TexMoot 2020--Apocalypse: Unveiling the Future
From Ragnarok to Revelation, from the utopian proposals of Plato’s Republic to the dystopian vision of Huxley’s Brave New World, a prominent concern of human language and literature has always been to describe possible futures. Some of these visions of the future are cataclysmic, looking forward to a time when Heaven—or Mother Earth—will wipe the slate clean; others propose a more optimistic vision of progress. Recent films such as Interstellar or Tomorrowland have taken a middle way, suggesting that although humanity has recently fallen short of its promise, there still remains hope that we will be able to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps.