I think that the exercise we did with Future Coast was very interesting in the sense that we got to see and hear different scenarios that could possibly happen in the future. One aspect that I thought made this more realistic was hearing people’s voices and the emotion that came out of some of them. It was also very fun figuring out a scenario and making the actual phone call. But I had some thoughts that went through my head as we were doing this that made me question if the Future Coast project was realistic.
I know that the Future Coast project is to make people aware of climate change and what might happen in the future. But, it made me wonder just about technology in general. None of the messages were positive, and none really seemed like they could be realistic. It is hard for me to picture what could possibly happen in the future with climate change. I also started to wonder if there were even voicemails being left in the future. I feel like leaving voicemails is a dying cause since people already do not leave voicemails unless it is an important message for someone or an office call. Do we think that in the future we could look back at these voicemails and see what was said and then compare what is actually happening? I’m not really sure what it would be like, but I think it would be interesting to be able to look back on these messages and compare what was said and what is actually happening.
Throughout this class I think that the Future Coast project could be related to the Future World Company in the book Odds Against Tomorrow. I think this is because they are both predicting what could happen in the future about natural disasters. Although Future World never really mentioned anything about climate change, there were implications that disasters that could happen could be because of climate change. I also thought these two could go hand in hang with each other because they both could be looked at as a fluke that I mentioned earlier. Future World is something that people could think of as fake and that they could not really be able to see what can happen with a natural disaster. Whereas the Future Coast project is something where we don’t know what is going on, but we are being predictive of the future.
I know that these two genres are here to raise awareness to people that are not too familiar with climate change. I think that they are good intentions, but that they should have a positive twist on things. Reading all these scary stories are going to make people want to prevent these disasters from happening but I don’t think that they are truly being educated on how to prevent these things from happening. Everything that we have read in class so far has taught me a lot and I am happy that I am so much more aware about climate change now than I was 10 weeks ago. I just want to make a positive twist on things to make people aware on what to do to prevent disasters from happening instead of just scaring people.
I think it’s important that you are questioning if the Future Coast voicemails are futuristic; however, I honestly don’t think they’re supposed to be. When it comes down to it, no one has any idea what the future holds. I think this game is supposed to get people involved and having fun with global warming, as well as brainstorming what our future holds.
This is an interesting take on Future Coast, and am intrigued by the comparison you make between the Future Coast game and the fictional Future World company in the novel Odds Against Tomorrow. I think that your ideas and Brooke’s comments, when considered together, suggest a really important question about Future Coast and about Cli-Fi as a genre more generally: is it meant to be predictive or is it meant to be speculative? Perhaps the difference between prediction and speculation has something to do with the idea of playfulness (as Brooke suggests) — that creative projects like Future Coast are meant to be playful, fun, and speculative whereas a company like Future World (even though it is fictional, there are certainly companies like that in the real world) is meant to be predictive and thus profitable.
I totally agree that scaring people only gets us so far; we need to be also offering positive visions of the future and tangible steps we can take to achieve those futures. Maybe getting people to have fun, as Brooke suggests, could be an important first step in that process?
I think a lot if what you have discussed about cli-fi and the worry about just scaring really goes hand in hand with what J.P. Telotte said about cli-fi in our reading for tomorrow’s class. He talks about how cli-fi instigated discussion but does not provide solutions for the changing climate. I think that we definitely need to look into what solutions are availible now that we have discussed it, and share this with others. Cli-fi does scare people, now we need to discuss and resolve the issue.
This is an interesting take and I do agree with you. This class has been very interesting but there has also been a fair amount of negativity about the future. When it comes to Future Coast, I think if more people did not think about the future in the context of climate change, there would be more optimistic voicemails. Hopefully society can think more positively about the future in upcoming years.
Your take on Future Coasts bring up a valid point. None us know or can predict the future, yet with issues like climate change, we tend to think of it as bleak due to lack of effort being put in to mitigating it. I think if more were being done, maybe more voicemails would reflect positive aspects of the future instead of the negative.