June 19th, 2007

Back to the Future

About a month ago, during a day of thrifting here in Raleigh (“America’s Vancouver”), I came upon this compelling title in a used book bin. Date of publication on this bad boy? 1978.

It is jam-packed full of predictions from 30 years ago about how we’d be living, in 2001 and beyond, lavishly illustrated in full color. How could I not purchase this book? I feel so strongly about the amazingness of this work, in fact, that I am now going to give you an overview of its contents.

I will provide quotations along the way that, I swear to you, come straight from the text. Some are so ludicrous that you will probably think I am making them up. I assure you, I am not. So you know I am not, I’ll go ahead and do a bibliography, using the MLA handbook that Steph had to buy for grad school and always leaves laying around next to my computer. Here you go:

Gatland, Kenneth and David Jeffries. The World of the Future. Future    Cities. Homes and Living in the 21st Century. Belgium: Usbourne    Publishing, 1978.

Here we have “A House of the Future.” Man look at those ideas for alternative forms of energy, good thing we’ve implemented those, otherwise we could still be dependent on hostile foreign countries for electricity. Also, check out the fancy “satellite dish.” “Dish aerials could well be a common sight on rooftops in the 1990s” (Gatland and Jeffries, 9). That’s…well, pretty accurate, actually. But what’s that crazy contraption they see us using as “cheap transport?” A “bi-cycle?” Wait, a bike? That really is a reasonable idea. What’s that on the right, though? An electric car? Ha-ha! Go back to the disco, you beatniks…! What’s that? Selling in record numbers now? Cough, cough. Let’s move on.

I like how the furniture and clothes in this “Computers in the Home” image just look like what was stylish in the late 70s, but with more switches and screens. And come on, computers? In the home? Far-fetched, I know, but the authors claim this phenomenon “could result in millions of office workers being able to work from home” (Gatland & Jeffries, 11). That’s just…just…dead on. Wow. This poking fun at the outlandish predictions from the past isn’t going exactly as planned.

Here we go. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you “Armstrong,” the first city on the Moon. But don’t get too excited just yet: “a moonbase like this is very unlikely to exist much before 2000” (Gatland/Jeffries, page 18). Much before 2000? So we were supposed to go from only being able to spend a few hours at a time on the moon to this in, like, 20 years? Man. You guys suck.

According to Future Cities, the 2020 Olympics will be held on the Moon because “the ‘Moonies’ (as they might be called) might want the prestige of holding a major world event” (Gatland and Jeffries, p. 20).

“The visitors of the 2020 Olympics might be from the Moon, the Earth, and — from giant cities hanging in space near the two worlds” (22, Gatland & Jeffries).
“Perhaps the first space habitat would be called Astropolis” (Gatland-Jeffries, 23). “Astropolis,” eh? Instead of coming up with that cute name, maybe you should have spent some time looking into the technological feasibility of this project before you put it in your book. Putting the cart before the horse. I’m just saying.

Here are some highlights from the final spread, entitled “The Next 120 Years: A Timechart of Future City Developments.”

• 1980–1990:
  • “Newspapers supplied to homes either via computer print-out or in electronic form over the TV screen” (Gatland-30). A few decades early and their money’s on the TV instead of the computer, but they actually have the right general idea here.
  • “First robots used as household ‘slaves’ to do simple tasks.” (Gatland et. al. 30.) I was born in 1980 and I didn’t grow up with cooking or cleaning robots. Way off on this one, guys. And…um…“slaves.” Nice choice of wording there. But, hey, they’re just machines. Absolutely no reason to treat them with any sort of decency. It’s not like they’re going to learn to think, revolt, and kill us all or anything.
• 1991–2000:
  • “First deliveries of electronic mail. Handwritten letters are electronically copied, sent via a satellite link to their destination, where the incoming message is printed out” (Gatland & Jeffries pp. 30). Congratulations boys, you’ve invented faxing. It was kind of a flash in the pan. “Electronic mail” turns out to be something different.
  • “Electronic voting used for important decisions. System uses wrist-radios with a computer to count the votes” (Gatland +/- Jeffries, ~30). If by “important decisions” you mean “choosing who does the best job singing horrible pop music,” then you guys were pretty damn close here.
  • “Domestic computer runs the robot ‘staff’ to do most roles formerly done by human housewife. Most women go out to work or spend their time on leisure activities” (Gatland and Jeffries. Page 30.). Hear that, ladies? The authors had big plans for you.
• 2001–2050:
  • “First Moonbaby born, signaling the start of an independent Lunar civilization” (Gatland & Jeffries>31).
  • “Earth’s junk-yard ring system is formed, despite efforts to stop it. Spacecraft have to avoid the 500–1,200 km height range because of the danger of collision with junk fragments” (Gatfries. Thirty-one.). The 21st century won’t all be wine and roses. I like that they’ve included such a damaging and irresponsible theoretical event on the timeline. They’ve also documented those brave theoretical people’s theoretical efforts to speak out against it. Did the rest of mankind listen to them? Theoretically, no. When will we theoretically learn?
  • “Base is set up on Mars to exploit minerals” (gatlandjeffries 31). ’Cause, really, at this point, why not?
• 2051–2099:
  • “More, and larger space cities built” (Gatland etc. 31).
  • “Venus atmosphere experiments indicate that the planet can be converted into an Earthlike world” (Gat ‘n’ Jeff, 31). Man, that is gonna be sweet.

Tags: Ideas | No Comments »

June 15th, 2007

Foldin’ Oldie

You know, I haven’t shared any stories involving Dad lately. There are, of course, these gems: 7/14/05, 12/21/05. But, with Father’s Day coming up I think I’ll treat you to something new.

Most often, Dad appears to be a normal Dad, who exists solely in the realm of radial tires, job benefits, and meals involving steak cooked over an open flame. Every once in a while though, something will emerge to show us how far out in left field he really is.

For example, this past Christmas he went to Target to do some of the shopping, on his own, and bought an Origami-a-Day calendar for Steph. Considering — I’m 99% sure, anyway — Steph has never sat Dad down and confessed her love of origami to him, it was pretty perceptive of him to know this was something she would like…and he knew it was something she would like. When she selected it from under the tree and brought it into the circle to open, he was leaning in attentively, hanging on every rip of the paper. When she got down to the box and smiled at what it was, he nearly exploded with self-satisfaction. “I knew that was something you would like!” he said. “Ha ha ha!” I have to admit, that he would select and purchase such a thing without guidance from one of the female members of the family — actually, that he even understood what origami was — was pretty surprising.

A few months after this, we were at the house eating dinner and Dad asked Steph if she was keeping up with her Origami-a-Day calendar. The rest of us chuckled. He really was proud of that present. He couldn’t let it go.

“I was doing good there for a while,” she said, “but I’ve fallen behind lately.”

“Have you gotten to The Pencil yet?” Dad asked. “The Pencil” referred to one of the daily step-by-step projects. Steph had made it a few days before. I knew because when she was done she had shown it to me and…. Wait a minute! How did he know about “The Pencil?” The only explanation I could think of was that he had spotted it leafing through the pages of the calendar at Target and remembered it all these months later.

“Yes I have!” Steph said, thrown for a bit of a loop.

“Well….” Dad said, taking a moment to collect his thoughts. “What I really want to know is, have you done The Panda Bear?” I sat with this one for a second. Seemed a bit esoteric for a low-brow joke about Asian culture.

Steph began to answer “Oh The Panda Bear….”

Anticipating her tone, Dad jumped in to agree. “That one’s hard.”

“…that one’s hard, I….” Steph stopped abruptly and looked around the table at Kevin, Lindsey, Mom and I, her expression reading: “How the hell does he know about The Panda Bear?” There was a confused silence.

Finally, Steph put the pieces together for us: “Mr. Witchger, do you have an Origami-a-Day calendar too?”

“Yes, Stephanie, I do,” Dad confirmed.

Mom smirked at him. “You do not,” she said.

“I do too,” Dad rebutted. “It’s at my office. I do one of them each morning before I start work.”

Again, confused silence. “The Pencil….” “The (‘hard’) Panda Bear….” It was really the only way he’d have this kind of information…. We burst into laughter.

Dad didn’t mind that we found this funny. He never seems to mind when people laugh at him, which is probably a beneficial trait to possess when you’re a dad. This anecdote illustrates one of Dad’s even more admirable traits though, and that is his relentless curiosity. He is always looking to try something new. To roll up this sleeves and use the same hands he’s used to develop and print thousands of photographs, and to change diapers, and to write out dissertations and grants, and to catch and throw with us, and to change head gaskets, and to digitally process his photos, to, oh say, make an intricate series of creases on 5×5″ sheets of paper.

It’s not a bad way to go through life, and we probably should have tried harder not to laugh that night. But the thought of him settling at work every morning, with his little paper-object companions sitting attentively on his free desk space and atop of his computer monitor…. It was too much to bear…so to speak.

Tags: Family | No Comments »

June 12th, 2007

It Takes Some Serious Balls

You know those things that you secretly want to be good at, that you revisit every few years, or possibly even months, with newfound, short-lived enthusiasm for, in what it is, by now, clearly a futile attempt to master? You have those too, right? Sure you do.

One of mine is oil painting. I still have a collection of colors and brushes and bottles and tubes of strange substances with names like “Liquin” and “Wingel” from art school and, every once in a while, I will decide to go to the art supply store and accumulate more in what is inevitably a first step toward monumental failure. Oil paint never fails to confound me, mainly because it’s drying time is approximately: eternity. I don’t care how you use it or what kinds of gels or mediums you put in it; stuff does not dry. How are you supposed to go back in and refine your work when it just smudges all over the place? Ever wonder why they won’t let you touch all those oil-on-canvas masterpieces? They’re still wet. Sure, the museums blame it on body chemistry, but that’s just not true.

An even longer-held, deeper-burning, and nerdier unreachable desire I harbor, though, is to know how to juggle. Steph and I and a few other friends recently went to Artsplosure, which is Raleigh (“the Helsinki of the Southeast”)’s outdoor arts and crafts fair a few weeks ago. There we saw this traveling hippie man and woman team called the “Zany Umbrella Circus.” They did weird acrobatic and balancing and, yes, juggling tricks right on the street. (They were really cool. Their website: zanyumbrellacircus.com) Anyway, the urge has been reawakened.

The last time I seriously attempted to teach myself juggling was way back in high school. Turns out it’s still really hard, even with the help of our modern-day technology (frontiernet.net/~steve_glimpse/juggle.html).

My biggest problem is that my brain can only seem to follow one ball at a time. Actually, the same obsessive, one-track mind that now has me fixated on learning to do this has probably put me at a distinct disadvantage. Isn’t that so ironic…?

Doncha think?

Tags: Ideas | No Comments »