Walt Disney introduces EPCOT (1966)
ITN coverage of the opening of the Millennium Dome (1999)
The Millennium Dome - Promotional video (2000) - Tesco are the official education sponsor.
Looking To Tomorrow (1966)- British Pathé newsreel covering the 1966 Ideal Home Exhibition
How To See What’s Not There - a wonderful lecture by Georgina Voss in which she explores technological megasystems, and Jurassic Park.
Futurama at the 1939 New York World’s Fair
How much of modern life was predicted by ‘The Jetsons?’ - A Fox News feature from 2022, which includes many familiar traps of future prediction, with a side order of flying cars.
Design for Dreaming - General Motors (1956) - a precursor to the contemporary vision video from General Motors
The World of Tomorrow - Frigidaire’s 1964 voyage into Could Futurism.
Century 21 Calling - Bell takes a swing at the future at the 1962 World’s Fair.
Charlie Brooker's Weekly Wipe: Every TV news report on the economy in one.
The Total Electric Home - Westinghouse vision from 1959
Microsoft - Productivity Future Vision - a contemporary corporate vision video from Microsoft.
The 1951 Festival of Britain - A Brave New World - wonderful documentary about the origins and legacy of the 1951 Festival of Britain
The Audio Visual Interactive Cereal Box - a brilliant incidental moment from Minority Report (2002) - John Anderton grows frustrated with a faulty box of Pine & Oats - The future is a little bit broken.
Future Shock - 1972 documentary narrated by Orson Welles, based on Alvin Toffler’s book
A Logic for the Future - a conversation about imagination between Stephen Heintz and Kim Stanley Robinson (at the Long Now Foundation)
This plane could cross the Atlantic in 3.5 hours. Why did it fail? - Short Vox piece on the history and downfall of Concorde.
Faith Popcorn’s TomorrowVision 2038 - an excellent example of corporate trend gibberish from this seasoned futurist.
Shingy presenting at Blockchain World 2021, and Digital, right? a brilliant Shingy parody from Bob Odenkirk and David Cross.
How to Be Futuristic - A long and gloriously rambling Bruce Sterling lecture at the Long Now Foundation (2020).
Margaret Mead, Herman Khan, William Irwin Thompson - The Next Century - fascinating and heated discussion about the future from 1976.
Scenario Planning - Pierre Wack - recording of the GBN Scenario Planning seminar delivered by Wack on 19 April 1993.
Back to the Future Part II - Theatrical trailer from 1989.
Imagining Machines (2018) - Tobias Revell’s presentation at NEXT18 on the shape of imagination.
1999 AD: The Future as envisaged from 1967 by Philco-Ford. A good example of the misplaced confidence of corporate future visions.
Anthony Dunne & Fiona Raby - introducing their book Speculative Everything - a great introduction to speculative design.
Could Machines become Intelligent? Horizon (1970)
A Day at the Beach (1921) an AI enhanced film from 2022. More detail makes the film more relatable, somehow.
Cobalt Mining in Congo - How cobalt is extracted for Lithium Ion batteries in one of the poorest countries in the world.
20 Coolest tech at CES - A taste of the Consumer Electronics Show, and the ways in which it’s typically covered by the press.
Arthur C Clarke predicts the future in 1964 - Horizon (BBC). “The only thing we can be sure of about the future is that it will be absolutely fantastic”, which Arthur assumed would include telecommuting and artificial intelligence, but also servant monkeys and suspended animation…
Predictions Without Futures (2023) - Dr Sun-ha Hong - great lecture about technofutures and predictions
Tomorrow’s World (1989) - The BBC’s flagship technology show explores how homes might look in 2020.
Superstudio - Supersurface - An alternative model for life on the Earth (1972)
Uninvited Guests - Superflux (2015) - A sweet short film exploring how an elderly relative finds workarounds for intrusive ‘smart home’ devices.
Hyper-Reality - Keiichi Matsuda’s excellent short film from 2016. A maximalist AR vision breaks down to reveal the mundane reality lurking just below the surface.
All is Full of Love - Björk - Chris Cunningham’s beautiful music video which is now almost 30 years old. A canonical example of the persistent humanoid robot aesthetic which still dominates our media landscape to this day.
Text FUTURE to 22428 - Classic advert for Puerto Rican astrologer Walter Mercardo - satisfaction guaranteed.
On Distortion - Nick Foster proposes that the ‘errors’ in emergent generative AI systems may actually prove to be their defining characteristic, much as the overdriven sounds of early guitar amplifiers led to the creation of Rock ‘n Roll.
Design is Messy - Nick Foster and Christian Ervin explore the reality of design as a practice, in all its messy glory.
The Future Mundane - Nick Foster introduces the concept of The Future Mundane in Amsterdam (2023)
In the Future When All’s Well - The future as an impossible utopia, through the lens of Morrissey “every day I play a sad game called ‘In the Future When All’s Well’”
There Are Stars Exploding: Ragnar Kjartansson - When things just get too much, and you need a little perspective