What if we were in Utopia?

Would we know it? Can Utopia only be seen from the outside?

Quotes boingboing, from a 1935 issue of Popular Mechanics:

Imagine, if you can, the delight of the woman who steps into her "ready made" house and finds the kitchen already equipped with electric refrigerator, dishwasher, sink, electric or gas stove, built-in clock, abundant cupboard space--and even a two-day supply of groceries on the shelves. And she never will be bothered by cooking odors because an electric exhaust quickly removes smoke, dust and fumes from the kitchen. In addition to the windows, indirect lighting gives plenty of illumination for her work in the compactly designed room.

In the bathroom, this same housewife will find bathtub complete with shower and anti-splash curtain, the large basin that also may serve as the baby's bathtub, triple adjustable mirrors for her husband's morning shave and an extra electric heater for warming up the room quickly. The conditioned air issues from grills set into the wall near the floor and a built-in clock tells the "man of the house" just how long he has before his train or street car comes along.

 But forget trains or street cars -- now we all have cars, with radios that play Mozart in the morning. But, as a reminder that even Utopia still has flaws, there are the "walls of asbestos-cement".

The reified future

From J. D. Bernal, "The World, the Flesh, and the Devil" (1929):

The whole question is one largely of numbers, and would become entirely so as soon as the quantity and quality of population were controlled by authority. From one point of view the scientists would emerge as a new species and leave humanity behind; from another, humanity - the humanity that counts - might seem to change en bloc, leaving behind in a relatively primitive state those too stupid or too stubborn to change. The latter view suggests another biological analogy: there may not be room for both types in the same world and the old mechanism of extinction will come into play. The better organized beings will be obliged in self-defense to reduce the numbers of the others, until they are no longer seriously inconvenienced by them. If, as we may well suppose, the colonization of space will have taken place or be taking place while these changes are occurring, it may offer a very convenient solution. Mankind - the old mankind - would be left in undisputed possession of the earth, to be regarded by the inhabitants of the celestial spheres with a curious reverence. The world might, in fact, be transformed into a human zoo, a zoo so intelligently managed that its inhabitants are not aware that they are there merely for the purposes of observation and experiment.

That prospect should please both sides: it should satisfy the scientists in their aspirations towards further knowledge and further experience, and the humanists in their looking for the good life on earth. But somehow it fails by the very virtue of its being a possible and probable solutions on the lines of our own knowledge. We do not really expect or want the probable; all, even the least religious, retain in their minds when they think of the future, an idea of the deus ex machina, of some transcendental, superhuman event which will, without their help, bring the universe to perfection or destruction. We want the future to be mysterious and full of supernatural power; and yet these very aspirations, so totally removed from the physical world, have built this material civilization and will go on building it into the future so long as there remains any relation between aspiration and action. But can we count on this? Or, rather, have we not here the criterion which will decide the direction of human development? We are on the point of being able to see the effects of our actions and their probable consequences in the future; we hold the future still timidly, but perceive it for the first time, as a function of our own action. Having seen it, are we to to turn away from something that offends the very nature of our earliest desires, or is the recognition of our new powers sufficient to change those desires into the service of the future which they will have to bring about?

(emphasis added) 

Interesting to note that he classes "[man's] desires and fears, his imaginations and stupidities" under the Devil.

Note too the tight relationship between the notions of "science" and "the future"  (of which the making of both into opaque things is only a facet) -- as expressed here, they're co-dependent.

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New blog: Paleo-future

"A look into the future that never was" (see Blogs on the right too). Organized by decade, from 1870's to 1990's (the 2000's, presumably, not being that paleo, yet), peaks in the 1960's. Sample, from 1957:

DRIVERLESS CAR OF THE FUTURE

The "About Me" entry links to the Wikipedia entry on "Retro-futurism": "... retro-futurism explores the themes of tension between past and future, and between the alienating and empowering effects of technology." More:

Retro-futurism incorporates two overlapping trends which may be summarized as the future as seen from the past and the past as seen from the future.

The first trend, retro-futurism proper, is directly inspired by the imagined future which existed in the minds of writers, artists, and filmmakers in the pre-1960 period who attempted to predict the future, either in serious projections of existing technology (e.g. in magazines like Science and Invention) or in science fiction novels and stories. Such futuristic visions are refurbished and updated for the present, and offer a nostalgic, counterfactual image of what the future might have been, but is not.

The second trend is the inverse of the first: futuristic retro. It starts with the retro appeal of old styles of art, clothing, mores, and then grafts modern or futuristic technologies onto it, creating a mélange of past, present, and future elements. Steampunk, a term applying both to the retrojection of futuristic technology into an alternative Victorian age, and the application of neo-Victorian styles to modern technology, is a highly successful version of this second trend.

In practice, the two trends cannot be sharply distinguished, as they mutually contribute to similar visions.

The antique future

It's not this:

That was the 50's, a couple of generations or more past (though of course the 50's generate their own notion of the antique). But here's the future now, pre-aged:

Ian McQue, Shore Leave

Or this:

McQue, The Last Airborne

A rusty, old future, in other words, rather than shiny and new -- and no rectilinear grid lines disappearing to a perspectivist vanishing point. But this clearly has an appeal all its own -- note the enduring interest in Blade Runner. It's related, at least, to the appeal of punk, and to its cyber- and steam- variations. Related also to the appeal of ruins as such -- the sense of great depths, possibilities, mysteries, beneath the broken surfaces, the sense even of time itself made a visible, tangible presence -- but in this case still with that imagination-teasing added dimension of the future.

There's no escaping the appeal of decadence as well, however, and the indulgent sentimentalism that carries with it.  Note how that fits so well with the theme of Conspiracy, both benign and malignant -- the sense of vast, inherently incomprehensible social totalities, with a few outsiders fitting into its interstices, both preying and preyed upon (in contrast to the rectilinear, Utopian future of the 50's). Gibson, of course, but Pynchon too. And caverns measureless to man....


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Hugh Ferriss and "the vertical sublime"

From the nonist -- "Verticles on wide avenues":



The caption reads:

Verticals On Wide Avenues by Hugh Ferriss. From the post Hugh Ferriss: Delineator of Gotham, Or: Rendering “The Vertical Sublime” which features images from the preeminent architectural draftsman’s 1929 book The Metropolis of Tomorrow.

Here's "Technology":



"The science center":




Which came first, I wonder -- Hugh Ferriss or Metropolis?

And again, the rectilinear, this time with perspective in order to awe with space or scale.

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