[Cross-posted from my column on Anthropology News ] As I write this, magazines, newspapers and blog sites around the world proffer their predictions for 2014. Many of these are predictably banal; other prognostications are realistically pessimistic; many come from journalists, some from our social science colleagues. But they are still predictions—extrapolations from present conditions into a future that is always a continuation of the past. On the other hand, anthropology is conspicuously silent on the subject of 2014. But what would we say? Anthropological data seem utterly unsuited to annual prediction; the people and events we describe don’t fall along a linear path where the future can be neatly plotted like the price of gasoline. 1797 Phantasmagoria from Etienne-Gaspard Roberston. Image courtesy Wikipedia Commons. And yet, it would be difficult to find a discipline more concerned with the future. The 2013 annual meeting was a case in p...
Occasional posts on anthropologically interesting science fiction, anthropological futures and my own future as an anthropologist.