Paleo Future
Monday, January 14th, 2008This time in 2007 Matt Novak started a blog, PaleoFuture, to examine the ways that those in the past envisioned the future. Over twelve months Matt has covered topics such as architecture, cars, cities of the future, flying cars, food, homes, ocean life, picturephones, space colonies, and the year 2000. His blog is littered with the imaginative pictures and descriptions of the future, sourced from the 1880s to the present.
In an article at Mung Being Matt notes that over the last ten years we’ve been reluctant to project very far into the future. There’s less job security for futurists these days. He wonders if it’s our sense of postmodern sense of irony and sarcasm that has led to more modest speculation.
I have a hunch that crossing the boundary between the 20th and 21st centuries has made us less dreamy eyed about the future. We’ve become used to rapid change, so much so that predictions about life in ten years time are bound to be out of whack with the advances made in that time. We do have picture phones that have us speaking in video imagery. No big deal now.
However we do seem to have lost our obsession with getting into outer space. The realities of attempting to send people into the solar system have made it clear that flying to the stars involves crossing unthinkable distances. While our world becomes smaller the universe has become larger.
We’ve used virtual reality to simulate the experiences of galactic travel. Microsoft’s Halo 3, for example, takes players to many worlds in an alternative fantasy version of our reality. I wonder if Halo players hold that version of the future as a possibility?
Tags: future studies, Generations
