Quel avenir pour...

Went into the show because I heard Rose Eveleth was in it and I'm a fan of the podcast Flashforward podcast, which is an intelligent show with deep and thoughtful analysis about possible futures and does an excellent job of talking to experts on the issues.

The show is not like that. It's trying to be more accessible to a wider audience. It winds up being mostly techno-optimistic fluff, with every so often a teeny bit of more nuanced commentary from an expert like Rose Eveleth. I wanted much more of the latter and way less of the former.

I get they're trying to make this really accessible to a wide audience through random-people-on-the-street commentaries and the like. I found myself wanting more depth, and I was dismayed at how many minutes of every episode are spent breathlessly showcasing random tech startups. It felt more like long-form advertisements than documentary journalism.

Flashforward fans: don't get your hopes up. For every minute of an STS-type scholar trying to invite a smarter conversation, there are five minutes of hyping up random tech CEOs advertising their latest startup.

Watched the first episode and all I can say is... woof.

Brain-numbingly void of any real science. And in true Netflix fashion, it seems like they overpaid for VO and underpaid for graphics. Evidently people in the future have no faces or fingers.

Overall, it felt cheaply made and geared toward a younger audience. I'm not entirely sure I would even call this a documentary series since it feels so over-scripted and cookie-cutter. But I guess that's what happens when you have EIGHT executive producers on a 20-minute video about dogs.

Once again... woof.

For everyone who thinks Netflix is too woke, this series is a perfect example why. Sometimes I feel like Netflix is trying to shove their "mandatory diversity" agenda down everyone's throats, no matter how cringey and tacky it seems. Forced multiculturalism at its worst. I mean let's be honest: this program is by millennials, for millennials. Leave it to the godless heathens Netflix to do an entire 1/2 hour show on "Life After Death" and not ONCE even mention the word heaven! People already think these coastal elite liberals are a bunch of atheists; its propagranda like this that perpetuates this stereotype.

The show offers a superficial view into the possible future of technology. Allthough the show lacks any form of depth and is sometimes a bit too unrealistic (looking at you 'talking to your dog' episode) the show does offer some fun new visions for the future. Nothing too mindblowing, but enough to make you think.

The ideas presented are ideas worth discussing. Some ideas are 10 years away and others 100. Yes, the production values are poor. But the point is to imagine how life on earth could change for the better and to hear from those who are trying to make progress. Could you imagine trying to tell people in 1922 to imagine 2022? They would dismiss most everything that ended up happening.