You know, old, you know, mid and early 20th century futurism, it always imagines the future, you know, there's all these technological wonders and stuff, and yet it doesn't imagine that social relations change at all.

In this vision of the future, it's like, well, the maid has replaced a lot of the help, but there's still

like this housekeeper working in somebody's house. Like, the housekeeper still exists because

social relations haven't changed at all. My favorite example of this, and you mentioned it

earlier also, is the Jetsons, right? In the Jetsons, you know, they have flying cars and they travel

by like, what, pneumatic tubes or whatever, Like, you know, it's like this vision of kind of techno utopianism or whatever. And it has the social relations of the 1950s. Like it's just this like patriarchal nuclear family. Like Jane still has to perform all of the functions. Like all of the undervalued and completely unpaid work of a, you know, 1950s American housewife.

She just like still has to do all that stuff.

It's just that her doing of that stuff is like facilitated by these really cool machines,

but she's still doing it.

So that is something that is very funny and also just very short-sighted and myopic about many forms of futurism.

The only real futurism can be one that's materialist because you have to understand that

social relations change as a direct consequence of economic relations changing.

One is not autonomous from the other. They're deeply interwoven. Culture changes too.

The conversation we were having

earlier about like sequels and reboots and stuff, like that is a product of political

economy. Those things come out of political economy. They don't exist as something independent

from it. It has to do with the structures of like how studios are owned, how films are being

made, how capital is now structured internationally, all that kinds of

stuff. No need for the bride to feel tragic. The rest is push-button magic. So whether you bake or

broil or stew, the frigid-air kitchen does it all for you. Don't have to be chained to the stove all day.

Just set the timer and you're on your way.

1956's Design for Dreaming may not offer a materialist analysis, but it does have plenty in the way of material in it.

...