Collapsitarians

There’s a new mood: collapse.

Former President Reagan defined a recession as when your friend lost his job, and a depression as when you lost your job. Collapse is when no one has a job; in fact there are no longer any such things as jobs to be had.

Longdoom

Google Trends showing number of news references to “collapse” (red) and “depression” (blue).

Doom and collapse are in the air. We could think of the Long Doom as the opposite of the Long Boom. The stock market has been falling steadily for a year and not even  the usual optimists are claiming it has bottomed out.  Like a vicious circle bad news breeds more bad news, and so at the moment the prospect for the near future is for more of the same bad news.

How low could it go?

Article continued at The Technium…

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

More from Futures

What is the long now?

The Long Now Foundation is a nonprofit established in 01996 to foster long-term thinking. Our work encourages imagination at the timescale of civilization — the next and last 10,000 years — a timespan we call the long now.

Learn more

Join our newsletter for the latest in long-term thinking

Long Now's website is changing...