Personally, as is often noted, “Idiocracy” is probably tops for current events… but for the farther future, I’d go Blade Runner Universe, most likely… just for the sheer scale of total biosphere degradation and megacorp control. How about you?

  • DandomRude@lemmy.worldEnglish
    15·
    9 days ago

    I would say that we will very soon find ourselves in 1984 or perhaps Brazil, with a little bit of The Circle and Her thrown in, but overall it will be more like The Road due to climate change, unless Elysium technology has been developed by then, which is unlikely, but if so, it will certainly be used as depicted in the film.

    • GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca
      4·
      8 days ago

      I wish we had Gattaca instead of what we have. At least the shitty people would be genetically superior, for whatever that’s worth, instead of just richer.

  • GreenKnight23@lemmy.world
    4·
    8 days ago

    I would say we’re getting dangerously close to the videogame “Freedom Fighters”. Just replace Soviet Union with MAGA and New York with US and we’re already there.

    1000002480

    wiki synopsis:

    The game is set in an alternate history in which the Soviet Union has invaded and occupied New York City. The player takes the role of Christopher Stone, a plumber turned resistance movement leader, fighting against the invaders in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and on Governors Island.

    • CanadaPlus@futurology.todayEnglish
      1·
      7 days ago

      Flying cars were always dangerous and impractical in the places where they’d be needed, but I’m already in line for an implant that didn’t used to exist. Cyberware is basically just that on an elective basis, right?

      We have crypto, talking computers and warfare looks like this:

      Next up I’m waiting on crowded street markets lit by signage, although the trend towards delivering everything makes me doubt.

      The one trope that can’t happen is corporations as government. Executives are not warlords, even if they think they are. Actual authoritarian regimes always end up looking like each other, and not like Google.

  • gigastasio@sh.itjust.works
    973·
    9 days ago

    Not exactly sci fi, but the TV adaptation of Handmaid’s Tale bears some striking parallels to the current renaissance that extreme right ideologies are currently enjoying. Off the top of my head…

    • It shows how quickly and easily street-level enforcement of an authoritarian system can be implemented, and that there is no shortage of people willing to take on that role.

    • It shows that the architects of an oppressive system aren’t necessarily “true believers” in such a system, nor are they held to the standards demanded of the average citizen.

    • It shows how extremist ideologies bleed beyond the borders of one country and begin to infect others.

    You can see examples of all three of these in what’s happening now.

      • Bloomcole@lemmy.world
        1·
        8 days ago

        “A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.”

        That rat snitch thief Orwell has nothing on Aldous Huxley.

  • MyBrainHurts@piefed.caEnglish
    9·
    9 days ago

    Maybe recency bias, but a lot of stuff from the new Running Man hits home. Maybe not the murder TV show but (obviously minor worldbuilding spoilers):

    Bifurcated society, where the have nots have to check in to enter the nice part of town. (Related story: A couple years ago, I visited America for a wedding. After the pre-wedding reception, I was walking back to my hotel through an upscale neighbourhood, in a suit. Within a half hour private security drove by, got out of the car, hand on gun and explained they’d received calls about me walking on the sidewalk. The guy then insisted he drive me to a more suitable area.)

    Unions existed but reporting to them gets you blacklisted, people need work so safety regulations only exist on paper.

    Veterans Affairs is taken over by the Y and reduced to a miserable hostel and not much else.

    Time in a green park is awarded by lottery and only briefly.

    Ubiquitous private security.

    One media network, that is free and mostly exists to pit haves vs have nots. (Pretty much social media already)

    Etc. I think the part that really gets me is you don’t have to imagine particularly hard to see us getting there.

          • Lorindól@sopuli.xyz
            2·
            8 days ago

            TOS had the “Eugenics Wars” / WW III start in the 1990’s, but the later series made alterations to the original timeline due to several time travel shenannigans. An easy way for the writers to explain why we aren’t currently living in a post-apocalyptic hell. All the major events will happen, just delayed accordingly.

            Star Trek is supposed to happen in our future, so it’s hard to address our modern problems if they had to skip everything that happened after mid 90’s. Especially when the last 25 years have had a lot of mental stuff happening almost non-stop.

            • Darkaga@lemmy.world
              2·
              8 days ago

              To be fair, it doesn’t feel like we’re that far away from camps for undesirables and the Bell Riots.

              • Lorindól@sopuli.xyz
                1·
                8 days ago

                You are correct. It’s scary how things like these used to be just dystopic fiction. Now it is a completely plausible scenario in the very near future.

    • Profligate_parasite@lemmy.worldOP
      16·
      9 days ago

      Tomorrow I might as well see a manifestation of Q and watch a bewildered Picard shout “You can’t judge all of humanity by this barbaric time!”