Hicham Moussa

Apocalypse Sooner or Later: Hollywood's Visualisation of the Future of Humanity Hicham Moussa

Life on earth is immemorial. No one knows when it has started and when it will finish. We have many attempts to unveil the origins of life, but they fail to give an exact date. For instance, ?Darwin himself was remarkably circumspect, titling his treatise On the Origins of Species, avoiding speculating on life?s origins. In Darwin?s world, life had already been created?. We have different hypotheses on the origins of life, but all of them seem to agree on the fact that humanity has a past, present, and future. This research aims to explore Hollywood's visualization of the Future of Humanity. Tom Lombardo, for instance, views that the "warning scenario" is a common theme within futurist thinking, both in science fiction and non-fictional books on the future. He thinks that the logic of such warning scenarios is if we keep doing what we are doing, things will get worse. Wendell Bell, on his part, refers to such predictions as "presumptively true". In other words, the logic of a warning scenario is "If we keep doing X, then Y will follow". This is a conditional predictive statement.