May

3

The Past Is So Bright…

Posted by Christopher Waldrop

May 3, 2008 |

vision.jpgOver at BoingBoing, Cory Doctorow has a brief article with a link to a short Czech film from 1957 which has a surprising vision of the kitchen of the future: shopping by television, foods quickly prepared in glass ovens, the cokery (sic) book replaced by punch cards…well, at least they were right about stoves which cook by electromagnetic induction, and internet shopping is pretty close to shopping by television. And there are food dispensers that pre-measure the amounts–they just happen to be primarily used in the fast food industry.

What really interested me, though, was Doctorow’s use of the word “paleofuturism”–which covers all those old (and often wildly inaccurate) visions of the future. There’s even a blog, Paleo-Future, which regularly posts examples. While it’s tempting to make fun of these visions of the future, let’s bear in mind that no invention is possible without an idea first. Paleofuturism can be funny, but every once in a while it’s accurate–and, hey, while some ideas, like flying cars, may not be possible now, that doesn’t make them entirely impossible.

 


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