If you look at what people thought the future would look like years ago, in many ways it was way off the mark. Flying cars, meals in a single pill, an array of bizarre and unwieldy kitchen appliances, etc. Most things of the past’s future have not been made.
But when it comes to the design, the past’s future seems much more prescient: Stark monochromatic rooms and homes; cars that basically all have the same shape and color; most spaces – both private and public – with few signs of the natural world other than the humans that for reasons unclear desired to live in this monstrostic nirvana.
But was the design really prescient? Or have we just created the future that we thought we should because that’s the future we were shown? Did we really consider what we want the future to look like or did we just accept the vision of sci-fi illustrators as a blueprint due to it being consistently messaged for years? Are we really living in the future or is it just the vision past?
There seems only two ways the future is imagined: utopia and dystopia. (And, of course, in nearly all sci-fi under the utopia belies a hidden dystopia.)
Why isn’t there a future where people have invited more of the natural world into homes and everyone wears tie-dye and most of what people own is covered in corduroy or fur? There are a million possible futures be we seem to be stuck in the one that was designed decades ago by people who didn’t actually have to live in it.
Where are the people looking to make a future that hasn’t been imagined?
And what are we going to do after we reach the apex of the past’s future? Where do we go from there? What is the future after the future is here?