From my students: a few taboos and future visions of ethnology

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Paleo-Future or the Futures of the Past

Microsoft Office Labs has produced a montage video about what information technology will be like in 2019. In my opinion it's a neat and inspiring video but like any vision of the future, it has little to do with what the world will actually be like. The future just sort of shies away from most predictions, and the visions end up telling more about the contemporary world than the future.

Reading the the comments discussing the MOL video at iStartedsomething I myself started to rekindle my long lost idea of doing research on the past futures. Or the futures of the past. Then I came across Tim R. Mortiss' blog with some links to websites and blogs discussing the theme.

Paleo-Future is a blog that takes "a look into the future that never was". Paleo-future as a concept means a historical look at the visions of the future. The blog has plenty of interesting material on its subject. Here's a few pictures (click for hyperlink to original post) of how the future was imagined in the past.

"Going to the Opera in the Year 2000" (1882) - Of course on the all too non-existent flying cars!

"Everyman's Folding Auto" (1939) - Not yet, but we do have the folding bike though.

"Game Parlor in the Future" (1982) - Pretty perceptive story actually!

"Tomorrow's Kitchen" (1943) - No pots and pans anymore!

"The Future of the Helicopter" (1955) - Handy, eh?

Other interesting posts in the blog include: Postcards Show the Year 2000 (circa 1900), Collier's Illustrated Future of 2001 (1901) and Movies to be Produced in Every Home (1925). Check them out!

You can also browse through Daily Motion for paleofuturistic video clips. See, for example, The Electronic home (late 1980s) commercial with "computer-television" controlled with a joystick and "computerized yellow pages". The video is produced by a telephone company and they predict that information services through the "computer-television" will be as natural as driving a car in the future. Not bad, eh?

Or check out Magic Highway, a clip where an American vision of traveling by motorcar is presented in 1958. In The Future is Now (1955) electronic photography, video telephone and electronic music synthesizer are visioned.

And where's my jetpack already?! See the Jetpack Dreams trailer of a book by Mac Montandon (see also the Pale-Future post about it).

"How would you feel if those futurescapes of fifty years ago materialized today?" asks William Gibson. Read his essay at American.Heritage.com.

Pic sources as sited by Paleo-Future blog: Lithograph by Albert Robida in La vie électrique; The November 26, 1939 issue of San Antonio Light; a 1982 issue of Electronic Games magazine; the April 30, 1955 issue of Pacific Stars and Stripes (Tokyo, Japan). More about Microsoft Office Lab's future visions here.

Korean Ubiquitous Society Vision: abstract and lecture

I finished the abstract for Culture Abound. It's titled Ubiquitous Society City - Korean Future Vision of Humans and Technology in the Urban Space. Like I discussed earlier, in the final article (deadline in May 2009) I will discuss the Korean ubiquitous society vision and the interrelation between humans and technology in an urban context in it.

Next I will do a little preparing for my lecture next week. The theme of the lecture is related to the abstract as I will talk about the role of a citizen in u-Korea. (More about my lecturing schedule.)

IBM predicting the future

Digitoday reported on IBM revealing five great innovations of the near future. I surfed to IBM's report published in November 25 and read about the innovations "That Will Change Our Lives in the Next Five Years" and change the way we will "work, live and play."

The Fab 5 are:

1. Solar energy panels (or, film) so thin (and cheap) you can paint or print them almost everywhere.
2. Everyday gene analysis that will help you (and your doc) tune your habits according to your physiological strengths and weaknesses. All this for less than 200 USD.
3. Talking to the web and it will talk to you, so you don't have to read/write. IBM says voice recognition tech is getting better and will become hugely popular soon, especially in the developing countries -and perhaps among people too busy to type.
4. Digital shopping assistant helping you in the fitting room and connecting you to your social network for fashion advice.
5. A memorizer to record, store and analyze the "details of everyday life". It's a smart gadget with videocam and mic that will "record conversations and activities. The information collected will be automatically stored and analyzed on a personal computer."

Needless to say, solar energy is surely a smart move but as for the gene analysis innovation sparked some discussion at Digitoday as some wondered whether insurance companies and potential employers would start requiring genetic evaluations of their clients/employees. As one commentor said, it brings in mind the movie Gattaca, a dystopian view of the future when citizens are classified according to their genetics. Then again, if it can help people to live a healthier life...

The voice-orientation of IT applications is an interesting path and, from a techno-anthropologist's view, would probably bring about fascinating changes to how people relate to computers.

The digital shopping assistant didn't strike me as a huge innovation although it would be nice to have someone reliable to virtually warn me against the cool Hawaii shirt I'm about to buy. But to include it in top 5 innovation of the future is exaggeration.

A memorizer would come in handy if it was handy. If it was tiny, almost invisible and could really filter out the irrelevant data from the relevant (which I can't do) and presented it to me neatly on my PC, laptop or cell phone, then maybe I would buy one. The hackers would have loads of fun too hooking into people's memorizers.

Read the whole IBM press release here and the Digitoday article here (in Finnish).