Chuck Klosterman is no time traveler, but he's got a lot of ideas about how the future will shake out.
The journalist and former New York Times Ethicist is the author of his soon-to-be released ninth book, entitled "But What If We're Wrong?: Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past," in which he ponders the limits of humanity's search for truth.
Tech Insider recently spoke with Klosterman about aspects of this search, including the downsides of world-changing innovation, the perks of air conditioning, and how the Civil War might have been remembered differently if Twitter had existed in 1860.
Interview edited for clarity and length.
Chris Weller: Given the title, I think this could be read as a fairly pessimistic, or even nihilistic, book. How optimistic are you about the future?
Chuck Klosterman: The short answer is, "Not very." The long answer is that I think what this book is trying to suggest more than nihilism or cynicism, or a kind of negativity, is perhaps the idea that the world changes constantly. It always feels problematic when something we understand is replaced by something else. But in fact, existence might be a neutral charge.
If someone feels negative about the way society or culture seems to be going, what it probably suggests is that it's just moving away from the state that they are comfortable with or used to. It's understandable why someone would feel that way. I mean, we only get to live once. Maybe it takes forty years of your life to understand how the world seems to work. To see that change around you just when you feel like you had some sense of security is alienating and disappointing.
But when I think about the future, I'm not necessarily arguing it's going to be better or worse. I'm just saying it's going to be different.
Weller: There's been a great deal written by people like Steven Pinker about how, in the macro, rates of violence are going down. Things are better even if we don't like to admit it. How has writing this book made you think about those bigger changes in progress?
Klosterman: Well, what he's arguing is that you have to accept that even the most violent act there is — the act of war — is less violent than it once was. But I also think as much as he level of violence changes, I think people's relationship with the concept of violence changes, and that to me might be a little more interesting.
Weller: What do you mean by that?
Klosterman: The reason that people in the intellectual community argue that football is dangerous is because there's now a large swath of society that has no relationship to physicality or potential violence.
As more and more people recognize the level of violence involved and the consequences of CTE [chronic traumatic encephelopathy, a degenerative brain disorder], they're obviously going to say "We don't want this to be a part of culture." And they overlook the fact that there's a huge swath of the populace where physicality is still a real common thing.
If you move furniture all day, if you're a construction worker, if you have a job that's real physical, this idea that there is a sport that involves the kind of conventional, traditional view of toughness, you see that still as a positive thing.
So what's kind of happening is the conflict over football might be a class conflict where there is a percentage of people who have no relationship to physicality and a percentage of the populace who still does. And that's really what we're talking about when we talk about the future of a game — not whether the game itself is too dangerous, but whether or not the people who consume it see that violence as something that is kind of inherent to life or only a problem in life.
Weller: Anytime a new piece of technology comes out that changes how we live, we forget what it was like immediately before then. Do you have any sense of which piece of technology will inspire this feeling the most?
Klosterman: That doesn't exist yet? In the section I talk about the Internet — wait, how old are you?
Weller: I'm 24.
Klosterman: 24. OK. So I'm guessing you have very little memory of an age without the Internet. In fact, maybe none at all. Because I'm 44, I feel kind of lucky that I lived through this period where I started my career where there was no Internet at all, and now when I finish it, there will be nothing but the Internet. And I don't think in my lifetime, certainly, there will be anything that transformative. I think this is the kind of thing where we're rapidly moving toward an age where most of the populace will be almost unable to imagine life without an Internet component interlocked with it. In terms of things moving forward, well ... could you give me some possibilities? I'm curious what you're talking about.
Weller: So maybe a smartwatch or something that uses virtual reality or augmented reality.
Klosterman: Well, a smartwatch I would say no. But let's say there's a virtual reality that truly was virtual. I mean, on par with the Star Trek holodeck or whatever. The ability to disappear into an immersive world that feels no different than the world we live in. Well, certainly then there would be a lot of people who would choose to live only in the world in which they have complete control over. And I think that would probably be an evolution where there would be no going back from.
It's possible for me to imagine a generation of people maybe two generations removed from you who might decide that we have an adversarial relationship with technology. We're going to adopt Luddite ideals on purpose, or whatever. I could see that happening.
Weller: Sometimes when we realize we're wrong, society looks back on its behavior and winces. You can look at any ancient medical practice as an example. What do you think society will look back on as barbaric that today seems totally normal?
Klosterman: I think one possibility might be chemotherapy. And I'm always hesitant to say that because it makes it sound like I'm against chemotherapy. Right now, chemotherapy is the best cancer treatment therapy we have. But let's say we find some way where we can almost genetically engineer the DNA of our being and fight cancer that way. Then, the idea that we used to pump poison into people to fight off cancer will almost seem like the use of leeches or something.
That's a great example of the dangers that I'm trying to get at in this book. It is very easy for me to imagine in 200 years, people looking back at chemotherapy as proof that people of the 20th century were insane and just morons. But the reality is that in this time frame, that's the only sort of rational means we have outside of surgery or radiation to go after this illness.
Weller: What about social conventions like texting? Loads of research says people are getting less empathetic now that we're staring at our phones all the time.
Klosterman: I am of the opinion, and have been for a long time, that any kind of big technological move is almost always positive in the short term but inevitably somewhat negative in the long term. And I think there are many examples of this in every possible context.
Texting has become my favorite way to communicate. I feel like many of my relationships are based in this, because in a sense it feels the closest to actual conversation that isn't the phone. And it's better than the phone in some ways because the person communicating has more agency. Right now I'm talking to you and we have no choice but to talk when the other person stops. If we were texting, you could text me and I could make a piece of toast and come back and return the text. But even that description alone, that convenience, suggests a lack of caring about you as a part of this conversation.
What I'm basically saying is that it lets me decide when I communicate. That is a deterioration of empathy in a way. It's not empathy in the way we usually use the term, but it is. It's trying to get into somebody else's position and understand how they feel, and texting allows you not to do that.
Weller: Is the long-term downside the phenomenon of unintended consequences? We develop innovation for good, and then realize that it lets us do these terrible things.
Klosterman: Technology evolves faster than people do, faster than biology does. I've used this example in other books, but I think it's undeniable. Prior to the early 20th century, for the totality of humankind's existence if they saw something moving, it meant it was there. If they saw a tiger walking, that meant they were near a live tiger. This was entrenched in our subconscious and our unconscious.
Then that drastically changed with film and television. I mean, it was just this radical thing where we could see things that weren't there and intellectually we know they're not there. But has our body and our inherent us-ness really changed that quickly to understand that the thing we're seeing on television is not real? We can certainly describe it. We know it, in a way. But do we feel it? It seems as though our ability to change technology happens so quickly, and our ability to evolve as creatures is still very slow.
Weller: Does that scare you about the future?
Klosterman: Scare is a strong word. But it disappoints me. It disappoints me to know that I'm going to be an 80- or 90-year-old man and most of the world is going to seem fucking insane to me. That I will just have no way of comprehending how it works or what it means. It doesn't matter how hard I fight this. Fighting it actually makes it worse, because you get closer to this technology that confuses you, as opposed to just checking out.
Weller: That's so interesting, the idea that you can't check out. Everything is so integrated that you are unable to say "I'm going to live in my old world."
Klosterman: Yeah. Like I love music, right? I can't say "I'm only going to listen to a physical medium," because there's a bunch of meaningful records that as a music fan I love that I would've never been able to access. So if I want to be part of something I have to get dragged along with technology.
And that's the feeling people hate. They hate the feeling that technology is dragging them into the future, that they're not really following what's happening, but being forced to be involved. Even if it makes their life better, it still feels like it's happening against their will.
Weller: OK, we're at a pretty bleak place right now. What excites you about the future?
Klosterman: There's a documentary called "A Century of Living." It came out a few years ago. All it was was one-on-one interviews with people who were born at the end of the 19th century and essentially lived up until the end of the 20th century. Interestingly, these old people were not jaded or pessimistic at all. But look at it this way, if you're raised in the South, the idea of air conditioning must have blown you away. The idea that you can just be comfortable all the time if that's what you wanted.
Sometimes I wonder what will be the air conditioning of my dying days. What thing will they add that will make it impossible to be uncomfortable? Because I do assume that as an old person, I will be very comfortable. There will be something — a drug or some way to impact the air around me — that when I relax, I'm gonna feel great. So I do look forward to that.
Weller: You devote an entire chapter to how football will stick around because of, not despite, its level of violence. People will protect it because they think a weakening America needs it. Do you think Donald Trump could win because of this principle?
Klosterman: It's very dangerous to talk about Trump's chances of winning because since the inception of his candidacy everyone has been like, "It can't happen." Right now, it seems impossible for me to see him winning this election because if you look at, say, Obama in 2012, he didn't win in a landslide. But he did win decisively. Donald Trump would have to get some of those votes, and it's hard to imagine a person who votes for Obama in 2012 then voting for Donald Trump.
But if he does win, that sentiment — that thing you just described — while maybe not being the direct explanation, will be part of it. The belief that somehow his barbaric nature is missing from the culture and that we are able to ignore, maybe, some of the realities of life. Like I said, I'd be very surprised if this happened.
Weller: What do you think he could come to represent when future history classes learn about the 2016 election?
Klosterman: It could be one of two things. If Trump loses badly, it could mean the end of the GOP as one of the two significant parties. If that happens, when people look back they'll be like "Well, it started when John McCain picked Sarah Palin as the vice presidential candidate seemingly to consciously appeal to anti-intellectual voters, and then it was amplified by Trump's victory for the GOP nomination. The political party that at one point represented a large chunk of the country came to only represent a certain kind of marginalized person. And that that marginalized person can be encapsulated in the views and personality of Donald Trump.
Now let's say Trump wins. Then it really comes down to how his administration unspools. I think one of the many interesting things about Trump is that people in the media did not take him seriously for months. Then, when it was clear he was going to be the nominee, they immediately hit the panic button. I think they overlook the possibility that he could just be a really bad president in the way that presidents are traditionally bad.
Weller: Will people in the future see it that way?
Klosterman: Let's say Trump loses but it's close. That could change the whole way the job of being a politician shifts — that to succeed in politics, you have to be a caricature of what a politician is supposed to be like.
If you had made a movie five years ago with a presidential candidate like Trump, it would have to have been a satire or a spoof. You could never seriously have a fictional character be this way. So if he has success as this sort of almost-simulacrum of a crazy political leader, I suppose that could become — and I hate this phrase — the "new normal" or whatever. That to win a national election you have to appeal to people who literally know nothing about politics.
Weller: Do you think we tend to be more wrong about the past or the future?
Klosterman: We're more wrong about the future. There's no way around that. I mean, we are often wrong about the past, but at least with the past you can change your thinking. We can't do that with the future. With the future, you're just guessing over and over again, and as you get closer and closer to the date, you refine those guesses to where you're almost right, but you never are.
Weller: When future historians are doing their history, how do you think social media will fit into their work?
Klosterman: This is kind of how I went about writing this book. Let's say Twitter existed during the Civil War. We would have a better understanding of people in the Confederacy who were against slavery, people in the North who actually felt we should just let the South be the South. Because the way it is now, it seems like we have this portrait where everybody in Georgia hated Yankees and everybody in the North was enlightened. That wouldn't seem as clear cut as it does now.
So we'd have more information that might create the illusion of a more nuanced view of 1860 or whatever, but would our overall perception be different? Probably not. I think our overall perception would be generally the same.
So let's apply that to now. Every possible opinion is authored about everything. What's going to eventually happen is someone will look back on this period and have to sift through it. The overwhelming majority of those opinions are going to be ignored, because if every opinion is being offered, really no opinion is being offered.
I think a bigger difference with social media is going to be things like the impact Instagram will have for historians. For the longest time, we had no images of the past. And then when we had the advent of the camera, we had a record of the things people chose to photograph, which, for a while, were portraits of your family, a new building we built, or a really big horse. Well now we have images of everything. That will be the biggest difference I think — that we will have a visual record of this reality in a way that will be completely covered.
Weller: How do you think viral news has changed the way we relate to each other?
Klosterman: I don't know if that has changed people as much as it kind of reflects a depressing thing about human nature, which is that people just want to be involved with things they can be upset about. I think that's just the way people are. There's not many ways to perform that unhappiness. You can't go into the office and be a jerk. You can't yell at your kids or your wife or your husband for no reason. That makes you a terrible person.
But it's acceptable to be extremely outraged about a mother who allows her kid to get into a pen with a gorilla, or to be really really mad about a dentist who shoots a lion. Not only can we be upset about these things; we can be upset in a completely insane, over-the-top way because it doesn't really have any relationship to our actual existence. People can demand someone they've never met be arrested and thrown in jail forever because they know it's never going to happen and they're never going to see this person.
Weller: Is there anything science is giving too much attention to that might turn out to be irrelevant?
Klosterman: This will seem kind of contradictory to people who know anything about me, because everyone knows that I love dinosaurs. But boy, it seems like we put an inordinate amount of interest in that period of existence. We don't even fucking care that much about mammoths. We want dinosaurs! Kids want dinosaurs. It's kind of hilarious how much of the national museum budget goes toward these things that have been dead for 165 million years.
Weller: One thing scientists say they aren't wasting their time on is climate change. How long do you think the debate can really last before the people that are wrong are just weeded out?
Klosterman: The debate about climate change in many ways is tied to the petroleum industry. If the value of petroleum was considerably less than it is, and the value of coal was considerably less than it is, there would be much less debate about this. So if we get to a point where we run out of fossil fuel, then I think this debate will be interesting. All of a sudden everyone will agree climate change is manmade, but because we're out of fossil fuel we'll be like, "Well, we're not really doing it anymore."
Sure there's a percentage of people who are like, "It snowed in May. I don't believe in climate change." Well, that's crazy, but that's always gonna be the case. I suppose if climate change happens much faster than even the dire experts predict, then I suppose opinions will change. But I hope that doesn't happen. I would hate for climate change to be accepted simply because everyone was dying.
