Broken Promises of the Future

[Boss Radio]

Originally Posted by Not Afraid

I think the funniest thing for me as a child of the 60's living in 2005 is the growing fascination with ideas from my own childhood - and beyond. Shag (also my age) is capitalizing on this trend in a big way. Even Target is capturing the style of the 60's with clever designs. I'm not sure if comtemporary culture is trying to capture the hopes and dreams that were so stong during that time or what the MO is.

If you recall, when we were kids, the prevalent fascination was turn of the century, Main St USA NOSTALGIA. Anything from 1900-1929 was fair game in decor and fashion. Farrells, Shakey's, Swenson's all playfully reproduced a kinder, gentler past, where soda was 2 cents plain and gentlemen had mustaches. Tiffany lamps, brass fixtures, and turn of the century - style fonts were very prolific in advertising (and in early Jay Ward ads). Films like Bonnie and Clyde, Paper Moon, The Great Gatsby all celebrated this golden era, and TV was cementing the films from the 1930s and 40s as classics in our consciousness, through repetition, if nothing else.

Then George Lucas descended from on high to deliver the baby boomers the 1950s (actually 1962) in American Grafitti, triggering the first true nostalgia explosion, the effects of which are still felt today.

Thank you, George.

And Candy Clark, wherever you are...

[Boss Radio]

Originally Posted by flippyshark

There's a long story here that I'll tell some other time, but as a kid, I always thought the Star Child was huge, and he looked kind of pissed. I thought he was coming back to destroy the earth, and I found him the most terrifying image I had ever seen on a movie screen.

Since he's really pretty much symbolic, the question of whether or not he's baby-sized is pretty academic.

If the Starchild was really depicted in proper scale, then his diaper would be the size of the Pacific Ocean.

This in turn would mean that his bare baby bottom would be roughly the size of the moon.

Which is what we are actually seeing every month, as the Starchild completes another revolution.

He's mooning us, the bastard.

Which proves that the moon landing was faked on a soundstage, and the earth is flat.

Thank you.

(Hey, I bet if Karl Rove told this to George, he'd buy it...)

[sleepyjeff]

I think that many of the things predicted did come to pass......video phones(cordless, no less); playing board games with kids on the other side of the World( I remember reading this prediction in a Popular Science Mag back in 1975----); Powered Skateboards; Space Station(yeah, it's no L-5 Colony, but there is something at least); and who would have thought just how powerfull our personal computers would be now? I was thumbing thru a copy of Money Mag from 1987 a few weeks ago and after reading some of the ads for computers estimated that the computer I have at home would have cost about $400,000 back in the late 80s.

Now if we can just get those flying cars

[€uroMeinke]

Hmmm - I suppose there's a flipside to this about what things surprised you - Cell phones - I mean who would need to reach me 24/7? Message Board Communities - who would have thunk I could spend so much time in a virtual world with people I might not ever see in real life? Cable and Satalite TV with hunderds of channels - and nothing to watch. And we made it through the cold war without having a nuclear holocaust

[lizziebith]

Two words: moving sidewalks.

Yes, we have them in airports, but in the filmstrips of my youth (there, I've gone and done it -- only about three of you know what those are) I was promised MOVING SIDEWALKS. EVERYWHERE. DAMMIT!

Whenever I think broken promises, I think moving sidewalks.

And whenever I ride on the airport versions, I note, disapprovingly, how they stop every 75 feet or so, presumably so we can jump-start the blood in our legs after soooooooooooooooo much inactivity. Weak.

[Motorboat Cruiser]

I thought that we would have many of the gadgets from the original Star Trek series by now. I thought we would have the magic food machines where you just told it what you wanted and it could make anything appear almost instantly. Then again, I thought we might have the three basic staple gadgets; the tricorder, phaser, and communicator. We've come close, I suppose, with the palm pilot, taser, and cell phone, but they don't look as nifty, nor make the same cool sounds.

Also from Star Trek, I realized early on that the drinks in the future were usually a very cool blue color. Much to my relief, the blue drinks do exist, and my experience has been that they usually pack a punch. At least something lived up to the hype.

I suppose I feel the most disappointment for the lack of flying cars though. I thought the Jetsons would accurately reflect the future for some strange reason and we could remove ourselves from the burdens of traffic. I hope we have at least a couple of guys working on that one somewhere. I'm obviously not the only one who wonders what the hell happened to the flying cars.

[wendybeth]

Lol, MBC! I was just about to post that the one thing I really want is a phaser, just like on Star Trek. I'd also like to do the teleport thing, but I suppose I'll have to settle for Disapparating.

Oh, and flying cars? Easy- that went T.U. with the dissolution of the Air Traffic Controllers Union back in the Eighties. ****, they can't handle the traffic they have now.....

[sleepyjeff]

http://www.moller.com/

Of course this car has been on at least a dozen covers of Popular Science or Pop Mechanics over that last score of years')

[wendybeth]

Ooooh, pretty! Wonder if they actually work?

[€uroMeinke]

Originally Posted by sleepyjeff

http://www.moller.com/

Of course this car has been on at least a dozen covers of Popular Science or Pop Mechanics over that last score of years')

Ok - how about an affordable flying car?