The Past-Future Design Loop
Re: "I like to make things that do not have a like or download button"
Interesting points made here about future fantasies:
"In a way when you look at our projects, there is always something old, something new, and something borrowed. We met with the Tokyo government and they loved the glowing lines, because it reminds them of the Edo Period gardens. They could relate to it in a traditional way, but they could also relate to this energy-neutral future, because of the nuclear disasters that have happened there in the last years.
"When you design incorporating elements of the past and the future, people can associate it with it. That is a very intuitive factor embedded in all our designs, and also a very important argument of good design for me. Not only must it be effective, but it must also let you play with it and plug in from different levels. You can use design to seduce people to take one step forward."
I like the idea of The Future reduced to ten years out as opposed to fifty. It seems more logical to incorporate elements from the Now, into a future that somewhat resembles it. That's why I liked the future scenario in the film "Her". It didn't try too hard to look like The Future, as do most sci-fi films.
Nostalgia is an important element in future scenarios, as well as the use of anachronisms, as a way to assess how people really feel about progressive linear growth in technology. Sometimes the best technologies are from fifty years ago, and should still be useful now, and fifty years in the future or longer. The landline phone was a good technology, and the voice quality was excellent. Few have them anymore, but they are interesting in that they can function as anachronisms and nostalgic elements in films.
Too much nostalgia might be an indicator that the New is not as good as the Old. Vinyl records is a prime example: The future that we saw by getting rid of them didn't work out. No one wants CDs. That's an example of what worked fifty years ago still works now and will work fifty years in the future. It's logical to make a sci-fi film that references vinyl records and turntables, as a way to fold in the cultural mood from the 50s. We like to lampoon the 50s, but some now want to return to that time to revisit those moods and dreams. It is conceivable that CDs will show up as anachronisms in the future as a way to feel nostalgic for them--and the fact that many of them might not play, will be a commentary on the dregs of the 1980s. In 2050, when future dreams based on progressive models of technology perhaps didn't work out, some may get nostalgic for old media (what we use today) and the worlds they represented.
The future as of today uses the smartphone as the Hub and is based on the Uber model, which again redounds to the marketing of convenience, which is so 50s. Isn't it funny that flying cars never happened, but we have continued with the idea of automation, and sans-a-belt slacks as used in "Her"?
Curiosity about what happened in the past seems to be the place we go when when want to think about what the future might look like--just to make sure it looks somewhat familiar--like the Japanese want to be reminded of Edo, and to return to a time when we didn't have to deal with liking and downloads.
