MIKE MILLS: 

My name is Mike Mills, and I’m an artist and a filmmaker. 

When I got to sort of researching Silicon Valley, I was really interested in all the futurists. And so I thought, well, it’s interesting to talk about the future with the people who are actually going to be inhabiting it more.  

The video consists of all kids from, like, age eight to twelve, whose parents work in the tech industry. From very high levels to one of them’s father works as a cook at Google, at one of the commissaries. And I’m interviewing them about their future and their predictions of the future.  

And what was surprising is it’s kind of dark. It’s a bit dark. [he laughs] Though so many of the kids think that in the future there’s not gonna be much nature. There’s not gonna be animals. People are gonna be not as smart as they are now. There’s going to be amazing technology, but the natural world is really gonna diminish and suffer. And they’re not happy about it, but they also don’t see a lot of ways out. 

This is my interpretation of their answers but they felt a little bit resigned to it. And what could you do? I mean, as a nine-year-old, ten-year-old, how else could you feel? I feel a little bit resigned to it as a 47-year-old. But it’s really spooky hearing that response from a ten-year-old. And obviously, anytime you ask anybody about the future — to predict the future — you’re really just talking about the present. ‘Cause none of us can really predict the future, and all of our predictions about the future are really just a reflection of the stories we’re living in now.