The Obsolete Future

[shereads]

My generation has lived through at least two dates that once loomed so far in the future, someone felt safe using them as the titles for stories about a radically different world of the future:

Orwell's "1984" (didn't really get underway until 2003)

and Kubrick's "2001."

I was having this discussion with a friend yesterday, and we started thinking of cultural and pop-cultural references that date some of our favorite films:

in "2001," there's a Pam Am logo on the side of the space shuttle

in "Being John Malcovich," one of the early laugh lines was funny only because unemployment was at an all-time low when the movie was in theaters. John Cusack is reading the employment ads and says something about the difficulty of being a puppeteer "in the current job climate." The line got a big laugh three or four years ago; everybody had jobs.

Time flies when you're having fun, doesn't it?

Can anyone think of a movie or book set in the future that's dated because of an obsolete reference or outdated technology? (The "Main Switch" on certain B-movie space ships doesn't count. There will always be a need for a Main Switch.)

 

[AngeloMichael]

It's not really obsolete because it's set at the right time period, but whenever I watch "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home" there's one scene that gets me thinking about how technology has progressed.

In the movie, Kirk & co. has traveled back in time to the year 1986 and encounter people from this time period. In one such encounter Kirk is having dinner with a woman at a restaurant and his commuicator starts going off. At first he ignores it, but it persists in beeping. Finally the woman asks him if he isn't going to answer his "pocket pager". So Kirk takes out his communicator has a brief conversation with Scotty, then returns it to his pocket.

This exchange on the communicator is what prompts the woman to demand Kirk tell her who he is. I just think it's funny how if it was only a few more years in the future there would not have been anything unusual about that scene at all. Just another person taking a call on his cell phone at a restaurant.

Actually, the Star Trek communicators might seem obsolete today if they were to be seen being used by Trek time travelers in this time. "What, all you do is talk on them? No games? No music? No internet??? And what's with that 'chirp, chirp, chirp' ring? At least program it to ring the William Tell Overture!"

I remember Leonard Nimoy once talking about one day while being stuck in traffic he was using his cell phone and all of the sudden he noticed the person in the car next to him having a fit of hysterical laughter. The guy apologized for laughing at Nimoy but he couldn't help seeing the humour in recognising Nimoy and seeing him using a flip cell phone in real life that quite closely resembled the communicators he used in the series.


On a more somber note, the movie "A.I." had a scene in it that became obsolete about 3 months after it came out. The movie is supposed to be set maybe 50 to 100 years in the future and in one scene we see David, the robot boy, traveling to the ruins of New York City which is almost completely underwater save for the taller buildings which are only partway submerged. Among the buildings are the weathered but still standing World Trade Center towers.

 

[snooper]

... Orwell's "1984" (didn't really get underway until 2003) ...

Orwell's book was a parody of socialist state control and was intended to portray the then very near future, 1948. None of the technology he postulates was impossible in 1946/7 when he wrote the book.

... Can anyone think of a movie or book set in the future that's dated because of an obsolete reference or outdated technology? ...

I have been re-reading some old SF, mostly Analog, and I read one story which really hit me as dated, but I can't find it now.
Three astronauts were stranded on a distant planet by some accident, but had managed to repair and refuel their spaceship. There was a pilot, an engineer, and the passenger, who was an exobiologist. In order to get back home they had to calculate a course.
Before many hours had passed, the exobiologist became as adept with a slide rule as the engineer.

 

[shereads]

There's a Star Trek technology time-warp that always bugged me: Why no seat belts on the bridge? Kirk gets tossed out of that chair every time an enemy Wessel so much as fires a bb gun.

 

[neonlyte]

There's a Star Trek technology time-warp that always bugged me: Why no seat belts on the bridge? Kirk gets tossed out of that chair every time an enemy Wessel so much as fires a bb gun.

Real Men don't wear seat belts!
That's why there are so few Real Men about.

NL

 

[shereads]

Re: Re: The Obsolete Future

In order to get back home they had to calculate a course.
Before many hours had passed, the exobiologist became as adept with a slide rule as the engineer.

The Apollo 13 astronauts had to use a slide rule to calculate their angle of approach to the earth's atmosphere. Rent the movie, "Apollo 13." Amazing that they got back safely, using calculations on a yellow note pad, and some duct tape for repairs.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I'm still waiting for my atomic-powered personal helicopter my Weekly Reader promised me back in eighth grade.

I just got a book on retro futurology or whatever they call it: visons of the future made in the past. It's great to see these atomic powered automatically powered automobiles with the big plastic canopy. While dad sits in the driver's seat reading a paper and smoking his pipe, Mom is buttering toast as it comes out of their futuristic toaster and Junior and Sally are playing with Spot. All the men are wearing snap-brim hats and all the woman are dressed like June Cleaver, and they're all WASPs too.

But my favorite example of the future gone wrong is the town of Brasilia, designed at hugs expense from the ground up by Le Corbusier as the city of the future. It was on a monumental scale and totally unlivable, and the people who settled there ended up hanging out in the back alleys because the big open public spaces were too intimidating. Corbusier was furious because they used to string clotheslines out the back windows and ruin the geometric purity of his designs

Don't know what happened to it. I think it's still the capitol of Brazil, though.

---dr.M.

 

[Guest]

All the men are wearing snap-brim hats and all the woman are dressed like June Cleaver, and they're all WASPs too.

Yeah, except for the still token characters in books, film and TV, "the future" seems white and straight.

Perdita (not a sci-fi fan)

 

[rgraham666]

Yeah, except for the still token characters in books, film and TV, "the future" seems white and straight.

Perdita (not a sci-fi fan)

That's because most SF writers are white and straight… and male.

As a former computer programmer and lomgtime SF fan, I love to read old stuff with computers in them. In the '50s, '60s and '70s the computers were always big, room filling machines that used as much power as a small city. And they could only be used by properly trained priests, I mean technicians.

Now they sit on our desks and everybody uses them.

 

[shereads]

I'm still waiting for my atomic-powered personal helicopter my Weekly Reader promised me back in eighth grade.

I just got a book on retro futurology or whatever they call it: visons of the future made in the past. It's great to see these atomic powered automatically powered automobiles with the big plastic canopy. While dad sits in the driver's seat reading a paper and smoking his pipe, Mom is buttering toast as it comes out of their futuristic toaster and Junior and Sally are playing with Spot. All the men are wearing snap-brim hats and all the woman are dressed like June Cleaver, and they're all WASPs too.

But my favorite example of the future gone wrong is the town of Brasilia, designed at hugs expense from the ground up by Le Corbusier as the city of the future. It was on a monumental scale and totally unlivable, and the people who settled there ended up hanging out in the back alleys because the big open public spaces were too intimidating. Corbusier was furious because they used to string clotheslines out the back windows and ruin the geometric purity of his designs

Don't know what happened to it. I think it's still the capitol of Brazil, though.

---dr.M.

What's the name of the book. Retro Futurology? I love this stuff.

Where are our jet back-packs?

 

[shereads]

For a truly terrifying vision of the future, try the "Small World" ride at Disneyland. For the first few minutes, there is only the annoyance of the song, as we ride our little boats through the Nations of the World, peopled with happy children in Elton Johnified native costumes. But the big pay-off comes at the climax of the ride when we enter the mega-sparkly White Room. The costumes are all white, the buildings are white. There's a blaze of whiteness that's whiter than the town in The Stepford Wives. And everybody's singin' and kickin' in unison.

I think the Small World ride may have been the inspiration for the New World Order and the Thousand Points of Light.

 

[snooper]

Conversely, for a relly good piece of retro-futurology read "Paris in the XXI Century" by Jules Verne. The only thing wrong was the technology was available in 1950, but that's the effect of wars.