As bland and forgettable as it was, the film adaptation of "Tomorrowland."

The premise (or at least my takeaway) basically being that, we might have been headed toward a techno-utopia of optimistic and bright developments, but greed and cynicism took over the spirit of invention, and everyone collectively became cynical and pessimistic about the future as a result.

Technology and those who claimed to wield it became enemies of the people.

Many of our most popular "near future" stories and entertainment are about societal collapse, disaster, the worst of humanity turning on themselves, and technology being used for its worst purposes. We almost enjoy morbidly indulging in forecasting our own bad ending, over and over and over. Warnings became franchises co-opted by the bad powers they warned against.

Partially, we'll get a crappy future because we've all been conditioned and used to the idea that it's inevitable and there's nothing we can do about it. This reduces our will to fight it, and instead we settle for merely enduring it.

If we had hope and fire and a taste of something better, we'd stop giving in to doomerism and just accepting it when it keeps getting worse.

This is why I really like the emergence of Solar Punk. It's a hopeful and bright rebellion against endless neon acid rain tumbling down towering corporate fortresses, rusting everybody's work-leased cyber-limbs as they gig-work 24/7 to afford neural software updates.

Instead, it's about embracing communitarianism, careful stewardship of natural resources, sustainable existence in tandem with nature instead of against it, open and free knowledge to all, endless invention with human thriving in mind.

If people actually believed, not merely that's how it should be, but that it could be ...we could make some real progress.