Business has long imagined strange and wonderful futures, and it’s not done yet

18 Jun
2021

Business has long imagined strange and wonderful futures, and it’s not done yet

By Staff Writer

Business has long imagined strange and wonderful futures, and it’s not done yet

“We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives,” declared US celebrity psychic The Amazing Criswell, famous in the 1950s and 1960s for his wildly improbable predictions. In books, newspaper columns and TV appearances he informed the US that a craze for devouring human flesh would sweep the nation, the laws of gravity would cease functioning and the first humans on the Moon would be three pregnant female Soviet cosmonauts. In 1969 he also predicted television personalities would no longer be seen smoking, which doesn’t seem so outrageous today.

It’s hard not to think about Criswell while contemplating what the future might hold after the disruptive events of 2020. Making predictions has always been risky, so why should we still do it? One reason might be because the future has become an important part of the business narrative over the past century. No matter what a company is selling, its best product is often a vision of the future. The customer’s world would soon be one of ease and leisure, speed and convenience. The future gives meaning and direction to all those quarterly projections, strategy documents and planning sessions.

The future is 14-lane highways and smoking robots

A look back at how this message developed over the decades suggests we need it now more than ever. Take, for example, the General Motors ‘Futurama’ experience at 1939 New York World’s Fair.

1939 General Motors Futurama ride at the New York World’s Fair

With the Great Depression finally over, the fair’s opening pitch was ‘dawn of a new day.’ It was the first time the world of tomorrow had been used as the theme for an international exposition. General Motors offered its visitors a filmic ‘ride’ over a transport system for the year 1960. Laid out below them were fourteen-lane highways, self-driving cars and residential complexes with landing strips for private aircraft.

It didn’t matter that General Motors didn’t make any of these things – the public flocked to Futurama, just as they packed Westinghouse’s Hall of Electrical Living to marvel at Elektro, the Moto-Man: A walking, talking robot that smoked cigarettes. At the time, Westinghouse was best known for its toasters and radios, but these were now part of the promise of tomorrow. In fact, the company doubled down on this association, burying a time capsule at the fair’s Flushing Meadows site, not to be unearthed until the year 6939, some five thousand years into the future.

‘Cheap and reliable’ can change the world

One visitor to the 1939 World’s Fair came away with a clear idea of where this was all heading. Vannevar Bush, head of the US Office of Scientific Research and Development during World War II, drew upon his impressions of the exposition when writing ‘As we may think‘ in 1945. First published in The Atlantic, Bush’s essay on the future of information technology would become a key text, influencing generations of engineers and designers. Recalling the typewriters and computing machines he’d seen back in 1939, Bush made an important discovery: The modern world, he declared, had “arrived at an age of cheap complex devices of great reliability; and something is bound to come of it.”

The prospect of sophisticated pieces of technology being both cheap and reliable would have far-reaching implications. They brought complex engineering into the home, connecting it directly with the world of tomorrow. Big science and big business came as part of the package. Popular Mechanics’ December 1952 issue featured an article on playing safe with atomic rays alongside one on selecting your Christmas tree.

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