The Reluctant Optimist

Yesterday's Green Bay Press-Gazette (Green Bay, WI) ran a short piece about the Paleo-Future blog:

"It's been quite a journey," he said. "When I first started the site, I thought I had maybe a month's worth of material, but I dug deeper and who knew how many different versions of the future had happened during the 20th Century?"

Novak has taken a few things from digging around in the past to find out what today should have looked like to people half a century, or more, ago.

"If there's anything I've learned, it's that no one can predict the future with any degree of certainty," he said.

"And it's given me optimism. Because no one knows the future with any certainty, it's freeing and kind of feeling like, 'That's good; the future's not determined, and we can do what we want with it and try to make it a better place.'"

See also:
What the future didn't bring
New Hampshire Public Radio (Jan, 2008)
Paleo-Future in the Wall Street Journal
Article for MungBeing
Sincerity and the Paleo-Future
Postmodern Paleo-Future
Streamlined Cars of the Future

Sincerity and the Paleo-Future

The Summer 2007 issue of The Wilson Quarterly contains a small blurb about paleo-futurism. You may even recognize the name of a certain paleo-futurist blogger. An excerpt appears below.

Cars still don't fly, the moon remains uninhabited, and at home there's no robot doing the laundry. What happened to the future? To find it, bloggers and sci-fi buffs alike are flocking to websites that explore the paleofuture - "the future that never was." Matt Novak, the man behind paleo-future.blogspot.com, says that in today's cynical age, people crave the sincere and hopeful dreams of yesteryear.

Just to clarify, while we may long for sincerity in a world where sarcasm is the norm, I would rather be around today than at any other time in history. Too often we become nostalgic for a time that never existed. While the world is by no means perfect and there is plenty to do in making it a better place to live, most of us live longer and more comfortably than our great-grandparents did.

This could very well be the naiveté of a recent college graduate, but I feel writing this blog has exposed me to the fact that doomsday prophets are almost always wrong. And I like those odds.

Those of us who love studying history must occasionally take a breath and remember that tomorrow is the only thing we can truly change. So . . . what are you doing tomorrow?

See also:
Article for MungBeing

Moving Sidewalks by Goodyear (1956)

As a follow-up to last week's post on the moving sidewalk of 1900, today we have an illustration published in 1956. The image below appears in the book 1999: Our Hopeful Future by Victor Cohn. It was produced by Goodyear and shows the (semi-realized) hopes for this paleo-futuristic technology.


See also:
Moving Sidewalk (1900)
I want an oil cream cone! (1954)
Postcards Show the Year 2000 (circa 1900)

Closer Than We Think! (1958-1963)

In 1958 Arthur Radebaugh started the syndicated Sunday comic Closer Than We Think! It ran in newspapers until early 1963. The strip really epitomizes the optimistic brand of futurism so common in the post-WWII era. Below are a few great examples of this paleo-futuristic strip from the Chicago Tribune.

Push-Button Education - May 25, 1958
"Teaching would be by means of sound movies and mechanical tabulating machines."


Wrist Watch TV - April 17, 1960
"TV sets the size of postage stamps will soon be worn on the wrist, each with a personal dialing number."


"Pogo" Police Car - May 4, 1958
"Here, for tomorrow, is the concept of policemen on mechanical pogo platforms ..."


Farm Automation - March 30, 1958
"A floating tower will oversee a swarm of robot implements and tractors operated by electronic command."


Gravity in Reverse - June 29, 1958
"Factory-made houses equipped with antigravity machinery could be floated above the ground - to catch the breezes!"


See also:
Word Origins: Imagineering (1947)
Ristos (1979)
Homework in the Future (1981)
Connections: AT&T's Vision of the Future (Part 7, 1993)
The Road Ahead: Future Classroom (1995)
Superfarm of the Year 2020 (1979)

Prelude to a Great Depression (The Chronicle Telegram, 1929)

In the March 8, 1929 issue of the Chronicle Telegram (Elyria, Ohio) Roger W. Babson made predictions of what the future held. Below is an excerpt under the heading of "Stocks and Bonds." Babson couldn't estimate how quickly everything was about to change and that it would be for the worse. It almost reminds me of an Onion article in its optimism for the future.

In finance there will also be marked changes as the years roll by. The present generation has been chiefly interested in trying to buy and sell stocks and bonds at advantageous prices. While this is an important aspect of finance, it is very far from being the only aspect and perhaps it cannot be called the most vital aspect. I am ready to make this forecast, that during the next twenty years the public will develop a totally new viewpoint toward finance. The word will not only take meaning for thousands of people of very moderate income, but those of wealth will get entirely fresh concepts. I foresee with especial assurance that the field of trusts will offer great opportunities. The American public is being taken into partnership in our great industries of large scale. I feel very positive that the number of people interested in stocks and bonds will increase far out of proportion to the mere increase in population.

See also:
Dancing on the Moon (1935)

1994: The World of Tomorrow (1973)

The 1973 book 1994: the World of Tomorrow, published by U.S. News & World Report, starts with a preface that is optimistic yet thoughtful and measured.

"Like George Orwell's work, 1994: The World of Tomorrow, offers a warning that the future cannot be taken for granted. The future is forseeable. Unless, as Orwell cautioned, we anticipate future problems, begin the search for alternative solutions, and stake a claim on our long-term future, we may lose what it has to offer."

However, like any book of futuristic projections we quickly get to the fanciful visions. And let's be honest, would you read this blog without the spectacle of absurd, often wrong, predictions? Stick around, because 1994 was a much cooler year than any of us ever knew.

Magico Ano 2000 (2007)

YouTuber Esquadrao Atari has a rather beautiful yet depressing video collage/mashup titled Magico Ano 2000 that seems to illustrate the frustration of paleo-futurism and the present day.

From the video description:
"Back in the 60's, human beings had an optmistic view of what the year 2000 would be like. Space stations, clean fuel, intelligent computers. Now it's the year 2007, and reality is not very different from the Dark Ages..."

To The Fair! (1965)

With the same type of optimism presented in 1939's All's Fair at the Fair this 1965 film of the World's Fair in New York gives the impression that people can come together and bask in the beauty of our ever-improving world. The sincerity of the narrator is incredible, "A suspended theater with a film on the joy of living!"

The second half of the film provides a great look at the General Motors Futurama II exhibit. This, along with the cheeky narrative told through the eyes of lost boy scouts and hormonal teenagers is pure paleo-future fun.

(The YouTube video above has both parts compiled into one film but if you'd like the source video you can find them at the Internet Archive in two parts here and here.)

All's Fair at the Fair (1938)

The world presented in the 1938 cartoon All's Fair at the Fair is one of automation and robots. We see the World's Fair through the eyes of an adoring couple, impressed by the promises of the future.

The future is full of robots, specializing in cutting hair, shaving, teaching humans to dance, and otherwise perfecting humanity. All's Fair at the Fair offers that special brand of optimism I imagine the world needed in 1938. We will explore the real-life versions of the paleo-futuristic World's Fairs in future posts. Check out the short cartoon here.

The Future World of Transportation

I remember checking out this book at my elementary school library and being fascinated with the prospect of futuristic transportation. In the second grade I even did a science project on "Cars in the Year 2000." (In 1992, the year 2000 still had some significance to a second grader.) My cars traveled on an electric grid throughout cities. Nowadays, my hope for the technology of the future mostly resides in ideas like wireless power and the prospect of setting up wireless power grids, much like the wireless internet infrastructure some cities are adopting.

Chapter 1 of The Future World of Transportation opens with the ambitious "Report from the Year 2050." Their future is filled with "Ultra Jets" (described in the glossary as a double-decker plane of the future which loads passengers and cargo while hovering in the air) and "autoplanes" (a combination airplane and car) but, "there is still only one terminal for space flight, the Earth International Space Port near Tucson, Arizona [which is] used largely by people who have business on the satellite space stations, or 'space-habs' or by those going to one of the new space station resorts."

The second chapter is basically an advertisement for the now defunct World of Motion ride at EPCOT Center in Walt Disney World while the third chapter explores the history of transportation from the invention of the wheel to "current" flight technology. The fourth chapter is called "Moving Ahead on Land" and starts getting into some great paleo-futuristic territory with the "Planetran, a sleek magnetic levitation train propelled by electromagnets, [that could] whisk passengers from New York to Los Angeles through underground tunnels in less than an hour." Now that's what I'm talking about.

The fifth chapter explores "The Future at Sea" and basically guarantees the young readers that they will see three-wheeled land/sea vehicles powered by water jets in their lifetimes. The idea of their "floating hotel" is the most intriguing, as it appears that the hotel itself could, "move between ports on a cushion of air at 50 miles per hour." There appears to be no explanation necessary as to why someone would want a moving hotel in the paleo-future.

Chapter six lays out the somewhat mundane history of speed on land, sea and in the air but gets into amazing paleo-futuristic territory with the demonstration of a WASP or Williams Aerial Systems Platform which, according to the glossary is "a one-person flying device that is powered by a small turbofan engine." Personal rocket packs, here we come.

The book ends with a chapter called "Giant Steps into Space" which, as we all know, is the final frontier. Again, I can't help but wonder if any publisher could put out such an earnest and optimistic book for children today. The sincerity with which this book addresses the beautiful technology to come is astounding. Part of me laughs off everything in this book as fanciful and naive dreaming. Another part of me longs for that cynicism to be overtaken by hope for the future and the desire to again be amazed. Because, if the iPhone is the only thing that will revolutionize the way we live (as I believe on some level it will) we seem to be far from the "future" EPCOT sold us in 1982.

(I also own The Future World of Agriculture and The Future World of Energy, so don't you worry, those are coming soon. Also, I'll Flickrize more photos from this great collection when I find more time.)

Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy

I started reading the 1888 classic utopian novel Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy. I'll be blogging about it on a "whenever I damn well feel like it" basis and I invite you to follow along at home. You can either read it free here or here or you can do what I did and buy a cheap copy on Amazon.

The book is set in the far distant future of 2000 when the inhumane practices of captialism have been replaced by a compassionate, human-centered post-capitalist utopia. What drew me to the novel was the fact that it was the most read book of its time and clearly speaks to an alienated public of industrial workers with hope that the future would be better. We can debate the political realities of such a situation all day long but again, I marvel at a world filled with hope for the future. It makes me wonder what a utopian society of 2100 envisioned in 2007 would look like.

Follow along if you please. I'm assuming I'll do a few chapters a week.

-Matt

(Note: The second free version of the book I link to appears to be from some Christian cult but I found their formatting to be superior to the Gutenberg/first link version. Just a warning.)