It's odd how clear the future used to be. Now we're here it's not clear at all. Back in the Sixties the future was bright and uniformly presented as a white-hot society of ultra cool living, jet cars and rockets. We saw it every week on the telly in Thunderbirds, UFO, TV21 and Star Trek. We saw it on the big screen too: 2001 Space Odyssey, Moon Zero Two and we saw it at World Fairs in New York and Seattle.
The Future makers all seemed to agree what the future would be like back then. It seemed like an homogeneous vision of chrome and glass as captured beautifully for example in Mike Trim's Car Vu building. What happened? Did that future ever arrive? Are we just late and it's still on its way? Has it slowed down? What do you think readers?
Car Vu
Mike Trim
Century 21
I'm still waiting for that future as shown on the classic 1930s 'Popular Science' cover - the future in which we're all toolin' around the city in our private airplanes or copters or whatever and the land based vehicles are on road ways high in the sky weaving in and out amongst the skyscrapers. That being said, I have seen many marvelous structures being designed and built around the world today which look as though they were pulled from the pages of past concept art. I think we have a tendency to want to compress time because our lives are so short. We THINK things should progress much faster than reality dictates.
ReplyDeleteInterestingly, the late Alan Fennell (editor of TV21 and writer of various Gerry Anderson programmes) once lamented on the future we had inherited in a letter he sent me back in the early '90s. It's on my blog somewhere, under the heading of 'Regrets? I've had a few...'
ReplyDeleteAs you know I'm a rancid old cynic and firmly believe the human race stands a bloody good chance of not seeing 2100...however, there is always a bit of optimism in there and stuff I've read and heard in the last few weeks holds hope for the future;
ReplyDeleteDevelopments in bacteria farming, DNA research/GM/Cell-tech, modern materials, modern medicine, antibiotic replacements, 3D metal printing, nano-tech, IT, fuel replacement, renewables, quantum mechanics and matter transfer (among many others) are coming together at an almost alarming rate...can we save ourselves and get to the stars...before we destroy ourselves? It really is Pandora's box, and we opened it a long time ago!!
Waiting for my hover car and jetpack to get to work on. Very disappointed when I discovered that the jet packs seen in James Bond and US Air Force test footage only had enough fuel for about 30 seconds of flight.
ReplyDeleteInteresting comments guys. Maybe we were spoilt in the Sixties with such a universal vision of a space age future, created by a golden generation of fantastic talents. Maybe all childhood futures are exciting but I think my parents and their peers also believed in the space age. So many new household appliances came into thier lives in the Sixties: colour TV, sleeker cars, dish washers, tape recorders to name a few. There are lots of modern innovations of course: cable TV, Blu ray, microwaves, the internet and more than anything, the mobile phone, which I would say defines today's younger generation. There has also been fantastic scientific progress; the discovery of the Higgs bosun particle and landing Curiosity on Mars, which was hugely exciting at the start. Somehow, though, the global scientific effort doesn't seem to wow us anymore. I wonder if today's young people feel wowed like we did? I hope so.
ReplyDeleteThe letter from Alan Fennell sounds fascinating Kid. I'll have a look. Were you a keen TV21 reader?
ReplyDeleteYup, it was my favourite comic at the time, for the first couple of years. I felt it was never quite the same when they stopped publishing The Daleks 'though.
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