I remember reading Alvin Toffler's Future Shock (1970) and The Third Wave (1980) and even though he well-prophesied "information overload" and all sorts of other things, it's one thing to muse about the future as a kid, another thing entirely to live in it, yesterday's future, as an adult. Anyone remember those ads from decades ago, "At Honeywell, the Future is Now"? The rest of the world has caught up with yesterday's Honeywell. That Future is Now.
In case anyone's forgotten (older folks) or has no clue (callow youth), technology has gone miniature in just the past thirty years. Here's the beginning of the arc. Check out this IBM TV ad for its 5100 portable computer (1977): "it weighs about fifty pounds." Can you imagine lugging this thing around everywhere?
Below: MAC ad -- "You'll see why 1984 won't be like 1984." No, 1984 will be 26 years in the past, and counting, never to return.
Any surprises? Internet for global communications? Going digital? Cell phones? Wireless? Still having coal mine collapses and oil spills after all these years? Every day above ground is a good day . . . (and by the way, Alvin Toffler is now 82 and still very much kicking).
Today's Rune: The Self.
4 comments:
Read Future Shock when I was 17, and got about 1/3 the way through Third Wave. Dug it out recently with the intent to take another crack at it. My late friend Mark quoted it frequently.
It's funny (in retrospect,) looking at the old computer ads, articles & commercials. The Apple/1984 ad is kind of ironic, though. They were kind of anti-mainstream then, sort of the little guy against "the man." Now they ARE "the man." Ah, the lessons of Animal Farm & such...
So hilarious. I remember when my advisor in grad school got a "portable" Compac and it was like carrying a suitcase full of iron shot.
Thanks y'all for the comments! Lana, I hear ya' and Charles, iron shot sounds about right. IBM stuff was always heavy, including typewriters.
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