BACK TO THE FUTURE
by
Andy Bassett
Where did the future go? As we poise on the edge of the 21st century, all the wonderful, technologically advanced ideas that were supposed to be in place by now seem to have fallen by the wayside. Many things which appeared so futuristic in the sixties and seventies now look positively dated. Others seem just as far-fetched now as then.
This is 1999, for crying out loud! We're supposed to be living on the moon! Every phone should have a video monitor. Robots should be greeting us by name as we step off the monorail and through the automatically opening doors of our white-walled open-plan homes with amorphous orange sculptures in every corner, a dolphin in the swimming pool, a nutritionally balanced meal of red and blue pills on the table and a bland electronic symphony playing discreetly in the background through invisible speakers. What went wrong?
I remember, as a child, watching a TV series called UFO, created by Gerry Anderson, of Thunderbirds fame. It was the first Anderson programme to use real actors instead of puppets. It was set in 1980, a time which sounded so far away in 1970. Alien spacecraft were invading the Earth and a special organisation was set up to protect us all. I recall having a major crush on Gabrielle Drake, who played one of a team of purple-wigged and extremely short-skirted female fighter pilots. I didn't question why her hair had to be purple. It was future thing. You just accepted it.
The same went for the tunics the men wore. Looking back, I am mystified as to what science-fiction writers have against lapels. Every sci-fi film or programme ever created has men wearing tunics which button right up to the collar. How the hell are you supposed to take out your wallet? And don't they realise how dorky it looks?
By 1980, cars were going to be sleek, curved, sporty-looking things, which hummed to life with a sound like the inside of an airliner starting up and cruised smoothly along the road with a near-silent swish. Funny how, in 1999, cars look more generic than ever, still splutter to life with a sound like a flatulent bison and lurch along the road in a cloud of noxious fumes.
Of course, science fiction writers and post-modernist designers weren't the only people whose predictions for the future were wildly wrong. Remember all that talk 20 years ago about how computers were going to lead to the paperless office? Whoever dreamt that up was way off the mark. Nowadays, everything is drafted, photocopied for the ten-person committee, who then pass it back in for amendments, which are then typed, printed, photocopied and sent back out again ad infinitum. Hopefully, the advent of e-mail should go some way toward reducing this mass deforestation, though I can't help thinking it just adds to it, by sending the same drafts overseas, where they are printed up, photocopied and sent out to the committees in the London, New York, Hong Kong and Tokyo offices.
Admittedly, advances in computers do mean that documents, live pictures and money can be transferred anywhere in the world instantaneously. Yet it still takes a week to clear a cheque.
The one person who came closest to getting his predictions right was Andy Warhol, with his legendary pronouncement: "In the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes." It is partly true, thanks to talkback radio and the likes of Oprah Winfrey, allowing a platform for the halfbaked notions of any old fruitbat. It would be completely true were it not for one small matter. You just can't go for fifteen minutes without a commercial break these days.