/r/Futurology: Looking forward.

   Rarely does one see an aggregate of high quality, academic, high readership news online; but www.reddit.com/r/futurology offers an escape from sponsored stories, news of murders, or the dulldroms of academic papers that don’t allow an intelligent community to comment.

  This website stands as a lighthouse on the shore for news of the possible bright futures to be pursued, and the dark futures to be avoided.

     It’s easy to find news that breaks the mold of putting America at the center of the world, with china investing heavily into AI, renewables, and public transportation posted often without editorialization to let the reader form the opinion that the United States should follow this example and compete.

    The comments range from jokes  to serious discussions on applications of technology for collaboration between international scientific bodies.

    While Reddit doesn’t publish anything, the gathering of people and hungry eyes allows for a community to form around links and comment on a higher level than normally seen around the web.

 To some, it brings hope of a brighter future, and they celebrate the technological achievements of humankind. In this featured comic and associated comments on the work (click for comic): https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1i1bsn/the_dream_of_yesterday_is_the_hope_of_today_and/ One of the top comments acknowledges the shortcomings of uninformed scientific opinions in journalism, and their demotivational nature in the grander scheme of progress. Nobody had gone to space, and Robert H. Goddard was sure the physics and chemistry would work together to bring his rockets to space.  
Reddit user Rappaccini said, “ I love the NYT's real life editorial and front page story about Goddard. Specifically:

[A]fter the rocket quits our air and really starts on its longer journey, its flight would be neither accelerated nor maintained by the explosion of the charges it then might have left. To claim that it would be is to deny a fundamental law of dynamics, and only Dr. Einstein and his chosen dozen, so few and fit, are licensed to do that.

I guess it's true what they say... "don't believe everything you read in the papers".

But seriously, that such a fundamental misunderstanding of even Newtonian mechanics (equal and opposite reactions and all that) could be undertaken by such an organ of the media as the New York Times is laughable, and worthy of derision.”

      The website goes beyond simply linking ideas and creates community and culture through democratic elevation of comments and their thread to the top of a discussion.
A great example of this active community is in full swing and pinned to the top.
R/Collapse vs. R/Futurology are currently debating this question: Does human history demonstrate a trend towards the collapse of civilization or the beginning of a united planetary civilization?

The outcomes are fascinating: with one side of nihilists and another side of optimists trying to come to common ground on the future. The price of solar falling and ending petroleum wars to extreme climate change disrupting the world into war. Both sides make valid arguments, but only time will tell whose argument is sound.