Classical Futurism

Restoring Civilization by Promoting Technical Culture

There is a clear alternative to the world we currently live in. Digital involution was never inevitable. There is now little doubt that technological development in the past half century has fallen into an increasingly narrow set of domains. This can be seen in many subtle measures of our society, in the nature of our culture, in the experiments our scientists conduct, even in the types of engineers graduated by our universities. To solve this problem, one must abandon the view of technological progress as a linear path. It is rather an almost infinite state space of different potential paths of development, only a very few of which have ever been embarked upon. A new ethos is arising, first gradually and then suddenly. As science moves from publicly funded legacy institutions to independent investigators, those paths of development long abandoned will begin to come into view. To understand what these paths might look like, one must first examine the one upon which we are currently traveling, and what has placed us there. Space is hard. This message is repeated in so many places, almost in a conscious attempt to demoralize. However, digital chips are easy, or so we are told. After all, the extension of Moore’s Law has seemed almost effortless, and much recent progress has occurred in that domain. However, this progress can be attributed to the almost superhuman efforts of a few canny Dutchmen in Brabant, building the worlds most complex machines. There are clear choices that have been made, for reasons that are not always obvious. However, a closer look will shed some light on the matter.

In order to understand the extent of what is possible, technological development must be separated from the concept of modernity. Modernity can be defined by a series of trends that have defined history since the late twentieth century. These include centralization of work, massive urbanization, and the creation of a global monoculture. For such an endeavor to occur, the greater part of mankind must think alike, and more importantly, will be solving a rather restricted set of problems. These problems will be restricted to those which are financially feasible, and in practice, only those which enrich the major corporations will be pursued. It is therefore no surprise that communication leapt forward while virtually everything else stagnated. As a result of the mass production of architectural elements, minimalism gradually began to define the shape of cities. In recent years, several lines of technological development have come to evolve, which negate the concept of modernity entirely. Additive manufacturing seemingly makes intricate structures affordable. Art may be taking a more realistic turn since the advent of AI driven picture generation. To verify this, compare the cover illustrations of Substack from around 2022 to those made today. Once AI is coupled with additive manufacturing, there is no reason why minimalism should remain the default form of contemporary architecture. Many have described the fundamental condition of modern man as the annihilation of distance. Communication technology ensure the constant transmission of the monoculture to all corners of the globe, except for those societies which consciously abstain from it. If recent developments in rocket technology bear fruit as expected, mankind shall, as in most eras of history, be again scattered over insurmountable distances. Hence, the two main characteristics of society enabling globalization may soon vanish from the earth.

The events of the past few months have shown that the new powers that be will not attempt to reform the sclerotic institutions of legacy academia, but rather defund and dismantle them until they cease to exist entirely. No one trusts the Academy anymore, and rightly so. I see an age soon approaching where reason has given way to unreason, a rather perilous one indeed. However, after the inevitable consequences of increasingly unreasoning distrust and superstition, the populace will come looking for intellectual authority once more. It is not only advantageous for gentleman scientists to build parallel structures based on truth, it is also our duty. To this end we are establishing a fully independent alternative to such publications as Popular Mechanics or Scientific American.

I will focus on the necessity of three different cultural institutions, and why they form a complex critical to the advancement of civilization. Science fiction is important, as it represents the world that could be. As mentioned in How to Defeat Hollywood, science fiction adventure stories are a key portion of the Space Age Mindset. The main value of such stories to society is the inspiration they provide to aspiring inventors. Such aspirations however must evolve beyond idle fantasies, and the best way to bring them into the physical world is the development of capable science kits. There has never been a better time to be a gentleman scientist, as the cost of much lab equipment is far lower than most people would suspect. However, there is a great necessity for the organization and presentation of such equipment in coherent narratives for the conduction of guided experiments, otherwise known as science kits. Forthcoming will be a brief guide to such material available today, organized into convenient parts lists. The gentleman scientists cultivated by such kits end up conducting scientific investigations of man and the universe which increasingly fail to support the progressive worldview. While early discoveries such as heliocentrism and geologic time were often held up by Marxists and atheists as evidence of a fundamentally disordered Universe, more recent discoveries such as Big Bang Theory and certain insights into the nature of man often render their intellectual descendants palpably uncomfortable. For these reasons the next successful society must combine the high culture of the pre-modern West with the latest advances in science. To further this critical mission of Tom Swift, I am now accepting article submissions in the areas of technology, science and civilization. In order to maximize revenue, exclusive benefits to members will begin to appear, such as this list of books that will provide you with the building blocks of the civilization we were most definitely supposed to be living in by now...