Which artist is the essence of rock music? Who is the greatest writer of the last hundred years? Are we living in a simulation?
These are all interesting questions. This book is about these questions and many more, but mainly about the meta-question:
What will the answers to these questions be in 100 years? (Or more generally, “in the future”?)
In short, it aims to think about the present as if it were the past. It is true that prediction is very difficult, especially about the future. Accordingly, Klosterman’s main strategy is to try to assume that we are wrong about most of what we currently believe. Of course, that doesn’t help us to decide which of umpteen alternatives we should believe, but it’s still fun to speculate. This book doesn’t come to any firm conclusions (about the future – not surprisingly) but it still provides interesting discussion and food for thought.