Selling Tomorrows

OMNI Ushered in Age of "Armchair Scientists." Now it's Free Online.

The Internet Archive has just posted every edition of OMNI Magazine free for downloading, including beautiful PDFs that capture the art and ads of the time. 

Launched in 1978, OMNI had a profound effect on science literacy and people's understanding of tomorrow.  From Wikipedia: "Science Digest and Science News already served the high-school market, and Scientific American and New Scientist the professional, while OMNI was arguably the first aimed at "armchair scientists" who were nevertheless well informed about technical issues."

Reflecting the spirit of its times, both the NY Times and The Economist added science sections to their roster a month after the OMNI first dropped. The publication's 1986 cover story on nanotechnology brought that nascent field into the mainstream (see this timeline from MetaModern) and its art helped establish the futuristic aesthetic of the 80s (10 covers here). It was also an early nurturer of nerd culture.  As LiveScience notes, "As a short hand for an early version of geek-chic, OMNI appeared in "Ghostbusters", "The Breakfast Club" and "Star Trek IV", and was mentioned in "Jurassic Park" and the remake of "The Fly."

In 1982, OMNI published a "Future Almanac" which, if you were to read it, Ben Bova assured, "very little that happens in the next two decades will be a surprise."  By the way, copies of it are available for $4 via Amazon, and yes, I just bought a copy!

Here's an ad for OMNI from 1978 where it declares itself, "The magazine of tomorrow, on sale today." 

How James Bond's Gadgets Created a Gadget-Expecting Culture

Check out this great article in the Washington Post that explores how Bond movies prepared a generation for gadgets. It notes, "Bond taught us to think big when it comes to innovation, and it was never 'incremental' — it was always terribly 'disruptive.'"  Here's the slideshow. 

Hilarious: Twitter's Fail Notice Chalks Problems up to the End of the World

Just tried to login to Hootsuite and got this fail notification.  Check out the aweome reasons for why something went wrong.  Whoever came up with that idea deserves a high-five, and whoever signed off on doing it deserves a handshake. 

 

71 Movies About the Future Put into Chronological Order

A designer named Michael Hobson made an amazing infographic using visual.ly.  Behold, our fantastic fictious future in chronological order. I'd love to hear how these movies changed your expectations of what tomorrow holds.  Share them in the comments below!

 

by TremulantDesign. Browse more infographics.

How do you Assure People about the Future? Tell them We're Going Back to the Past

Disney is looking to modernize its Mickey Mouse brand, and I detect a sophisticated framing technique at use that's designed to allay people's fears about it.  According to this New York Times piece:

"But Mickey won't be bland anymore, either. "I wanted him to be able to be naughty - when you're playing as Mickey you can misbehave and even be a little selfish," Mr. Spector said.

In many ways, it is a return to Mickey at his creation. When the character made its debut in "Steamboat Willie" in 1928, he was the Bart Simpson of his time: an uninhibited rabble-rouser who got into fistfights, played tricks on his friends (pity Clarabelle Cow) and, later, was amorously aggressive with Minnie."

Whether this is a message Disney is originating, or one that people are clinging to instinctively, a "return to the past" approach can do wonders for allying people's fears about a future that represents a change from the present.  See?  It's not really change at all if we're just going back to our roots, right?

Another great example of this was GM's Futurama exhibit at the 1939 World's Fair.  As discussed in the book, Yesterday's Tomorrows, GM helped sell the idea of a national highway system by telling people it would help America return to its agrarian roots. There was a great migration at the time from farms to cities, and many felt America was losing touch with its farm values.  But by commuting from the farm to the city, Futurama promised, we could have both.  See?  It's not really change at all if we're just going back to our roots, right?

Popular Mechanics Revisits 5 Epcot Rides That Painted Visions of the Future

Seth Porges takes us on a ride through Disney's ride to the future.  His intro is notable: "The shameless futurism espoused at Disney World's Epcot theme park in Orlando, Fl. was taken in by generations of kids who saw the world through Walt Disney-colored glasses."  That in itself is pretty indicative for how sour people have become about utopian visions in the last 25 years.  But as always, our feelings about tomorrow are more about how we feel about the present than anything else. 

If you'll indulge one personal Disney memory...I was approached by a robot in Epcot during a trip for my 10th birthday.  The 5' tall roving, speaking light-blinking machine was impressive, I was but absolutely blown away when it seemed to read my mind and call me by name.  Wasn't 'til an hour later when I realized I had a name tag on and the person running the robot by remote control saw it!

 Read this great piece here. 

New Book Explores Chemistry's Portrayal in the Movies

Alfred P. Sloan grant in-hand, a scholar and artist have teamed up to explore the role that chemistry plays in the movies.  The pair watched more than 300 movies, most made after 1970 and considered to portray good stories and significant doses of chemicals.  The result is a new book, "ReAction! Chemistry in the Movies."  

Though the goal was, as reported by Omaha.com, to “have a collection of movies that chemistry instructors could refer to, to illuminate some theme in the classroom,” the themes have everything to do with human -- not physical -- nature. 

From Amazon: 

"It is about the dualities of Dr. Jekyll vs. inventor chemists, the invisible man vs. forensic chemists, chemical weapons vs. classroom chemistry, chemical companies that knowingly pollute the environment vs. altruistic research chemists trying to make the world a better place to live, and, finally, about people who choose to experiment with mind-altering drugs vs. the drug discovery process.

A good read for PR professionals in the chemicals sector seeking insight into how the public gets much of its information on the industry. 

New Book: "Future: A Recent History" Will Change the Way You Think About Tomorrow Today

I’ve just finished reading Lawrence Samuel’s new book, “Future: A Recent History.” Suffice it to say, I’ve underlined a fifth of its passages, written in the margins of almost every page and scribbled dozens of check marks for the "wow" insights I want to remember later.  It’s that good.

 

The book explores 100 years of history in 200 dense pages, taking readers on a tour of how people's expectations of the future have changed over time.  An ambitious number of topics are covered -- politics, religion, class, gender, pop culture, fashion, the home, business, jobs, travel, architecture, and lots of science and technology.  But the payoff is equally large, as Samuel’s brisk writing style delivers a fascinating look into an aspect of our culture that we are barely conscious exists.

 

Marketers and PR professionals will find Future to be an especially valuable tool for better understanding target audiences.  If you needed proof that your vision of tomorrow needs to adapt to people’s preconceptions of what’s ahead, this work offers plenty.  And while Samuel doesn't take on what people are thinking right now (many others do that) his voyage through history teaches you how to spot the patterns.

 

It’s worth noting that a lot of books make fun of futurists who have gotten things wrong.  Rightly so.  Many of them are hysterical and it's part of what makes this topic fun.  Not Samuel.  He found a chillingly large number of predictions that have come true.  Sure, sometimes the predictor got the technology right and its impact on society wrong, or vice versa.  But there are patterns to the errors, and understanding them will help you be a better marketer, historian or futurist when it comes to dissecting and using predictions.

 

If all that’s not enough, the exhaustive research that went into this work offers a treasure trove of books, articles and pop culture moments to be further explored by anyone interested in futurism. 

 

A worthy successor to I.F. Clarke's "The Pattern of Expectation," "Future: A Recent  History" will change the way you see tomorrow today.

We Love Vampires Because We're Freaked About Change & Technology

Guillermo del Toro of Pan's Labrynth fame, wrote an interesting Op-Ed in today's NYTimes about what the resurging popularity of vampires reflects about our fears of change and technology.  Definitely worth the read. Snip: 

"In a society that moves as fast as ours, where every week a new "blockbuster" must be enthroned at the box office, or where idols are fabricated by consensus every new television season, the promise of something everlasting, something truly eternal, holds a special allure...Part of the reason for the great success of his "Dracula" is generally acknowledged to be its appearance at a time of great technological revolution. The narrative is full of new gadgets (telegraphs, typing machines), various forms of communication (diaries, ship logs), and cutting-edge science (blood transfusions) - a mash-up of ancient myth in conflict with the world of the present.  Today as well, we stand at the rich uncertain dawn of a new level of scientific innovation."

Top 50 Dystopian Movies of all Time - Snarkerati

It's settled then.  And we have Snarketrati.com to thank for it.  The 50 best dystopian movies of all time have been scientifically calculated by combining IMDB fan rankings and Rottentomatoes professional critic rankings into one definitive list.  And #1 on the list? Metropolis.  Here's the famous robot transformation scene from the movie that gave dystopias a good name in cinema.