Hello, I used to be the future
In 10 years time will we be surprised by change?
Watching a programme such as Micro Men, I can’t help but surrender to old fart’s disease and lose myself in wave after wave of nostalgia.
I get the same feeling whenever I watch War Games or look at a first issue iMac too. There is something about clunky technology that rubber stamps all the emotions of a time into my head. Like looking back at a library book I’ve been the sole reader of I can recall where I was at the time.
Micro Men had it all. Liberal scatterings of everything Eighties in order to quickly and then unrelentingly remind you how we ‘used’ to live. And above it all, our protagonists, pushing forward their vision of the future but really only ever managing to create the moment.
And if course it takes many moments, one after the other, to make up the present.
I’m not a big believer in the idea of timeless design. Classic, sure. But timeless? So when I look back 30, 20 or even 10 years I enjoy the sights and sounds for what they were.
I enjoy that wave and relax as it unfolds, teasing my memory and surprising me with detail. Did I really want to dress like that? Was I really happy fiddling around with command prompts and Sinclair’s strange, secret agent code of button combinations? Did I really stand in the QA department of Ocean Software and gasp at Mario 64?
Of course I did.
Just as I am surprised I accepted the changing of jumper settings and endless waits for fsck to check 35gb drives. Just as I am surprised I made a 56k modem serve a staff of 4 or marvelled at how sleek my mobile phone of the time was.
And what of now? What will my 48 year old self look back on and be surprised by? Writing this with one thumb on an iPhone that can’t maintain an Internet connection? Or having to travel into work and not just logging on to the HoloNet?
Whatever it is, I hope I’m surprised. And I hope I’m not still doing or using it.
