Future: A Recent History

by Lawrence R. Samuel

The future is not a fixed idea but a highly variable one that reflects the values of those who are imagining it. By studying the ways that visionaries imagined the future—particularly that of America—in the past century, much can be learned about the cultural dynamics of the time. In this social history, Lawrence R. Samuel examines the future visions of intellectuals, artists, scientists, businesspeople, and others to tell a chronological story about the history of the future in the past century. He defines six separate eras of future narratives from 1920 to the present day, and argues that the milestones reached during these years—especially related to air and space travel, atomic and nuclear weapons, the women's and civil rights movements, and the advent of biological and genetic engineering—sparked the possibilities of tomorrow in the public's imagination, and helped make the twentieth century the first century to be significantly more about the future than the past. The idea of the future grew both in volume and importance as it rode the technological wave into the new millennium, and the author tracks the process by which most people, to some degree, have now become futurists as the need to anticipate tomorrow accelerates.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

254 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 2009

About the author

Lawrence R. Samuel is the founder of Culture Planning LLC, a Miami– and New York–based resource offering cultural insight to Fortune 500 organizations. He is the author of The End of the Innocence: The 1964–1965 New York World’s Fair, Future: A Recent History, Rich: The Rise and Fall of American Wealth Culture, Freud on Madison Avenue: Motivation Research and Subliminal Advertising in America, Supernatural America: A Cultural History, and a number of other books.

Reviews

[Artur Coelho · Rating 2 out of 5]

A focalização numa visão americanocêntrica do futurismo é um handicap assumido à partida. Compreende-se a escolha, mas não é esse o defeito do livro. A história do futurismo, não do movimento artístico mas das ideias e concepções que pretendem imaginar ou antever o que o futuro trará, é assunto cheio de visões intrigantes, bizarrias, predições que falharam o alvo por quilómetros e pequenos detalhes estranhamente prescientes. Samuels consegue transformar este assunto num tédio assinalável, construindo o seu texto numa prosa que se resume ao coligir e entrosar de recortes de artigos, discursos e livros de divulgação popular publicados entre as primeiras décadas e o final do século XX.

Do livro retira-se uma visão da evolução temporal da concepção daquilo que Bruce Sterling apelida de flatpack futures, antevisões futuristas produzidas com seriedade por analistas em empresas ligadas à tecnologia e que se distinguem pelo seu aspecto limpo e burguês de revolução tecnológica que não levanta ondas. As visões citadas por Samuel não nos parecem ser tão relevantes, hoje, como as design fiction da corning ou microsoft, mas percebe-se que as concepções que hoje nos parecem de vanguarda depressa se tornarão tão absurdas como as compras via televisão, automóveis com motores atómicos ou cozinhas renováveis no final da estação de modas.

Inadvertidamente, Samuels mostra uma clivagem entre concepções de futuro. Até aos anos 70 reinava a utopia consumista, representada por ondas de optimismo alastrante onde qualquer tecnologia presente era extrapolada para um glorioso futuro de bakelite conveniente. Após os anos 70 instala-se o pessimismo, com a crescente observação que a sobre-exploração dos recursos planetários exigida pela sociedade industrial consumista, o aquecimento global e as crises energéticas poderão ter consequências devastadoras e a consequente visão de que o futuro poderá não ser tão sorridente quanto as predições anteriores postulavam. Os anos 90 vieram trazer uma epidemia de utopia tecno-cibernética, com o digital a levar de enxurrada concepções futuristas que, no limite, apregoam a transcendência dos limites da carne para a promessa de uma virtualidade eternizante. Talvez a conclusão a tira seja que por muito negro que o futuro se afigure as predições e antevisões trairiam as nossas expectativas se fossem demasiado pesssimistas.

Retirei um dado curioso das tendências postuladas pelos futuristas citados por Samuels. Independentemente dos acessórios - televisões de dupla via, carros com reactores nucleares, consumismo de bakelite brilhante e conveniência no dia a dia graças ao progresso da ciência, todos os preditores apontavam para que no futuro se trabalhasse menos, com horários de trabalho semanal a rondar as vinte horas ou abaixo disso. Os vendedores esfregavam as mãos a imaginar o que poderiam vender às massas humanas com tanto tempo livre para ocupar enquanto os mais utópicos previam um renascimento intelectual massificado graças a um renovado interesse pela cultura na futura leisure society trazida pela promessa libertadora da tecnologia. Pois, estamos no futuro e é o que se vê. Não só não trabalhamos menos como trabalhamos mais e de forma mais intensa, graças à tecnologia que nos prometia libertação conjugada com o retrocesso nos ideários socializantes provocados pelo domínio da escola financeira de pensamento na sociedade ocidental.

[Shinynickel]

Off this review:

Future: A Recent History
By Lawrence R. Samuel (University of Texas Press)
In this exuberant chronicle, Fortune 500 consultant Lawrence Samuel traces predictions from a century of American pop culture, civics, economics, transportation, architecture, and science and technology. While running errands by airplane (predicted in 1929 to be in practice by 1979) and using pills to control your dreams (predicted in 1935 to be around by 2035 at the latest) may not have materialized—yet—air conditioning, an obsession of 1930s futurists, is obviously here to stay. This slender volume on the history of the future also packs in a thought-provoking chapter on the future of futurism, too, asking: With the advent of the internet, where the future is constantly revised, is the art of predicting the grand trend dead?

[Steve · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ho hum.

[David Rosen · Rating 5 out of 5]

5.0 out of 5 stars"Future: A Recent History" Will Change the Way You Think About Tomorrow Today

I've just finished reading Lawrence Samuel's new book, "Future: A Recent History." Suffice it to say, I've underlined a fifth of its passages, written in the margins of almost every page and scribbled dozens of check marks for the "wow" insights I want to remember later. It's that good.

The book explores 100 years of history in 200 dense pages, taking readers on a tour of how people's expectations of the future have changed over time. An ambitious number of topics are covered -- politics, religion, class, gender, pop culture, fashion, the home, business, jobs, travel, architecture, and lots of science and technology. But the payoff is equally large, as Samuel's brisk writing style delivers a fascinating look into an aspect of our culture that we are barely conscious exists.

Marketers and PR professionals will find Future to be an especially valuable tool for better understanding target audiences. If you needed proof that your vision of tomorrow needs to adapt to people's preconceptions of what's ahead, this work offers plenty. And while Samuel doesn't take on what people are thinking right now (many others do that) his voyage through history teaches you how to spot the patterns.

It's worth noting that a lot of books make fun of futurists who have gotten things wrong. Rightly so. Many of them are hysterical and it's part of what makes this topic fun. Not Samuel. He found a chillingly large number of predictions that have come true. Sure, sometimes the predictor got the technology right and its impact on society wrong, or vice versa. But there are patterns to the errors, and understanding them will help you be a better marketer, historian or futurist when it comes to dissecting and using predictions.

If all that's not enough, the exhaustive research that went into this work offers a treasure trove of books, articles and pop culture moments to be further explored by anyone interested in futurism.

A worthy successor to I.F. Clarke's "The Pattern of Expectation," "Future: A Recent History" will change the way you see tomorrow today.