made up future techno-craziness

Really I just remembered this quote that I had marked out from Infinite Jest to put up that was along the lines of the way that social defaults effect personal defaults. After this long paragraph about all this weird Wallacian made up future techno craziness, he has this to say about where we'd be at if that'd been the way that we'd gone and gotten. Anyway, so-

Saying this (made up future techno-craziness) is bad is like saying traffic is bad, or health-care surtaxes, or the hazards of annular fusion: nobody but Ludditic granola-crunching freaks would call bad what no one can imagine being without.

But so very much private watching of customized screens behind drawn curtains in the dreamy familiarity of home. A floating no-space world of personal spectation. Whole new millennial era, under Gentle and Lace-Forche. Total freedom, privacy, choice.


It's true. Society kind of has these generational defaults that are really what culture is, and those social defaults set up what the general personal default will most likely be. The thing that you would become if you weren't paying attention. Anyway, maybe something in that range. Maybe not. I couldn't rightly say.