The needle on the compass of contemporary discussion increasingly points toward the future - attracted by "A/" for NEW. Past, present and every halfway foreseeable develop­ ment appear to chase this omnipresent oracle. Everything appears to be oriented in the direction of this magnetic maelstrom. The current discussions transpose man into a future in which he sees his own image beyond the future. Technologically perfect, free of all the shortcomings of his defective past. This course of discussion is a mani­ festation of post-futurism. Media discussions are especially increasingly focused on that which is absent, on that which cannot be seen or determined. The harmlessness of referencelessness - couple with the exotic allures of quasi virtual mental sports - is a partial explanation for the boom in this school of thought, l/l/e feel confronted with an inflation of assumptions which in the form o f lack of interest for the present, for the boredom with that which is feasible produces an enormous vacuum in which every impulse to put oneself into relation with the present dis­ appears in the vortex o f an endless, futurological prophecy. In this mael­ strom ethical and moral concerns regarding current developments can easily be thrown over board. What will be feasible in the future, makes any thought on the present pointless. Test tube man will become standard. Brain transplants w ill become an operation like any other. Why even both with thoughts about current consequences? Why even discuss the right to one's own consciousness when it will be commercially upgradable in x years? Yet the abyss of the feasible still lies between now and the future. It is clear that the state of being cannot be deduced from what should be ... no real present may be built on the basis of an imagined tomorrow.
Will man become a creator who makes himself obsolescent through the creation of his own new, improved version? The cult of Newness as a techno-theological cannibalism. Progress continues to be made on every part of the body - equipping us to survive in the future. We are no longer the dead on holdiay, but rather the dead who dream of the perfect, endless vacation.
April 1997