A Brief History of Paleo-Futurism

This blog was originally going to be called "The Paleo-Futurist." I wanted to start a blog to document and develop all the ideas I have, questions I wonder about, and weird stuff that interests me. The word futurist seemed to do a good job of summing up the general bent of my interests. But futurist, like almost any -ist word, has all sorts of preexisting associations for people, which I wanted to avoid. There is, for instance, the art movement Futurism, which I think is really, really silly. So silly its awesome. For instance, check out these musicians. Or this quote from the Futurist Manifesto(1909),

We affirm that the world’s magnificence has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing car whose hood is adorned with great pipes, like serpents of explosive breath—a roaring car that seems to ride on grapeshot is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.

Also there are sci-fi type people who call themselves futurists. Like Isaac Asimov, or people who draw things like this. Also both cool and silly.

What I mean when I think of being a futurist, though, is someone who is thinking about new ideas and looking at how things are changing, and trying to guide that change in some direction, rather than just go along with it. In my case, I want a future that has less cars and engines and speed, and weird boxes with cones coming out of them. I don't really like driving places, pollution, city lights, or industrial noise. Not that I'm against technology. I'm just against how its often used. Anyway, to describe my stance I made up a new term, Paleo-Futurism. This term sounded cool, and had the added bonus of not making any sense. I was very proud of myself.

Unfortunately, I googled the term, and I found that it had already been invented by someone else! In fact someone already made a blog called Paleo-Future! They use the term to describe antique visions of the future. Which are generally awesome and silly(see above on Futurism, or rent Back to the Future II). Also their use of the term makes more sense than mine. So I thought of a different name for the blog.