Terence McKenna Predicts 2024 in 1996

In this talk from March 1996, Terence McKenna speaks on the work from home phenomenon and the dissolution of office culture, the death of print journalism and the end of mass media, the rise of "many to many" media communication by means of internet platforms, the end of national governments, and more.

From the McKenna lecture series titled "Countdown Into Complexity"

[mightytaiger]

Thank you for uploading this without adding tacky techno music (or any music at all).

[AlbertWolfe-pv]

i use to like terence mckenna a lot as a kid, and now listening back i realize he predicted the 2020s near perfectly. in a talk in pheniox arizona for his book, he said "around the 2nd decade of the 21st century something will happen, a diease, something." and it shook me to my core when i heard it

[HowFarCanYouSee]

"When we have the internet we really want, we will not have internet at all."
- Terence McKenna
Telepathic communication

[k.m.]

Love Terence McKenna. People weren't prepared to understand his ideas when he presented them but history will increasingly look back on how prescient he was.

[tethathehuman]

When we stop making profit priority #1 we can reimagine the future of our species

[simonrudduck]

Though he’s right, not having a common reality is proving to tear us apart.

[spearzzz]

This is why I always admired Terence he was a man before his time.

[TimotheeLee]

Mr McKenna is so very right when he speaks of publications but so very wrong when he speaks of governments. All levels of government have turned into a perpetual motion machine. It doesn't reduce, it just expands into oblivion, completely payed with credit.

[danzanegra]

yes, but he did not foresee the corporate takeover of the internet were experiencing now.

[Notsam]

The fact that he had such a good idea of what the internet was and could be in 96 is amazing

[johnryan]

Right off the bat he was wrong. He didn't think that corporations would prefer control over their employees lives over the cost savings.

[jpsabbey]

Mass media was finished for me 5 years ago!

[Artezia]

He never saw the economic side of the situation in which we keep the old model of making business, a linear one, completely immersed in algorithmic definitions. That’s crazy and neurotic!

[limemason]

McKenna was a genius ahead of his time. If only he were still here.

[tnlshow]

Wow! I was impressed with McKenna 14 years ago. Now, i'm even more impressed with his insight/predictions!

[cuyfly]

Really wild how the way he talked about office culture dying really strongly parrallels what went on after the Covid-19 pandemic

[SpooksMcGoose]

This is something of a cope, the Internet is arguably more concentrated than it was in 1996. Mass media will fizzle, but corporate media has had plenty of time to catch up to produce micro media. Think of this website, the users produce the content, but the platform takes the bigger cut! The advertisers are happy just the same. The narrative can be molded by censoring algorithms instead of editors.

[xXx_Regulus_xXx]

I agree with his takes on working from home, but looking at what the average person and what corporations have done to the Internet, I wish it was still a niche.

[cozmicmike]

Taking the unfiltered awareness we're born with and gradually conditioning it to filter everything through a conceptual cognitive map, gives the cartographers of the map and those who own them, too great an influence over each individuals experience of reality ! Yes it's a functional tool and enables society and the state to exist, but at what cost ? It would be far better, if we preserved our access to unfiltered awareness, and accessed the map only in such cases that there was a need, then at least some of the time we could be in wonder and awe, without the incessant narrative thought voice, translating and relating everything we experience, to an experience we've had before, or experiences we anticipate having in the future !
LSD, DMT and other psychotropics can briefly open the door, but for the long run, practicing a Zen like awareness and making a habit of it, allows us to function in both the mundane ( cognitive map ) and the divine ( pure awareness ) for as it says in the Bible, " we must become again as children to enter the kingdom of heaven " heaven not a place, but a way of being, being like we where before we had words to describe what it is to be 😂.

[svers_personal]

That level of foresight is very impressive.