the galaxy and sort of begins with that existential question of, like, is that is that Theseus ship still you?

Yeah. This is the Derek Parfitt tell tele transporter problem. We also we cruised through introductions and forgot to introduce someone.

That's so true. Best friend.

Jason's best friend, Chad.

Chad is with us.

Chad is with us. We are recording this team chat segment with Chad live on Twitch, and Chad is already making some much needed a plus contributions to the conversation. Scorching Ray reminds us that fun fact, the food replicator in Star Trek fueled by poop.

Really?

Now I feel more optimistic we might get it.

Yeah. Honestly. And

Hans Peaches and Streams offers that the original Star Trek could print food. So that poop food?

Sooner or later, it all is, man.

Just a sore. You go.

Yeah. We're just eating Yep.

Food off of dirt cups.

Makes you nervous. Boy, do I have news for you about dirt. And what's in there? You're not gonna like it. So

yeah, we're talking at least in in in in visual science fiction at least the sixties, if not earlier. I'm guessing fifties. I'm guessing there's, like, b science fiction movies all the way back to the thirties. Arthur C.

Clarke certainly has touched this.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And in books and lore. Yeah.

Can you describe the matter replicator in you said Star Trek or Star Wars?

Star Trek. Trek.

Star Trek. Yeah. For those who are not familiar.

Basically, like a little box in the wall and you beep boop beep, like a microwave, some buttons. And then in a little box, maybe about the size of a little bigger than a bread box?

Like a microwave?

Yeah. Yeah. Something small. Yeah. Small microwave.

It would just print whatever it is that you beep boop beeped in.

Oh, okay. So like you

could get if I remember correctly, you could beep boop beeping, like, you know, ask for ice cream, but you would also get the dish that the ice cream comes from. The dish.

Yeah. And then you put the dish back in and then it matters

some away. To me that so many moments like this in film and TV are in a kitchen.

Oh, yeah.

I think in a way, some version of food printer, in my mind, has always felt more likely than flying car.

Yes.

Mhmm. Flying car just seems like especially in The United States, never gonna happen. Yeah. I'd say so. But, like, food printer feels like something that, like it feels like it's always just over the horizon.

Yeah.

In the chat, Gadvoir says the kitchen at the center of technological innovation, which is true. I mean, think of, like, Hitchhiker's Guide, think Spy Kids has a whole scene in kitchens where they're, like, creating food. It's sort of, I don't know. It it's just this ubiquitous concept. I feel like everyone thinks of that.

What I find interesting about that, George, is that it's a in Star Trek, at least, it's actually decentralized. Like, nothing is a kitchen. Nothing is a dining room. These things just exist kinda like bathrooms. They just exist somewhere.

Kitchens don't exist in Star Trek. Oh. There's no

That's like a thing. Interesting.

There's no galley.

There's no like a globe. There's a

dining cloud, but there's

no kitchen.

Never not working.

So there is literally no there's, the new Star Trek in Strange New Worlds, Kirk in the new one, is a renowned cook, and he, like, grows. You go into his into his quarters, and he's, like, growing tomatoes and stuff. And then he's, like, got a whole cooking setup, and it's really everybody's like, this is

really weird. What are you doing?

I see.

It's almost the thing they've dispensed with being, like, we don't have to worry about this anymore.

Exactly. I think it kinda still comes back to the kitchen, though. Right? Because Mhmm. If you have this matter replicator, then you don't need to cook because you can just make food.

Yeah. So it's like the replacement of the kitchen.

Yep. People are pointing out in the chat that, like, there are people who cook for fun.

Yeah. Which sure. That's true. Did. Cisco's dad was a was a Cisco in Deep Space Nine.

His dad was a chef. Famed like, a big part of the plot. Yeah. That's that's

not true. Neelix? If you were like a soylent enjoyer or one of the analogs, does this make you feel like we are closer to this?

Yeah. Interesting.

No. I don't think so.

Okay. It's not like a step on the direction reducing nutrition down to its raw material, and then maybe step two is recombining that into something tasty?

I'm look I'm, like, looking off screen because I'm looking at my, like, shake container thinking about this. No. Because this feels like the milkshake feels really almost like primitive to me.

Yeah.

It's a snare. It yeah.

It's like really is it maybe is an example of some sort of progress in that over time, they have gotten more nutritious, less bad for you, like, with slightly better taste and, like, cheaper to produce. But, like, there is nothing about them that is approaching the pleasure of, like, eating a meal. Mhmm. And none of them are are trying to it's all, like, hyper convenience. Whereas, like, I think of the the idea of being able to print food as a time saving mechanism in order to still make something that is desirable in all of the ways that a cooked meal is desirable.

Mike, if you when you watch this, what what is something that you want, like, when you were young that you wanted to print immediately?

All of it. Anything. Give it to me. The treats. I want hamburgers.

I want

Fries. I think.

I want fries. I want

ice always like ice cream and hamburger. Blankets.

Oh, yes. Coffee.

Yeah. I wanna print a coffee. To genius.

I have another thing to nominate

Yes.

For something I expected. I was thinking about this last night. So as a team, we were collectively watching the 1995 film Virtuosity, and this reminded me of a thing that I feel like we've been promised at various stages, which is screens that are huge and actually other things. So, like, a wall that you suddenly comes becomes a screen. Oh.

Or, like, screens that can come up in various places, like, kind of the minority report, like, HUD display kind of, but more like like, back to the future, like, big like, big wall sized screens somehow.

That I can put a picture of of, like, a waterfall with a mountain vista in the background.

A 100%.

Yeah. Because I'm trapped in a space station.

Or like you walk into a rich guy's office, and they you're in the middle of a a Glenn. You're in the middle of a beautiful Glenn. And then he says, like, down to business. Yeah. And the screens that are the office become an office again.

I see. So not quite the the thing where you're, like, pinching and zooming on these screens that are sort of floating in the air.

Right. The the, like, heads up display, the minority report. I yeah. I think that cannot

almost be like a VR space without the pesky need of wearing goggles.

Yeah. Just like a a all hardware space, which is interesting because I think we have sort of jumped it. It's one of those things that it almost feels like they would assume when they were coming up with these spaces in, like, the eighties and nineties that this is obviously what we would like. And because it's impractical to get to, we kind of jumped over achieving that reality to things that are arcing more towards the pinch and zoom of the minority world. You're kinda like, actually, your wall should just be a wall.

Instead, let's put like AR space around you.

The closest thing I can think of that does exist like this is that some TVs where people will frame them like a painting Yes. And they'll have like a painting image on it that looks matte enough to kind of pass if you're not paying attention, and then it can serve as a TV. But it doesn't have that scale that it sounds like you want. That I

feel like we were promised, like, watching last night, it's like a bunch of huge TVs all put together into like a grid of six. But like, actually, without the seams in it in a full like this my whole wall in front of me should just be able to suddenly go and become video.

What's the the place in Vegas? The sphere?

Yeah. The

sphere. God. My hell. So why

are you so here?

Say you love the sphere now.

I love the sphere. Please more sphere.

I did like Tim had the idea in chat of it'd be nice to have a wall that could change color at a touch. I think that's a little bit what we're closer to is, like, very specific digital needs put into something at large scale. So rather than your wall should be a screen that could do everything every other screen can do, your wall should have a little bit of digital component that alters the pigment at will.

It's a

hue light. Yeah. I mean, that's why everyone has those. Yeah. The, like, sunset lamps.

Yeah. I guess.

It is interesting though how, like, a lot of this particular type of, like, technology of, a screen that looks like you're in the mountains is just, like, why not just go to the mountains? And it just speaks to, like, how we're stuck in an office. Yeah.

Mhmm. Well, I think that most of the future is set forward where you have like the, you know, the rich guy in his office that's in the picture of the mountains. It seems like the assumption being made is that there almost aren't any mountains left or impossible to be there. And so his grand luxury is he gets to pretend better than you can, that he's in a place you can no longer really get.

Yeah.

Okay. With that, we are gonna take a quick break, and we will be right back.

So the way I was approaching this question was less, what I expected to exist and what I hoped would exist. And there is a difference there, which is that it's less realistic.

Okay.

And I need you all to understand that.

Follow your heart.

But the first thing I thought of specifically was the Babelfish. Mhmm. From Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Universal

translator. Yeah.

It's a little gross. I don't know that I'd want it to literally be this. But if people are not familiar in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, one of the many fun, weird, little techie things that our protagonist deals with is something called the babble fish, which is a little fish that you put in your ear. It like slithers on into your ear, and it live translates every language for you.

I love it.

I believe in the book, it is described as the oddest thing in the universe.

Yes. Yeah. Yes, it is. And I think that is so fabulous and genius. And I think it's sort of largely understood throughout the story that kind of everybody has these because everyone can understand each other.

It's amazing. Do I want a little creepy fish that slithers into my brain? Not really. But the the concept of that, I think, is incredible.

You know,

it's odd

to me that you described this as unrealistic, that you make that proviso. I think we're closer to that than anything else.

I agree.

With sort of. I think there have you tried to do that thing that Google has where you speak and then it translates and you show it to someone? Because it's, you know,

there's Great. Some problems. It's often good and it exists.

It's pretty okay. I've done it. I use it in Korea when I was staying in an Airbnb. Yeah. I guess you're right.

Simultaneous interpretation like they have at The U UN, I think is very, very, very, very close to.

I think we are close to it, but at the same time, we're battling just like the ever growing movement of making everything the same and like language colonization and we're losing languages. And the idea of this fish, it's like, it wouldn't require the loss of languages. We would just be able to communicate and it almost like promises a type of reality where we could live in different cultures but still be one culture at the same time. Whereas, like, yes, we have that with translation and transcription apps, but it's it's just different.

And, well, I think something you're gesturing out there and something Daniel Jenna Grauss is gesturing at too is that, like, part of the meaning of language is the meaning of itself or the meaning that is captured only by its specific linguistic usage. So a trans will never get that and will indeed, like, erase parts of it. Sodad should always remain sodad. And, like, do you put your relative Babelfish's, like, the language the words that come across without translation or that need to in some way.

I think there's an interesting parallel between this and the and and the nomination of, food replicators. Right? Because food replicators let you isolate and get one really specific thing over and over, and it's not dependent on, oh, I only have these ingredients, so I'll sub them out, or, oh, I actually live near this grocery store, which has this thing, and then that's how, like, recipes and food evolve is by mixing and mingling components. If you can isolate all the components and you never have to touch, those things will never touch, then what happens? Yeah.

The process is the point is what people are saying in in in the friction, is what's being said in in chat.

Danielle Jenna Grouse also makes a very interesting point here saying, it's once again removing the friction we find annoying dealing with, but which might be where meaning is produced. Which I think is kind of the the thing to contend with with all of these ideas. I think with something like the Babelfish, I'm curious kind of where that friction is making meaning and where that friction is so insurmountable that it just is like a brick wall. Like knowing every single language in the world, for example, versus learning Spanish.

It's not knowing.

Right.

It's understanding every language in world.

Well, sure. But like, this is what I mean is that there's like, I I'm curious about tech like this in movies and TV that is supposed to paint with this a massive brush. Being like, you can do this with every single language immediately, perfectly.

I think what's interesting about drawing it from science fiction is that it actually is solving a different problem. What it's solving in science fiction is how can we make every alien race with just regular English speaking actors legible?

Yeah. Oh, sure. Yeah. Of course. We have to have this thing happen.

Like

That's what it's actually trying to solve. And so anything that comes anything that comes downstream from that is our, like, lumping meaning or anticipation onto that.

Right. I think I think both we in the call and we as, like, a culture, like a society over the last maybe fifty years or so, have a hard time thinking about and looking at some of this technology outside of our own context, especially right now. And what I mean by especially right now is, like, we are just learning, like, in this moment to refuse convenience. Mhmm. Yes.

There there is a lot to be gained by refusing the convenience that is foisted upon us by often people who profit from that convenience. They want us to want it so that we give them money so that we get it. And I think the thing that's important about the matter, the matter replicator, the BabelFish, whatever, whatever, like, the BabelFish doesn't come to your house and put its fingers up your nose and pull you across the room anytime you try to sit down and learn Japanese. It just helps you translate things. Yeah.

It's not removing your agency for learning. It's just giving you an opportunity to not have to learn a language in a specific point. We, in theory, a user would retain the agency to continue to learn a language the old fashioned way. But I think it's hard for us in this moment because we do not yet have the personal and cultural skills to say, but I to be confident in saying, but I would refuse the convenience when it was right to. Yeah.

As an optimist, maybe you would say in the presence of the existence of this technology, we would be able to learn how to have that muscle. As a pessimist, you might say, well, it would just destroy, you know, the uniqueness of culture.

That reminds me. One of my favorite sci fi books as a kid was The Uglies. Okay. The movie's horrible.

My god.

I really liked it because in this universe, have the ability to become beautiful. Everyone can go through a process where they become beautiful, what have you. But as you read the series, there's resistance movement, where they cut up their face to have their genetics like come back. And how like, the convenience or the option to be beautiful actually Yeah. Takes away, you know, who you are as an individual.

This convenience or this option to be better is actually quite horrible.

I think the limit of a lot of this tech is that, again, Mike, to your point, we should have some friction in our lives. Like, we should still want to prioritize that. It should not be something we just use ubiquitously.

Yeah. I I really agree with this because I've been thinking about convenience a lot as being one of the one of the, like, principal insidious things that is happening to us recently and thinking about that on a binary with curiosity. And how do you have convenience without letting it remove curiosity, I think, is a thing we to Mike's point, don't know how to manage it.

We're figuring it out. Think

Yeah. We're figuring it out. But I think, yeah, for me, it's you you saying that, Mike, helps me realize that, like, I don't trust it yet. I don't trust myself to have convenience and not abandon curiosity.

You should be from the Northeast. We're really good at just looking at something that makes our lives easier and going, no. Thank you. I will choose to labor more and have a bad time.

Deeply concerned without that friction ever present, I won't know why anymore.

Gadovoir asked, do have a sci fi want for your youth that is not about more convenience?

Oh. Yes. Okay. See? Oh, good question.

So much of the sort of theorizing of these things is about what makes life easier.

I mean, someone else in the chat, it has long since passed. I'm so sorry. But saying that, you know, sometimes we, as people, choose the less convenient option and an example of that being that we refuse mass transit and drive cars. There's so many shades of gray with this.

I think the convenience of not having to see strangers beats the convenience of getting there sooner and easier.

Yeah. Yeah.

It's a different kind of convenience.

Yeah. At the risk of opening a can of worms, crisp cracking sound, and then from the can issues forth a whisper that goes, Ronald Reagan. Yeah.

Down the stream. He's here. He's here.

In America specifically, it's like from Ronald Reagan forward like, it was already really bad. But from Ronald Reagan forward, individualism has just become virulent.

Oh, yeah.

It is, like, pathological to a degree that will be, I think, impossible to extract from American society in Return. The next six or seven generations on top of the fact that America is built for cars. Literally, like, the infrastructure is made for cars and not people. Like, New York City is one of the most pedestrian friendly places in the entirety of The United States, and I still almost get killed on the walk to the studio multiple times a week by a car.

Yeah. I mean, so so that people live in their cars.

Yeah. Oh my god. So, like, I I think that's the other part of it is that it's like, there's a real top down kind of power structure, that both builds the natural environment to force us into certain things that we then see as convenient. One, because kind of they are, and two, because we kinda can't see them any other way, and there's no social pressure to be like, hey. We should all work together to make things better for everybody.

It's like, no. My car has air conditioning. And, yeah, I don't I don't have to see a poor person.

Mhmm. Anyone who says, like, if they talk about why they don't like public transit is always because they don't like to see unhoused people. And it's like, okay. Great. Yeah.

That's a problem we can solve. Yeah. Let's just not let's not build a bomb for one second. But we like for one second, and we can solve that problem too.

I believe in New York, a lot of the highways were built over poor neighborhoods, you don't have to see it.

Either over them or directly through them if they were getting too rich.

Through them. Yes. Yeah. Bisecting them to cut the economic district in half.

Yes. Yes.

Yeah. Which the DOT now is trying to undo, and all of the people who drive on those highways are like, but my highway. Oh

my god. My beautiful highway.

Anyways, okay. I sorry to rant at all of you. It drives me insane.

Before we move on, per our international folks in the chat, I need to relay an audio another can. Look what I've got here. Full of worms.

I know.

Thatcher. Margaret Thatcher. A bit

of good.

So there you go, chat.

Big pro Irish

Chat requesting worms. Worms.

I want this is sort of a shift. But there's been this very interesting conversation in the chat that started with beauty tech, and especially in Fifth Element and like Total Recall where I think someone was mentioning the secretary that could change the color of her nails with a little pen as kind of an example. Isn't that amazing? I think the nail change and stuff like that is in a way supposed to also create an efficiency to shorten of doing something. But then what has happened in the chat is now a conversation about body mods Mhmm.

And tattooing specifically as a body mod and as technological advancement because now, obviously, most people are getting tattooed with guns instead of like a big long stick that someone's hammering. Though if you get, for example, traditional Japanese tattooing, that may still happen and there are a lot of cultures that obviously still use traditional tattooing methods. But I think that's an interesting technological advancement that isn't making anything more efficient or anything, like, it's it's purely for the self. Mhmm. But I am I'm like, okay, well, what would like the sci fi movie version of this be?

To me, it would still kind of fall into that like efficiency model of like, okay, well, a sci fi thing would be getting tattoos that can move or that you can change.

That reminds me of just like how I I really thought that we would come a lot further with accessibility like like limbs and Yeah. Yeah. Robot arms

and legs. But

Yeah. We got bored.

So this is we got I don't know if we wanna transition to this right now, but, like, David Graeber wrote a piece a while ago about basically, like, why didn't we get flying cars? Like, David Graber was 40 at the turn of the millennium in February. And he was like, when I was a kid, I was promised flying cars. Like, in the fifties, like, I watched the moon landing, and it was clear to us as a culture that we were going to get flying cars amongst other things that were, like, already well underway. The promise of genetic science as well that seems to have basically, like, if not stalled, then just, like, slowed down based upon where it was in the mid century.

And, you know, he asks a bunch of really good questions throughout the whole piece. You can read it in the Baffler. What's it called? I think it's called of flying cars. Of the things that he asked is like, well, if we don't get it, like, where you know, we had all these resources.

Where did all the resources go? Bombs. Yeah. Yeah. Bombs.

Bombs. They just went it went to it went to bombs.

I I full on expect corollary to that is I full on expected, like, the the the atomic panic of the fifties of, like, mutations and genetic shifts and all of that, like extra tentacles or monstrous things. I don't know if I expected it, but, like, that's a whole other vein.

Like cloning and, like, let me put a tail.

Yeah. What's kind of weird about something like cloning like the fears around that is that there has been actual stuff happening.

Streisand?

Yes. Barbara Streisand. She she cloned her dogs.

Famously did not did not want her dog to die and so made clones of it.

But the what I bring this up because in the same way that, you know, the the moment I think last year, right, when the FBI was like, aliens are real. And everyone was like, dude, whatever. I have so much else going on. Yeah.

The air force.

Yeah.

We're like some I'm on the phone with insurance. Yeah. I feel like some of this tech that does end up happening like Barbara Streisand cloning her dogs, people are like, alright. Anyway, like, what? I mean,

it's very, like, Katy Perry going to

To spay oh my god, with her flower.

The thing I think that's happened is we kept like, we had this fear of, like, oh, we're gonna grow extra limbs or, people are gonna get mutated into something or, know, merge with plants or all these exciting imaginative things, and it all just turned out to be cancer. Just cancer across the board.

Oh, boy.

Yeah. It really was. Yeah. Everything just came cancer. And I

just like, one disappointment after. Do you you remember, like, three, four months ago in that somebody put into the chat, oh, they did definitive studies about e EMF. Is that right? From phones

Oh, like five g?

Are they bad for us? Yeah. And and the verdict was neutral. Does nothing. Does absolutely nothing.

And universally, we all were like, I was kinda hoping for

wild mutations.

I was kinda kinda hoping for X-ray.

Well, because, you know, because everybody lost their minds, and they're they're on the Internet too much and read too many things about how five g gives you Brain worms. Brain something. Yeah. Yeah. All the scientists did exactly what scientists do.

Do you think they would learn their lesson by now? And they're like, we exposed something like brain tissue to 10,000 times more five g signal than anybody would ever experience, and we see no reason to believe there will be adverse effects. And what everybody heard was, so you're saying there's a chance?

Yeah.

This is why I like the work of Samuel Delaney a lot because he goes sort of both routes. He goes, like Oh, yeah. Like body mods as, like, tissue modification and as, like, the result of exposure to the bizarre world around us and, like, technological advancement.

Oh. Wet.

Yeah. Wet. Future but wet.

Future but wet.

What who is this boy? Say the name again.

Stereo Delaney.

K. That's not someone I know.

Hans. Nice.

Give us the t l

d r.

This is

very fun.

What's his deal? Give me the the sparkling Wet. Okay. No further questions.

So one of my favorite shows as a child was Totally Spies. Yes. It is so

good. I'm gonna have to look this up. I was probably too young for this is what I'm assuming why I don't remember it.

Definitely. Too

old for it.

Too old? I'm What's that now? I think I'm hearing too old.

Do you guys Jason's 24.

Oh, My parents probably wouldn't let me watch this. It was too too scary for me because I was so young.

Yeah. Jason just got his braces taken out.

Totally Spies is a show about three women who were spies. It's very like Charlie's Angels, but animated, like Powerpuff Girls, but Like a little more realistic.

Should I explain Powerpuff Girls to Hans and Mike?

Let me let me step in there, Jason.

But specifically, I think one of the most notable pieces of tech in the show was their pink compact, and it looked like a makeup compact, but it was like a it's kinda like a phone with like, you know, video calling feature where they can, I'm forgetting the main guy that their like boss who would tell them about missions.

They're truly Basically.

With him. But the compact could do a lot of things like Jerry. Yes. Yes. Jerry.

It could analyze material. It's interesting because it is very similar to a phone. Like a lot of the things that it can do is what we can do on a phone now. But what I love about, I was thinking like, why do I still want this even though I have a phone, is how it looks. So much of the technology in Totally Spies was extremely girly and extremely feminine and it wasn't it didn't look like a black box, you know?

And that was part of the technology and why I wanted it. It was tactile and it was like pink and shiny and purple and has flowers. But totally size. Let's see.

Was the time of the the pink razor and, like, bedazzling your flip phone, at least when we were in middle school.

Jason wasn't born yet.

Jason wasn't alive yet. So Jason, a flip phone.

Yes, too.

But I I have to, like, you talking about this has reminded me of another thing very similar that is also girly, that is also gorgeous. That's actually from a pretty recent movie and not a sci fi one at all. It is the Shell e reader from It Follows. I'm gonna put it in the chat. It's incredible.

I hear you. There's like no reason That is

so so serious.

Why it needed to exist.

Could someone describe this for the podcast listeners later?

So the shell e reader, it's in the horror movie It Follows. Imagine also a compact. So you just flip it open. It's baby pink. It looks like a shell.

And both sides of the compact are screens. And she can page through, like, scroll through from the bottom circle of the compact and is reading a book that the screens of which sort of bleed into each other like an e reader. But it's just this little shell, and it's probably frankly, would probably be very difficult to read on.

Yeah. Like as I'm looking at this, this seems like something that is way cooler than its utility.

Oh, I'm sure this would probably be a UX nightmare. But to your point, Meckel, it has this similar quality of very very femme and an interesting shape that sure is maybe not like the most realistic shape. But it yeah. It has this beautiful still kind of tactile quality despite I mean, the Totally Spies compact is also screens. Yeah.

Oh, my god. What okay. Just reading this aloud. From Daniel Jenna Grouse. What if we lived in a world not designed by several men who misunderstood the point of Bauhaus?

We are here to imagine that very world.

Like, one of the most, I think, maybe optimistic things about so much of the technology that's depicted in forward looking fiction from the past is that it would either be tailored to the individual person that was using it in some way or reflect their style in some, like, meaningful way, or it would more meaningfully evoke the body. I think that was the, like as we were coming out of the mid century where everything had corners and we were getting into the end of the century, there was both a sort of, like, design idea and, industrial design and construction capability of making things with curves. So And people were like, woah. Like, what if technology looked a little bit more biological Mhmm. Which, like, we can do now and is different.

But then we just went back to yeah. Then we just went back to Johnny Odds.

Yeah. We had that beautiful moment where the iMac, like all the the colors of the iMac, the sort of clear trend of having clear plastic, so that you could see the inside of the technology. Even like the beaut I think beautiful clear purple Game Boy. Oh, yeah. And then, yeah, like the iMac laptops that were all different colors and very, like, rounded at the edges.

I think probably what happened is that like like everything else, the people manufacturing those things realized that that is not so broadly desirable as to be, like, maximally profitable. So you can't make anything that has character because not a billion people will buy it.

Speaking of character What

do you have there? I know what it is.

Is this a Polly Pocket?

Someone mentioned the contact was in like a Polly Pocket.

Oh my god.

And you had that in Yeah. Recent is

so sick.

Clearly, I love nostalgia. This is a Polly Pocket I had as a kid that I lost and then I bought it on eBay.

So beautiful.

But like, this was like the like, the texture and the feel of, like, some of this tech. Right?

I mean, you're opening it like a flower. Like, you're

It's also kind bizarrely o Oke Yes. Okefos. Okefos. Okefos.

I mean, it is like a lotus.

Yeah. Like yeah. It's also, like, maximalist. There's so much going on in there.

Yeah. But it's like a little flower that is technically like, I think it's like a swim pool, but you can like put water or something and I think it will spout out and it like pop. You can pump it. And it's like a little water slide thing. Wow.

Definitely a choking hazard for a child is probably why something like this you can't buy for a kid anymore. Mhmm. Because it's so tiny. But like a little whirl that you can put in your pocket.

Yeah. It's a little like a compact that opens like a flower and four petals full of swim gear that has a pump through the middle that can pump like a fountain and fill it with lots of chokeable little things.

Yes. I even I even think I was thinking of this the other night. Earlier in the day, was also talking about the Volkswagen Beetle, and it lives inside my heart always, that car. I think it's a beautiful sweet thing that is very different than so many other things. But I don't think it has this feature anymore.

But at least in the February, the Volkswagen Beetle had a little vial in the dashboard that you could put a flower in.

The flower. That's right. I

remember this. And I think about it all

the Quimsical.

Such a sweet and completely unnecessary feature might have been more trouble than it was worth. Because imagine water there, go over a pothole, and then, uh-oh. But I think we can afford to have that.

It's interesting how we started talking about how all of our our initial ideas were around convenience. And now we're just talking about things that are explicitly anti convenience.

Yeah. Well, it's just absolute decoration. Like the the I miss decoration. I miss the equivalent of filigree, basically. Crown molding.

Crown molding.

Give it

to me. In a

white box. Yeah. Yeah. Like, for real.

I had assumed that the future would be giving us more things and more customizability and more maximalism. Like, I assumed that my room would look like the center of that O'Keefe and Polly Pocket universe. I just have fewer things and fewer options and more white boxes and a singular screen that occupies my attention rather than a wall of screens.

This is very similar to Hans, the fear that you were describing of convenience being sort of the the enemy of curiosity.

That Curiosity. Yeah.

I think we did have that moment and I'm sure part of this is the nostalgia I have for this kind of technology. But when cell phones all looked very different and had different relationships to how they present a keyboard to you

Yeah.

How they flip open, do they spin open, do they push open, do you flip them open? The way you decorated them was very specific to you. That there was, I think, and is this desire for decoration. I want it back. Part of this is also

this is also Kyle Chaeke's point, right, of like Yeah. When you can see right, Instagram has provided a united idea of what a living room looks like. Yes. A coffee shop looks like, what a studio looks like, what a kitchen looks like. And so that's, like, invaded some portion of our culture such that it is maybe even like a little bit harder to make things that are not that way.

This Even if you want them.

Yes. This reminds me. I literally saw this last night. There's some girl, I believe she lives in New York, who's making her entire apartment look like the sunken Titanic.

Like so bad.

It's so outrageous.

Let's get her let's get her on the show. Let

to her. And me it's been, like, I saw the finished product first and then obviously a bunch of videos being like, have you guys seen this girl who made her apartment like this? Sure. And then I was getting some older videos of her because I was watching those. And it was like day 288 of turning my apartment into the Titan.

There's, I think, also in line this conversation of like, excellent use of free will to your point again, Hans, of I think curiosity being very much something you you, in some ways, have to choose to seek and to even garden.

It almost feels like, being able to use your at least for me, sometimes I feel burdened by the idea that I have free will and it becomes difficult to use my free will. And I like, I'm existing in this like phone convenience, and I'm just stuck here. That's my own personal issue. Yeah.

But we think that we have now gotten a unified sense of the future, just like we have a unified sense of a kitchen.

More bombs. More bombs.

What's that?

No fuss. Unified expectation.

Yeah. Like yeah. I mean, I think part of what the part of what David Graeber talks about in the essay is that it does it feels a little bit like the future got stolen.

Yes. Yeah.

Like, I think it is it is really hard to feel like there was a possibility space that felt rather wide, I think, until, like, the early nineties. And David Graeber seems to agree that it's like things felt really possible from the fifties through the eighties. It began then it began to taper off. It feels now like we have to fix a bunch of stuff we've done wrong over the last thirty years before we can start to progress. And that's kinda like muted a sense of idealism for future because we have to fix the past.

Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I think there was still like an optimism in the, like, twenty tens with like hipsters and also just like a little bit of an optimism around some of the tech companies. Like, I felt very differently about Google fifteen years ago than I do now.

Yeah. Same.

And that is why like sometimes I'm like, why am I so obsessed with nostalgia? And I think it's like that I do feel like the future was ripped for me so I'm going back to a space where I had

Yeah.

You know, a little bit of hope, a little bit of excitement about what was to come.

But I think a similarity in that era of the movement in tech and the movement of hipsterdom was to reclaim, readdress the past that Mike is sort of referencing there. The whole hipster movement was, hey, we're gonna do the past again, but with a better critical consensus.

Exactly. Yeah.

Yeah. I think of that time as being really present focused and not future focused. Yes. But, like, I I agree that they're they're, like, it might have then been the idea of, like, if we fix this now, then, like, we're gonna set ourselves on the right path. But, like, I do remember a kind of, like, really specific future sort of perspective or thinking in the nineties, then maybe the early two thousands.

But then, yeah, once we get into hipsterdom, it's like, we're gonna fix now. Now we have to fix then. Yeah. Like, gotta undo we gotta undo stuff feel

like we are in a very odd place. And I know that's sort of overly general. But in that, there is so much taking stock of in all directions of the present, the past, and the future right now. I think the feeling I'm sensing at least is very much a woah woah woah woah woah woah. Like, in all directions.

I think the gut of loss says maybe the problem was that we thought it would come easy. And I think for a while, we did. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think it did for a little while.

We thought that, like, there was work to be done, but, like, we would do it.

Right. Or at least that it would come linearly. Yeah.

And it Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's right.

And it does not.

Step upon one. Yeah. I also wanna address I think it's gone by, but someone said, like, isn't this a problem of getting older? And I don't think it is. Mhmm.

Because I asked my parents this a little while ago. Was like, do you guys feel like do you ever feel like the world is ending? And they're like, god, no. Never. Things are getting better.

Like, everything's always improving. They're like, why do you? And I'm like, yeah. All the time.

Well, yeah. I also think it's a perspective as well, of course. Because, you know, if you're older, I am also imagine that you've seen many more iterations and and cycles, how it feels and then what actually happens and how it feels.

I think boomers aren't worried. I think categorically boomers are not worried.

I think

that's fair. I I will say though, I I think that boomers have not been worried for a very long time, but I think they're starting to really understand the situation that younger generations are in because like, for the first time, I think like my parents are like, oh wait, the job market is unsafe for everyone, including my kids.

And like Yeah. There's no like shortcut. There's no

I think that's I think that's true. Yeah.

Robert Reich's new memoir is apparently an apology for boomers getting it wrong. Woah.

Did they nominate him as

the That's

what you

were reading.

He's the Yeah.

Yeah. They got they had a meeting.

I mean, they picked a good one.

Yeah. Yeah.

Because in a yeah. Because in a way, like, my parents' generation, you know, got to escape the poverty that my grandparents were in and there was hope you could like get an education, get a job, have a pension, have benefits and then, yeah, we know what happened to all of that.

Yeah. Home ownership?

Homo what?

At one day. Everyone is gay now. Fellas, is it good old house? The gender is everywhere.

Alright. Did we solve

it? Yeah. Think so. Let's recapture this feature.

Hell yeah, gang.

Shell phone now. Shell phone now.

Shell phone now. Shell phone now.

I'm surprised no one brought up time travel.

No. It sucks in every direction.

I'll stay put.

I have so much going on.

I'm good, dog. I'm good. I'm sorry, brother. Sorry, brother. I got I got places to be.

That's our team chat for the Never Post Member Drive stream week. Thank you, Magle, famed Brooklyn ceramicist Yeah. For joining us once again

Of course.

And for providing the frame for this conversation, incisive as always. Thank you, chat.

Yes.

For joining us. Thank Chet. And all of your contributions. They were invaluable. Excellent.

Very, very much appreciated. And I guess, you, Hans, Georgia, and Jason. Wow.

I mean,

it's, Jason, I'm glad your

parents let you out for the afternoon. Yeah. Aren't you late for I'm going to homework to make sure you're late.

That's the team chat that I have for you today. We'll be back in the main feed right now.

Right now. Bye. Bye? Bye. Bye.