‘Leisure in the Age of Technology’  was the slogan that accompanied the 1988 world expo that was held in Brisbane.  As a kid I was swept up by how fantastic our technological future was going to be.  I would travel the world on a constant holiday while robots stayed at home and did my bidding.  The japanese pavillion was the embodiment of these new technologies with robots and a 3d cinema.

Now when i look at the way technologies have changed in our lives, it seems there is less leisure time and more work to get done… Where are my robot servants?

When I first discovered Matt Novak’s Paleofuture blog these feelings swept back.  I love browsing through this site to see what people believed would be practical developments in the near future.  Often these posts reveal much about the culture in which they were created.

I am hoping to capture this kind of excitement with the paleofuturist trade show we are organising at  Ptarmigan.  If you are interested to be involved, we are looking for people to create some of these items/phenomena from the Paleofuture blog, or if not the item then some representation, interpretation, advertising etc for the item/phenomenon.  We are looking for people to confirm their involvement by the 1st of August. The work doesn’t need to be ready for then but we would like to know what you plan to do and confirm the exhibition by that date.   So please get in touch if you want to exhibit at the paleofuture trade show.  We have already some exciting contributions, so get involved with this fun project and show your work in Helsinki, Finland!  send an email to tara [at] ptarmigan.fi or message me on here with your project ideas…

Here are a few of my favourite posts from Paleofuture:

Evening Fashions of the Year 1952 (1883)
DateFriday, August 10, 2007 at 12:13AM

This illustration is from a beautiful 1981 edition of the 1883 Albert Robida book Le vingtième siècle. La vie électrique. The edition I’ve linked to is in French and doesn’t include any color pictures such as the one above. For an English translation check out The Twentieth Century (Early Classics of Science Fiction), but again, the illustrations are in black and white.

See also:
Going to the Opera in the Year 2000 (1882)

The Coming Ice Age (1982)
DateTuesday, June 26, 2007 at 1:20AM

The 1982 book Fact or Fantasy (World of Tomorrow) by Neil Ardley contains the two-page spread below which illustrates domed cities of the future. The domes are necessary to protect humanity from the “savage cold” yet to come.

What is our planet going to be like in the future? From the way in which the Earth moves around the Sun, we have some ideas of the kind of weather that both we and our descendants are going to suffer or enjoy. It seems that the rest of their century; in general, summers will be less warm and winters more severe. Meteorologists expect the next century to be mostly cold, but the weather should improve in about 150 years time!

This last link is not from the palefuture site. It’s a video from a tv show called Beyond 2000, an Australian show about new technologies.  This also informed my fascination with the amazing technological future and adult cyborg life I would have….

over n out
taramigan

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The palefuture trade show was one of the projects awarded cash from the Central Station Members Fund.