Wednesday, July 6, 2011

The present is so much better than the past thought it would be

Here's a cool Mashable article showing short films from the past that envisioned the future.

These are fun, but what's more meaningful is to realize how our current society easily eclipses their dreams. Not only is their technology too humble (automatic mixers are very exciting but are far surpassed by a microwave oven, for example), but more importantly, they didn't envision pivotal cultural changes, only technological ones. It's telling that the men of the 1950s thought their doting wives would be most excited by automatic kitchen appliances, and not, say, equal rights.

Here's one of the videos; go to the article to see them all.

1 comment:

James said...

Hahah, I watched this with my parents when you posted it. Really funny how, they're not really using this to predict the ideal future (I think the Jetsons does a better job at that) but trying to package the technology they were developing so that when it was a reality....drying elements to the dishwasher were developed in the 40s, food processors hit the public market in the early 70s.. microwave ovens had been developed for home use by 1955 but didn't hit homes for over 10 years.. so all the things in this advert technically existed... but they sure did package it in a manner to make it seam "perfect" -- it's brilliant and funny.