Spider-Man (it has a hyphen) is definitely my favorite superhero. Or was until the comics had him make deal with the devil and wiped out all that continuity. No idea what happened after that, because I quit reading. What I liked about Marvel was that they didn’t reboot and start over, but kept their continuity (albeit with retcons). And I really like a superhero with a life. I liked that he was married (and had a baby on the way when I started reading).
Get that respiratory disorder checked out. Somethingng, oxygen starvation perhaps, is causing you to talk nonsense.
Liberal answer: People will be amazed at how awful conservatives were.
Conservative answer: As they poke through the post-apocalyptic ruins of their once decadent society, people will be amazed at how morally degenerate and fiscally irresponsible today’s world was. They’ll be thankful for their large stockpiles of firearms and gold, and smirk at the (now deceased) foolish liberals who called them paranoid.
But here are some things I think people of the future will be incredulous about that I don’t personally agree with: that we didn’t allow incestuous and polygamous marriages, that the age of consent was defined by a number and not puberty, and that racial preferences in dating were tolerated.
That people got fired or suspended for using marijuana outside of work hours.
I don’t really see “incredulous” in 50 years, because I don’t think a societal shift will be that huge (in the US; can’t speak to other areas). Though it does matter which age group we’re talking about - is it everyone or just the kids of 2065? I’m in my thirties, and it’s the small things that get to me, I think. Segregation - I know about it, in theory, at least, and as bad I think it was, it doesn’t evoke any real surprise to me. It’s big and taught about in schools. But my father’s rural area not having electricity available until the 1950s was something I was very surprised about when I learned (in the '90s). Sure, most of the country had had it for decades, but it wasn’t everywhere. But even in that case, it was an outlier that surprised me, and that was because I knew the timeline for the majority. I will admit to a cultural shock on the violent racism that my own family members engaged in as children - it’s not the racism that surprised me, but the physical actions that went along with it in the 50s/60s - how could their parents/teachers have allowed it? I know, intellectually, but it’s one of those things I can’t really grasp emotionally.
I think the things I’ve been most incredulous about have been things that were surprising to me - if we covered it every year of elementary school, it doesn’t get a response. OTOH, old sumptuary laws are foreign to me and some very strange penitentials (look at 154 v. 179 here) are funny. But they’re centuries before my time (some over a millennium). But for 50 years ago, I think the issue is usually for many is the person’s DOB-10 years - it seems like a time that wasn’t that long ago. So many things haven’t changed that much, which makes it surprising when some things really have changed. I don’t know if that goes away when you get older, but right now I’m still in the “the 90s weren’t that long ago” phase.
If the supreme court cases regarding same-sex marriage and timeline of legalization are taught in something like the fashion of the civil rights movement (particular focus usually in the 50s and 60s), then I don’t think the youth of 2065 will be incredulous over it, because it’s just something they’ve always known. But I could be wrong on that, mostly because of just how fast opinions have been changing on the matter.
Amusement is easy - hairstyles and music will do it for many. Incredulity is much harder to predict. Probably because it depends so much on predicting the future and unexpected paradigm shifts are unexpected, but are also the most likely to make now foreign enough to the youth of 2065 to evoke such a response.
When I look back at 1965, there is not much I am incredulous about. Yes, we survived without a world encyclopedia at our fingertips, but I am not incredulous about it–that’s just how it was. In fact, as I look around my house, there is not, except for the computers, much that would seemed out of place 50 years ago. Oh, our TV is better but we could have had a TV then (we didn’t in fact). We had a car, although it didn’t run as well and didn’t start reliably in the winter, but this is only minor improvement. Really, not that much has changed in 50 years. There was likely a bigger change from 1915 to 1965 than from 1965 to today. The rise of cars and the fall of public transportation including passenger rail.
By 2065, the US will have some Gawddamned form of universal health care, whether that’s full blown single payer, modified ACA, or whatever. People by then will realize that it’s not that big of a deal & they’ll wonder why the Hell there was such bloodthirsty opposition to Obamacare.
Some jobs like telemarketing and maybe retail cashiers will have become entirely automated, and people might seem incredulous at the fact that such occupations were once facilitated by flesh and blood humans.
Also, there will be universal derision at what little action we took to address climate change.
When I look back at 1965, I am incredulous that my grandmother couldn’t get a credit card in her own name. I’m incredulous that my mother needed my father’s permission to get contraception, and my aunt in Connecticut couldn’t get it at all. I’m incredulous that some of the people I know couldn’t get service at Marshall Fields in Chicago because of the color of their skin (I was taught that segregation was a thing of the South). I’m incredulous that a man could support a family with only a high school diploma and a stay-at-home wife, and that people spent their whole lives in a single career, or even at a single employer. I’m incredulous that secretaries were assumed to provide their bosses with sexual favors or be fired, and that men were openly and unabashedly hired preferentially and paid more than women, and many careers were completely closed to women, and no one thought any of this was wrong.
When you grow up with it, nothing much is surprising, but for those of us who weren’t born yet, there was some seriously weird stuff going on back then.
You do realize, Superman and Batman are over 75 years old and more popular than ever?
Why does everyone assume society will get better? I predict it will be closer to something like Blade Runner meets Idiocracy (which I guess would be close to The Fifth Element)
People will wonder how we let super-intelligent nerds in Silicon Valley and Wall Street subject large numbers of people with their intellect, much in the same way we view medieval feudal lords who subjected people through force.
People in the future will look at Paris Hilton, The Kardashians and “The Situation” from Jersey Shore much in the same way we look at the Wright Brothers, Thomas Edison and Henry Ford. Brilliant innovators who pushed the envelope and ushered in their modern age of 24 hour reality show entertainment.
Well, I think racial preferences in dating will always exist. They’ll simply go unspoken instead. A white woman may always have white boyfriends but insist it’s just coincidental.
Yeah, oftentimes this is how people see it.
I don’t know about 2065, but I think in a few thousand years, space-age anthropologists will uncover gyms and exercise machines, and conclude that people in the late-20th through the 21st century were obsessed with torture in private and in public.
In 2065? I’ll be yelling, “Get off my asteroid, you damn kids! With your hoverscooters!”
Not sure the reality TV stars are pushing any envelopes, TBH. Early newspapers had gossip, non-fiction, outright lies and sensationalism. The earliest printing had stories told - in picture form - that might’ve been true or not, in the 16th century jesters and whole plays went from town to village, given performances that told stories.
Hopefully, the level of religious belief in American society.
When they hear about mega-churches, and flim-flam preachers running for president I expect they’ll roll their eyes and feel astonished we ever got anything done.
They’ll think we were real assholes for ignoring climate change too.
Can you believe there was a time when there were preachers who ran for president? Gosh, it sure must have been nice to have people running for office because they believed in something other than money and partisan horse races.
No, more like “can you believe the masses thought it was acceptable for someone to run for president and try to force everyone to abide by their religious beliefs and enshrine their religion as the state religion.”
“What, people were fighting tooth and nail for ‘Universal Health Care’…when all they had were HUMAN doctors? Fuckillit, grandma, they might as well have just signed up for the euthanasia program from the very start, 'saved themselves some trouble!
…oh you’re kidding—they didn’t have THAT, either!?”
We can probably see that in light of the trend lines presented here:
That is, they will probably be too busy surviving.
Clearly the level of history education in colleges will suffer a shocking decline over the coming centuries. In spite of all that progress, apparently professors treat their students as infants in the future.
It might instead be that abortion is unnecessary, because women can turn on or off the ability to get pregnant. So no accidental babies. Birth defects will be addressed at the fetal level and virtually eliminated.
Another idea; the robots of the early 21st century will be seen as hopelessly primitive and limited in functionality.