Where's my jetpack?
July 13, 2016 10:22 AM Subscribe
42 Visions For Tomorrow From The Golden Age of Futurism — selected panels from Arthur Radebaugh's late 1950s-early 60s newspaper comic strip Closer Than We Think.
Arthur Radebaugh previously
Arthur Radebaugh previously
Actually, the Golden Age of Futurism was a century ago, but I guess it's a lost cause expecting Gizmodo to know that.
posted by languagehat at 10:40 AM on July 13, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by languagehat at 10:40 AM on July 13, 2016 [1 favorite]
man, retro-futurism, is there anything you can't do? I guess by definition, no.
Some of these ideas are self-contradictory - we'd have overcrowded schools but a shortage of teachers? Is this just baby-boom anxiety? Did they not expect that some of these numerous kids would grow up to be teachers?
And why would you want there to be a fake sun shining all night? How would you get any sleep?
posted by GuyZero at 10:49 AM on July 13, 2016
Some of these ideas are self-contradictory - we'd have overcrowded schools but a shortage of teachers? Is this just baby-boom anxiety? Did they not expect that some of these numerous kids would grow up to be teachers?
And why would you want there to be a fake sun shining all night? How would you get any sleep?
posted by GuyZero at 10:49 AM on July 13, 2016
Actually, the Golden Age of Futurism was a century ago, but I guess it's a lost cause expecting Gizmodo to know that.
Yeah, that Peter Thiel/Hulk Hogan judgement appears to have really gutted Gawker's research budget...
posted by Naberius at 11:26 AM on July 13, 2016
Yeah, that Peter Thiel/Hulk Hogan judgement appears to have really gutted Gawker's research budget...
posted by Naberius at 11:26 AM on July 13, 2016
Speaking of retro-futurism, I almost used an AskMe question running to ground this image of two young women talking on their video phones next to their personal plane. It's variously credited to Bruce McCall, Hildebrant Chocolates, A German magazine circa 1930, or all sorts of other things.
While composing the question, I discovered that it's part of Zukunftsphantasien, a collection of futuristic postcards to be collected in an album, manufactured in Germany as a giveaway for the Echte Wagner Margarine Company circa 1930. German margarine manufacturers in the interwar period were apparently seriously into promotional giveaways (DE, translation required).
posted by zamboni at 11:29 AM on July 13, 2016 [5 favorites]
While composing the question, I discovered that it's part of Zukunftsphantasien, a collection of futuristic postcards to be collected in an album, manufactured in Germany as a giveaway for the Echte Wagner Margarine Company circa 1930. German margarine manufacturers in the interwar period were apparently seriously into promotional giveaways (DE, translation required).
posted by zamboni at 11:29 AM on July 13, 2016 [5 favorites]
No persons of color in the future, I see.
posted by SPrintF at 11:46 AM on July 13, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by SPrintF at 11:46 AM on July 13, 2016 [1 favorite]
But more frustratingly, I'm still waiting on truly global TV. The internet has indeed opened up the world of media so that more people can enjoy TV shows from countries they don't live in. But the complex web of international licensing agreements makes legally watching some shows from overseas an overly complex chore.
This, this, a thousand times, this. Music, and radio, for that matter too ... I want to be able to listen to Sport1 in my car during the Euros because the closest we get here is "Oh yeah. There's a soccer-thing going on this month, I'll look up who's playing during the break..."
posted by Seeba at 12:03 PM on July 13, 2016
This, this, a thousand times, this. Music, and radio, for that matter too ... I want to be able to listen to Sport1 in my car during the Euros because the closest we get here is "Oh yeah. There's a soccer-thing going on this month, I'll look up who's playing during the break..."
posted by Seeba at 12:03 PM on July 13, 2016
These panels come from a future where energy is free and pollution has no consequence. (See also the fleet of globe-hopping rockets shown in Thunderbirds, or the the island fortresses of James Bond's villains.) What happened to your jetpack? It was grounded after the price of oil shot up, and people started asking for poison-free air.
posted by Popular Ethics at 2:25 PM on July 13, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Popular Ethics at 2:25 PM on July 13, 2016 [1 favorite]
Every single one of these things has some crazy fairly obvious fault. The thing isn't that these were actual idea, it was that people felt free to speculate about clearly impractical ideas that had some sort of advantage over the current situation.
The elevated police car which is a ball on a stick over a motorcycle is clearly nuts and would have been clearly nuts in 1950 too. But there was a sense of optimism and future potential that made people want to think up crazy stuff.
What happened to your jetpack?
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to come to the conclusion that blasting hot exhaust directly onto your ass and hamstrings is a bad idea.
posted by GuyZero at 2:35 PM on July 13, 2016
The elevated police car which is a ball on a stick over a motorcycle is clearly nuts and would have been clearly nuts in 1950 too. But there was a sense of optimism and future potential that made people want to think up crazy stuff.
What happened to your jetpack?
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to come to the conclusion that blasting hot exhaust directly onto your ass and hamstrings is a bad idea.
posted by GuyZero at 2:35 PM on July 13, 2016
But what about sex robots? Won't somebody please think of the sex robots?!
posted by sexyrobot at 2:43 PM on July 13, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by sexyrobot at 2:43 PM on July 13, 2016 [3 favorites]
I don't know why you're always so concerned about the plight of the sex robots, sexyrobot, but oh wait I see.
posted by kyrademon at 3:23 PM on July 13, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by kyrademon at 3:23 PM on July 13, 2016 [2 favorites]
These are impractical and many are unneeded or worse than what they are replacing. They're weirdly optimistic about pollution, accidents, uptime of machines, and the basic laws of physics. They seem to assume everybody is made of money. And they're EXACTLY the kind of thing little kid me would have drawn if I had any sort of artistic talent.
A good number of the ideas are real now too. The connected classroom is pretty close. The article doesn't think so but I think the robot warehouse is very much what Amazon and other warehouses are like today. And the dome over my rotating house is just like - ok not all of them came true.
posted by Clinging to the Wreckage at 3:55 PM on July 13, 2016 [1 favorite]
A good number of the ideas are real now too. The connected classroom is pretty close. The article doesn't think so but I think the robot warehouse is very much what Amazon and other warehouses are like today. And the dome over my rotating house is just like - ok not all of them came true.
posted by Clinging to the Wreckage at 3:55 PM on July 13, 2016 [1 favorite]
Yes, but pollution and energy costs aren't a problem with the power of the mighty atom.
Reliability and safety, eh, I'll get back to you about those. But bear in mind that safety in the immediately post-war years was seen in the context of a time where people were dying in industrial quantities. It was entirely acceptable to get tanked up at the bar and then drive home in a car with no safety belts and the road handling characteristics of a warthog on roller skates. The whole risk-reward equation was vastly different, and besides science and robots and artificial brains would be along shortly to fix anything. .
No persons of color in the future, I see.
Au contraire. They appear to be uniformly yellow.
The entire future, in fact, is very, very yellow. Golden age, I guess.
posted by Devonian at 4:10 PM on July 13, 2016 [1 favorite]
Reliability and safety, eh, I'll get back to you about those. But bear in mind that safety in the immediately post-war years was seen in the context of a time where people were dying in industrial quantities. It was entirely acceptable to get tanked up at the bar and then drive home in a car with no safety belts and the road handling characteristics of a warthog on roller skates. The whole risk-reward equation was vastly different, and besides science and robots and artificial brains would be along shortly to fix anything. .
No persons of color in the future, I see.
Au contraire. They appear to be uniformly yellow.
The entire future, in fact, is very, very yellow. Golden age, I guess.
posted by Devonian at 4:10 PM on July 13, 2016 [1 favorite]
The one depicting a "Facsimile mail Christmas card" transmitted wirelessly off a lunar repeating station is pretty cute. For quite a while even after Sputnik the concept of semi-permanent artificial satellites in orbit never caught on with the public. Much easier to imagine relay sites on the already orbiting moon.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 4:42 PM on July 13, 2016
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 4:42 PM on July 13, 2016
Although Syd Straw thought the future looked like the 40s.
posted by gingerbeer at 5:22 PM on July 13, 2016
posted by gingerbeer at 5:22 PM on July 13, 2016
Avery Brooks: I was promised flying cars! But I don't see any flying cars! Why? Why? Why?
posted by adamg at 8:02 PM on July 13, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by adamg at 8:02 PM on July 13, 2016 [1 favorite]
I want my dinner on the moon.
And yeah, pizza is fine. It's probably all I could afford after paying the fare.
posted by Autumn Leaf at 5:28 AM on July 14, 2016
And yeah, pizza is fine. It's probably all I could afford after paying the fare.
posted by Autumn Leaf at 5:28 AM on July 14, 2016
I liked the future with vast orbiting relay satellites stuffed with tubes that needed a permanent repair-person presence. Because that was going to be my job.
(An idea that was still sorta-current when the Shuttle was being developed, but that conclusively proved what everyone knew, that the cost of putting repaimen in orbit was vastly more than just sending up another damn satellite...)
((can still fix a tube-based satellite, if anyone's hiring))
posted by Devonian at 9:59 AM on July 14, 2016 [2 favorites]
(An idea that was still sorta-current when the Shuttle was being developed, but that conclusively proved what everyone knew, that the cost of putting repaimen in orbit was vastly more than just sending up another damn satellite...)
((can still fix a tube-based satellite, if anyone's hiring))
posted by Devonian at 9:59 AM on July 14, 2016 [2 favorites]
((can still fix a tube-based satellite, if anyone's hiring))
I've got a screen grid failure in the Schottky tetrode in the superheterodyne oscillator here.
posted by GuyZero at 10:48 AM on July 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
I've got a screen grid failure in the Schottky tetrode in the superheterodyne oscillator here.
posted by GuyZero at 10:48 AM on July 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
sexyrobot: But what about sex robots? Won't somebody please think of the sex robots?!
Oh don't worry, people are doing a LOT of thinking about sex robots. Er, some people, nobody around here, or so I've heard.
posted by AzraelBrown at 1:27 PM on July 14, 2016
Oh don't worry, people are doing a LOT of thinking about sex robots. Er, some people, nobody around here, or so I've heard.
posted by AzraelBrown at 1:27 PM on July 14, 2016
I've got a screen grid failure in the Schottky tetrode in the superheterodyne oscillator here.
It's not the valve, it's the filter condenser.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:33 PM on July 14, 2016
It's not the valve, it's the filter condenser.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:33 PM on July 14, 2016
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Do you ever wonder why Americans call it a restroom? Because we like to sit in there and rest. This combination bathroom-lounge was really going to take our resting to a new level.
posted by sammyo at 10:34 AM on July 13, 2016