{"id":114,"date":"2012-11-10T01:25:55","date_gmt":"2012-11-10T06:25:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.noendofneon.net\/writingthefuture\/?page_id=114"},"modified":"2012-11-10T01:36:05","modified_gmt":"2012-11-10T06:36:05","slug":"assignment-4-paradigm-shift","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.noendofneon.net\/writingthefuture\/assignments\/assignment-4-paradigm-shift\/","title":{"rendered":"assignment 4: paradigm shift"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paradigm Shift: \u00a0The Emergent Future<\/h2>\n

 <\/p>\n

length<\/em>: \u00a05 pages<\/strong><\/p>\n

due dates<\/em>: \u00a011.12 (proposal<\/em><\/a>), 11.16 (draft<\/em>), 11.26\u00a0(final<\/em>)<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Over the course of this semester, we’ve done a lot to demystify the future, progressively thinking of it less and less as some distant abstraction entirely out of our collective reach, more and more as something emerging within and out of present-day contexts. \u00a0Raymond Williams’ language of dominant, residual, and emergent phenomena speaks to this: \u00a0just as the residues of the past live on in the present, woven into the fabric of the “now” that seems to have replaced that past, so does the present inevitably contain the seeds of the future that will ostensibly displace it somewhere down the line.<\/p>\n

Your task here is to capture this moment of the emergence of a new future\u2014the moment where bubbles are rising but the water is not yet at a boil, its transition to vapor inevitable but not yet in full swing. \u00a0Following Thomas Kuhn<\/a>‘s conception of paradigm shifts, the goal of this paper is to be able to identify some new event or development that registers as an anomaly<\/strong> (something out of the ordinary, perhaps something that has never happened before) and analyze it in relation to both the dominant paradigm<\/strong> from which it deviates and the new, emergent paradigm<\/strong> it inaugurates. \u00a0If 9\/11 is the 21st century’s archetypal paradigm shift moment, for instance, we’d identify the attacks themselves as an anomaly that our old paradigms (American exceptionalism, invulnerability, insulation from geopolitical struggle) couldn’t have predicted or accounted for, and then we’d articulate the new paradigms that anomaly brought on (“they hate us for our freedom,” we’re under attack, we’re a superpower fighting for its life, we have to fight terror abroad to secure freedom at home, etc. etc.).<\/p>\n

To do this, you need to be able to think about past, present, and future. \u00a0The history of your subject is important to situating this new development within a larger context (the way that, for Postman<\/a>, the shift from oral culture to written culture is also relevant to the shift from written culture to televisual culture). \u00a0The moment you’re really keying in on analytically and diagnostically is the present day, when something is happening that is going to reshape some crucial elements of human culture and of the way we live\u2014an anomaly that will force a paradigm shift. \u00a0(Think back to our\u00a0unthinkable futures<\/a>, and how much you can tell about 1993 by what its residents thought would be inconceivable in 2003 or 2013.) \u00a0The future is why this moment of anomaly is relevant; the anomaly is worthy of notice precisely because it is going to induce a paradigm shift<\/em>, a significantly different way of living and thinking and interacting from what we’ve known in the past and what we know currently.<\/p>\n

Remember, too, that the effects and changes and ramifications you’re tracing here are likely more subtle than the effects you unpacked in your investigative reports. \u00a0To reiterate what I’ve said in class, you want to be thinking here not just about the way this new development is changing its immediate context, but also about its more indirect effects on culture, psychology, behavior, interaction, discourse, and so on. \u00a0The Postman book doesn’t just trace the effects of television on marketing or on politics or on education, though those effects are all important and interesting\u2014it traces the effects of television on the way we think, the way we interact, the way we speak, the expectations we have. \u00a0You want to be thinking not just about immediate effects but about distant effects, not just direct effects but also indirect effects. \u00a0Being a good thinker of the future<\/a>, remember, has a lot to do with thinking your way out of the short term and into the long term, and with accounting not just for the immediately visible effects of something but also its more distant consequences.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

* \u00a0 \u00a0 * \u00a0 \u00a0 *<\/p>\n

In summary, your goals:<\/p>\n