Starfire (Part 3, 1994)

Part 3 of the Sun Microsystems video Starfire begins with our protagonist spying on the office receptionist. From there, we take a look at the scanning interface of the (paleo)future. Enjoy.

See also:
Starfire (Part 1, 1994)
Starfire (Part 2, 1994)
Connections: AT&T's Vision of the Future (1993)
Apple's Knowledge Navigator (1987)
Apple's Grey Flannel Navigator (1988)

Article for MungBeing

I wrote an article for the online magazine MungBeing which appears in the new issue. An excerpt appears below. You can read the entire article here.


There is a genuine sense of sadness detectable when you talk with people about flying cars and meal pills. Oddly enough, most people don't want meals-in-a-pill, they simply want the fanciful. We long for the world where anything is possible. We exist in a rather unique age when most American's basic necessities are met. You and I have luxuries unseen in human history and yet we want more.

See also:
Postmodern Paleo-Future

The Electronic Brain Made Beef Stew (1959)

Today we have the thrilling conclusion to the September 13, 1959 Chicago Tribune article, "Call a Service Man: This Cry Will Still Be Heard in Year 2000."

For lunch we eat scrambled eggs, prepared manually. Following lunch, still a bit unnerved by the sight of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches sticking to the ceiling, I accidentally dump garbage in the dishwasher and dispose the dishes in the garbage disposal unit.

Obviously, the wisest plan - at least for the remainder of the afternoon - is to sit down and read that science fiction thriller. However, as little things continue to go wrong all day, I am kept busy calling service men. Consequently, when my husband comes home that evening, the place is swarming with them.

"It's late," my husband says, glancing at his watch. "Maybe we'd better invite them to stay for dinner."

Seeking to ease the strain on the weekly food budget, I decide to select something economical. Beef stew seems a wise choice. "Let's see," I murmur while pressing a button, "we'll need 24 servings."

The electronic brain comes up with 48 servings of beef stew. Some are on plates, some aren't.

Automatically my husband says, "Call a service man."

"How can I?" I shout hysterically. "They're all here."

See also:
Call a Serviceman (Chicago Tribune, 1959)
Something must be wrong with its radar eye! (Chicago Tribune, 1959)

Poison War (1981)

Don't you hate it when countries use pterodactyls in war?

The 1981 book Future War and Weapons (World of Tomorrow) by Neil Ardley describes future wars being waged with drugs which would produce vivid hallucinations in opposing soldiers. Below is the entire two-page spread.


See also:
Robot Rebellion (1982)
Space Colony Pirates (1981)
Gigantic Robots to Fight Our Battles (Fresno Bee, 1934)

Electrified Topsoil (1909)

The June 27, 1909 Galveston Daily News (Galveston, Texas) ran an article titled, "The Electric City of the Future." Below is an excerpt as well as the article in its entirety.

All the well-known scientists and business men of today agree that the city of the future will be an electrical city. With a very few exceptions all the manifold requirements for speed and economy will be met by electricity.

Even the food products consumed in the electric city of the future will be the results of electricity applied to agriculture. The country will have an abundance of electrical power for light, power and heat on the farms. The farming communities will flourish under the stimulus of an electrical topsoil, and an increased absorption of nitrogen, procured direct from the atmosphere by electricity. These processes are already successful as experiments on a small scale.


See also:
Superfarm of the Year 2020 (1979)
Farm of the Future (1984)
That Synthetic Food of the Future (Ogden Standard-Examiner, 1926)

Starfire (Part 2, 1994)

Part 2 of the 1994 Sun Microsystems video Starfire contains remote manipulation of a camera via tablet. Pretty sweet.

See also:
Starfire (Part 1, 1994)
Connections: AT&T's Vision of the Future (1993)
Apple's Knowledge Navigator (1987)
Apple's Grey Flannel Navigator (1988)

Part-Time Robot (1923)

The August 7, 1923 Oxnard Daily Courier (Oxnard, California) ran a story titled "Shaw Wants To Be Robot, Part Time." Below is the article in its entirety.

George Bernard Shaw would like to be a "Robot" - a machine man - for about two hours a day.

"I want to find my own happiness," Shaw says. "What we should all be aiming at is a distribution of the slavery of nature. Let me be a 'Robot' for two hours a day, but for the rest of the day let me be Bernard Shaw. For those two hours of ..'Robotism' give me a mechanical job so that while I am turning the wheel I can think about the next play I am going to write. People who have nothing more to do than to think about their own happiness are completely miserable. Men engaged in mechanical occupations keep their minds in virginal innocence."

See also:
Henry Ford's Machine Men (1924)
Gigantic Robots to Fight Our Battles (Fresno Bee, 1934)
Robots: The World of the Future (1979)
The Mechanical Man of the Future (1928)
The Robot is a Terrible Creature (1922)

Spacewreck (1979)

The 1979 book Spacewreck: Ghostships and Derelicts of Space by Stewart Cowley explores the "history" of spacecrafts and their demise from the perspective of the (paleo)future.

Thanks to everyone who suggested finding this wonderful book. We'll be looking at this book in more detail in the coming weeks.

See also:
Spacecraft of 2004 (1978)

Television-Phone Unveiled (1955)

The August 25, 1955 Nevada State Journal (Reno, Nevada) ran a story titled, "Television-Phone Unveiled But Caution Warned on Use." Oddly enough, they never explain the "caution" part of the headline. Below is an excerpt from the story.

The television-telephone was unveiled to the world here today.

This is the one you don't answer while in the bathtub.

Called the "videophone" or 'TV-telephone," the device gives you a 10-inch screen view of the person you're calling the instant the other party picks up his receiver.

You see her - and she sees you - until someone hangs up.

While a curious group of reporters in the Fairmont Hotel watched, Noel E. Porter, an electronics executive, dialed a conventional telephone equipped with a pair of television screens. A small camera focused on him.

A mile away in the Civic Auditorium San Francisco's Mayor Elmer Robinson picked up the receiver of an identical unit. His image flashed onto the 10-inch screen in the Fairmont and Porter's appeared on Robinson's screen.

"This is an instance where seeing is believing," Robinson punned.

The videophone, jointly developed by Kay Lab of San Diego, Calif., and Bell Telephone laboratories, is expected to get its first practical application in industry.

But its optimistic producers anticipate it will be as much a part of the American home scene as the telephone and the TV set someday.

See also:
Governor Knight and the Videophone (Oakland Tribune, 1955)
Connections: AT&T's Vision of the Future (1993)
Face-to-Face Telephones on the Way (New York Times, 1968)

Starfire (Part 1, 1994)

With the annoucement of Microsoft Surface it seems like a great time to reflect on similar technologies projected in 1994 for the year 2004. Part one of the Sun Microsystems video Starfire sets the scene with an unfortunate reference to Princess Diana and then gives us a glimpse of the user interface to come.

There are eight parts to this video, so stay tuned.

See also:
Connections: AT&T's Vision of the Future (1993)
Apple's Knowledge Navigator (1987)
Apple's Grey Flannel Navigator (1988)
1999 A.D. (1967)
Online Shopping (1967)

1999 A.D. Intro (1967)

In the future, kids will be so dumb that they'll forget the year (and spooky music will swell on cue).

How does the computer know everything? I mean like how . . . I mean like, how many times to exercise and all?

You can find 1999 A.D. on the DVD Yesterday's Tomorrows Today, released by A/V Geeks.

See also:
1999 A.D. (1967)
Online Shopping (1967)
Monsanto House of the Future (1957-1967)

The Air-Ship or One Hundred Years Hence (1908)

It saddens me greatly to read about films that are forever lost to deterioration. The 1984 book Yesterday's Tomorrows by Joseph J. Corn and Brian Horrigan mentions a film that was released in 1908 under the title The Air-Ship or One Hundred Years Hence. The ad below advertised the film, giving it second billing to The Great One Hand Pianist. This ad for the Electric Theatre appeared in the May 19, 1908 La Crosse Tribune (La Crosse, Wisconsin).


Anyone with more information about this film is encouraged to fill us in. For now, let us raise our glasses to this paleo-future wonder, currently playing at The Great Showhouse in the Sky.

Closer Than We Think! Lunar Mailbag (1960)

This Closer Than We Think! strip ran in the December 25, 1960 Chicago Tribune.

Chistmas cards of the future may be transmitted electronically. The post office is studying the use of space technology for quick movement of endless quantities of mail between widely separated points.

To do this, microwave stations would be set up. Envelopes would be opened mechanically, and the automatic "fingers" would remove the contents and expose them to a scanner. Impulses from the card or letter might be beamed to a postal satellite or even the moon, bounced back to the destination point, reproduced there in the original printing or handwriting, sealed in a capsule and delivered. All this might be done minutes from the time the communication first arrived at a post office thousands of miles away.

See also:
Closer Than We Think! (1958-1963)
Closer Than We Think! Monoline Express

Moving Sidewalk (1900)

Below is film of the moving sidewalk featured at the Paris Exposition of 1900. The film is credited to Thomas Edison.

The New York Observer ran a series of eight letters from October 11 until December 27, 1900 by a man named Augustus. He was reporting on the Paris Exposition and part two (October 18) includes a description of the "traveling sidewalk" in action.

From this part of the fair it is possible to proceed to a distant exhibition which is placed in what is called the Champs de-Mars, without going out of the gates, by means of a travelling sidewalk or a train of electric cars. Thousands avail themselves of these means of transportation. The former is a novelty. It consists of three elevated platforms, the first being stationary, the second moving at a moderate rate of speed, and the third at the rate of about six miles an hour. The moving sidewalks have upright posts with knobbed tops by which one can steady himself in passing to or from the platforms. There are occasional seats on these platforms, and the circuit of the Exposition can be made with rapidity and ease by this contrivance. It also affords a good deal of fun, for most of the visitors are unfamiliar with this mode of transit, and are awkward in its use. The platform runs constantly in one direction, and the electric cars in the opposite.

Below is a photo of the moving sidewalk from the Library of Congress as well as a German postcard (circa 1900) of the moving sidewalk concept.




See also:
Postcards Show the Year 2000 (circa 1900)

Your Own Wireless Telephone (1910)

Are the switchboard girls listening in on your calls? Get the Wireless Telephone! This story ran in the February 20, 1910 Washington Post (Washington, D.C.). The story has a number of typos and grammatical errors so I took some liberties with the transcript, but you can read it unedited above.

The part about calling your husband and telling him to stop at the butcher's shop is amazing. I don't think I'd believe the article was real if I hadn't found it myself.

The wireless telephone makes it easy enough for the timid lover who hasn't the courage to make his avowal to his Valentine face to face.

He could have used the ordinary telephone you say? Ah, there was the dread of the listening giggling telephone girls at the Central switchboard. Crossed wires might cross him in love besides.

He wasn't safe with the old style telephone - for it is old style though still in use. Somebody else might cut in. Somebody else might cut him off and thereby cut him out.

For the wireless telephone is here. That is if it isn't here it's there.

And do you think it is necessary to hitch a wireless telephone to a tall steel tower to get results? Not at all. Mr. Pickerill uses an umbrella. Mr. Pickerill says if you are at all superstitious about raising an umbrella in the house -- for the wireless telephone can be used anywhere within a radius of several hundred miles outdoors or in-you can hitch the telephone to a typewriter or an iron bed or the metal frame of a sewing machine or the coal scuttle or the radiator or the kitchen stove or the gas fixture - he doesn't care - and call up your own true love.

Wives can call husbands at their offices or on the way to Harlem or the suburbs in the car and say, "Do stop at the butcher's on the corner and get some liver and bacon!" It's the girl's day out. And you know how she is! She never orders a thing ahead.

As a matter of fact, the present style telephone is used mostly by loving couples. After a man's married the trouble begins - not on account of needles and pins money so much as because he doesn't telephone that he'll be late at the office or has to sit up with a sick friend.

"When we were keeping company you used to ring me up a dozen times a day simply to ask me if I still loved you!" the wife will cry. "And if Central would say Busy you'd get so jealous and accuse me of having other fellows call me up. And if Central would say Nobody answers you'd write complaints to the main office. But now you never even let me know you are not coming home!"

Lovers must be sure that their wireless telephones are in tune as well as their thoughts in accord. The wireless telegraph companies are appealing to the Government to supervise aerograms because mocking amateurs are continually butting in on the Hertzian waves.

So too if lovers are not in tune, the wrong girl may get the wireless telephone proposal.

Advice to Married Men - Don't you care when your wife says angrily, "Don't tell me, I know you heard me. I called you all day and your wireless telephone was in perfect condition when you fastened it to your hat this morning when you left the house."

Affect a look of surprise and reply, "Don't be angry dear. I forgot to take off my rubbers and wore them all day."

Space Station X-1 (circa 1955)

The image above is from an insert in the Walt Disney Treasures - Tomorrowland: Disney in Space and Beyond DVD set. The image was used in Disneyland as the poster for the Space Station X-1 attraction.

Space Station X-1 invited Disneyland guests to circle the earth from fifty miles up for a satellite view of America.

See also:
Tomorrowland, Disneyland Opening Day (1955)
Walt Disney Explaining the Carousel of Progress to General Electric (1964)

Robots Will Be Kings (1949)

The March 3, 1949 Austin Statesman (Austin, Texas) ran the picture above, declaring that the people of Nice, France believe robots will be kings in the year 2000.

SALUTE TO THE FUTURE - The people of Nice, France, are preparing for their annual carnival, one of the top features of the season on the French Riviera. Among the biggest attractions in the parade will be this "robot." The people of Nice will honor it, because they feel robots will be kings in the year 2000.

Blondes to be Extinct (1907)

A number of major news outlets got burned in 2002 on a fake story about blondes going extinct. The idea that blondes will soon be non-existent is not a new one, as you can see by reading the story below. "Blondes to be Extinct" ran in the March 7, 1907 New Oxford Item (New Oxford, Pennsylvania).

Another man has come forward to declare that the woman with the golden tesses is doomed, says the New York American. This does not mean that she is to be absent next summer from the beaches, when her bathing suit is of the proper color, or that she is not to be found the next Winter, wearing a white veil to accentuate the head of hair nature or a chemist designed for her.

But in about six hundred years the blonde will be a curiosity. She is to join the horse with five toes and the dodo. The leading lady doing Ophelia in a play by Shakespeare will not be able to wear her own hair unless she violates tradition. The color will predominate in the department stores around Christmas time and still be a favorite for dolls.

Apple's Grey Flannel Navigator (1988)

Of all the paleo-futuristic concept videos we've looked at in the past four months, the future depicted in Grey Flannel Navigator may have been the most accurate. Granted, it's the safest but computer networking and ordering pizza through your computer was pretty visionary for 1988. The assumption that we need an image of a person as an interface seems to be where most of these videos fall down.

Below are all three parts of the 1988 Apple concept video Grey Flannel Navigator. Thanks again to Keith C. for the video.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

See also:
Apple's Grey Flannel Navigator (Part 1, 1988)
Apple's Grey Flannel Navigator (Part 2, 1988)
Apple's Grey Flannel Navigator (Part 3, 1988)
Apple's Knowledge Navigator (1987)
Connections: AT&T's Vision of the Future (1993)

Henry Ford's Machine Men (1924)

The evening edition of the December 5, 1924 State Journal (Lincoln, Nebraska) ran a short article about Henry Ford's automated vision for the future. It was titled "Machine Men," and the author laments the hustle and bustle the automobile has produced. The author calls "pish-posh" on Mr. Henry Ford and his projections of life with less work.

The article is transcribed below in its entirety.

Where is Henry Ford going to land us? asks Arthur Train in The Forum. His ambition is to build and market a hundred million automobiles so that every child will have one. His "vision" is for a world where everything is done by machines. His perfect man would press a button by the side of his bed and find himself automatically clad, fed, exercised, amused, and put to bed again. Thirty minutes' work for each of us a day would be enough, he says, to keep civilization going. Pish-posh, Henry! Does anybody suppose you would stop until you'd eliminated the necessity for all work whatsoever? Of course you wouldn't! When you rearranged everything so that the human "robot" can sit on his front porch and talk to another "robot" friend a thousand miles away on his eye glass string, mow his farm in Mongolia and milk his reindeer in Nova Zembla by wireless, hear and see what is going on upon the other side of the world by looking at a shirt stud, transport himself thru the air on a broomstick, and kiss his wife and best girl by radio - will he be any better off? Before we had motors in New York I used to go down town in a rattling old surface car that took half an hour; but now in your cabriolet, even if you've reduced the price $590.65 F.O.B. Detroit, it takes an hour. Have I gained anything? Somehow I feel as if I'd lost a little of my liberty. I don't want a nickel-plated stomach or an oxydized liver. I don't want to sit in one place and be artificially respirated and exercised, in order to keep my blood in circulation. I like to work. I like to earn my bread by the sweat of my brow because it makes me hungry to do it that way. For if, Henry, everything is done for us, what eventually are we going to do?

See also:
Gigantic Robots to Fight Our Battles (Fresno Bee, 1934)
Robots: The World of the Future (1979)
The Mechanical Man of the Future (1928)
The Robot is a Terrible Creature (1922)

Time Travel (1982)

The 1982 book Fact or Fantasy? (World of Tomorrow) by Neil Ardley features this picture of "time tourists" choosing their destination.

Time tourists choose an era of the past to explore. They then enter the time machine on the left and watch history unfold before them. But they can only view the past and not enter it and live there. The time machine does not show the future, otherwise people could change what is going to happen.

Apple's Grey Flannel Navigator (Part 3, 1988)

Part 3 of Apple's 1988 paleo-future concept video Grey Flannel Navigator gives us much needed closure about that business plan.

See also:
Apple's Grey Flannel Navigator (Part 1, 1988)
Apple's Grey Flannel Navigator (Part 2, 1988)
Apple's Knowledge Navigator (1987)
Connections: AT&T's Vision of the Future (1993)

"I Can Whip Any Mechanical Robot" by Jack Dempsey (1930s)

The 1979 book Wasn't the Future Wonderful? features the above two-page spread of Jack Dempsey challenging a robot. Unfortunately, the book doesn't specify the publication or date except that it's from the 1930s and probably from Modern Mechanix. Below is an excerpt from the piece.

I can whip any mechanical robot that ever has or ever will be made.

Maybe that sounds a bit egotistical, maybe you will say it's just the voice of a "has-been," but I assure you that neither is true.

Engineers can build a robot that will possess everything except brains. And without brains no man can ever attain championship class in the boxing game.



See also:
Gigantic Robots to Fight Our Battles (Fresno Bee, 1934)
Robots: The World of the Future (1979)
The Mechanical Man of the Future (1928)
The Robot is a Terrible Creature (1922)
Mammy vs Robot (Charleston Gazette, 1937)
Donald Duck's "Modern Inventions" (1937)
All's Fair at the Fair (1938)

Closer Than We Think! Monoline Express (1961)

Arthur Radebaugh's Closer Than We Think! strip for the May 21, 1961 Chicago Tribune envisioned a Monoline Express of the future. Below is the text of the strip.

Two ideas now being developed in Detroit - an automatic highway and a high-speed monorail bus system - are combined in the concept of the Monoline Express, in which private automobiles will use a novel "high road" to commute to town or travel between cities.

General Motors proposes the "autoline" - a computer-controlled highway in which cars would travel almost bumper to bumper at speeds of 120 miles per hour or more. And a business group wants to see the two sections of the University of Michigan campus linked by a "monobus" which would move on a novel monorail guide trough up in the air. Put together, the two concepts result in automatic travel in your own car at light aircraft speed!

See also:
Closer Than We Think! (1958-1963)
Disney's Magic Highway, U.S.A. (1958)
'Flying Saucer' Buses (1950)
Word Origins: Imagineering (1947)
Speed is Key to Future Travel (1965)

Apple's Grey Flannel Navigator (Part 2, 1988)

Today we have part 2 of Apple's 1988 paleo-futuristic concept video, Grey Flannel Navigator. Stay tuned for the thrilling conclusion.

See also:
Apple's Grey Flannel Navigator (Part 1, 1988)
Apple's Knowledge Navigator (1987)
Connections: AT&T's Vision of the Future (1993)

Year 2000 Time Capsule (1958)

The June 10, 1958 edition of the Chicago Daily Tribune ran an article about predictions for Chicagoland and the world. The predictions were sealed in a time capsule and supposed to be opened in the year 2000. Below is an excerpt from the article as well as a copy of the piece in its entirety.

The predictions included the conquering of space, advanced atomic energy and electronic progress, a higher standard of living, shorter working hours, and longer vacations (with four weeks as the average). The chicken in every pot and a car in every garage forecast has been changed to a helicopter and heliport in every back yard.



See also:
Commuter Helicopter (1947)

Postmodern Paleo-Future Art

The Flickr group Wasn't the Future Wonderful? has some great examples of postmodern paleo-future art. These pieces co-opt and remix past visions of the future, giving an interesting context to current visions of the future.

Kozmonaut by ART NAHPRO

eye lines by Nesster

Moonweb by Matt West

Au Revoir Planet Earth by Mattijn

Soon Mariska, Soon by john_bolin2002

Apple's Grey Flannel Navigator (Part 1, 1988)

The video above is part 1 of Apple's futuristic concept video Grey Flannel Navigator. It was produced in 1988 and has a tone similar to other videos we've looked at by Apple and AT&T. There are three parts to this rarely seen video, so stay tuned. Many thanks to Keith C. for this great paleo-future find.

See also:
Apple's Knowledge Navigator (1987)
Connections: AT&T's Vision of the Future (1993)