Supernatural is the New Futuristic
I’ve been thinking about the future a lot, specifically the technologically utopian/dystopian future commonly associated with science fiction.
I’ve had a problem with it for some time because the future just doesn’t feel futuristic any more.
Music is a good starting point. I remember when techno was like music from the year 3000 and invoked undiluted visions of the future. Techno now feels more retro than anything else. A memory of a naive future we didn’t get.
I’ve been trying to think of any new music that could be deemed “futuristic” and all I can think of is the ultra minimal digital music on Raster Noton. Even that sounds “current” at the best of times and “Cold War” at others.
Modernism was supposed to be the future. We should be living in buildings like the Nagakin Capsule Tower by now.
I’ve said it to quite a few people and I really do believe the future was a lot cooler in the 70s and 80s. You can’t escape into the future anymore - because we’re living in it.
We’ve got readily available long distance transport, instantaneous mobile communication and the ability to seamlessly link to data networks spanning the globe from anywhere. Things have never been so good and they’re looking to get far better with the advent of the new mobile revolution.
It’s worth watching this appearance by Louis CK on the Conan O’Brian show
What he’s saying is funny because its true. It’s close to being magic, which brings me to Arthur C Clarke’s three laws.
- When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
- The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
- Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Magic.
In our pursuit of making things easy to understand, easy to operate, useful and natural we’ve really been creating the supernatural, which is incredibly interesting to me. I’ve been saying that the traditional scientific approach to interaction design leaves the things we create lacking a certain something. That something is true emotional engagement and any attempt to turn that into a science seems to fall short. When something is supernatural it can’t be totally explained by science. It’s that something else. The essence, the spark. Genius. Magic.
Supernatural is incredibly popular at the moment. Whilst science fiction narrows in scope the paranormal widens. I include Super Heroes in this bracket. We’ve got TV shows like Heroes, True Blood and the rise of music like the Ghost Box label, Hauntology as an entire genre and the omnipresent dub. The word dub is arguably a shortened form of the word “duppy” which means ghost in Jamaican Patois.
Which brings me back to ubiquitous computing. When we live in the age of “internet of things” and navigate the networked urban spaces forecast by Adam Greenfield and others the technology we have and use will probably be indistinguishable from magic.
Does that mean we should look to studies of the paranormal, the supernatural, religion and the occult to find the things that man has been trying to create and the powers that we’ve been trying to develop for inspiration for our technological advances?
After all, using some kind of object that gives us power to complete tasks that would otherwise be impossible is very close to pulling out a magic wand or casting a spell isn’t it?
Near field communication using RFID (the technology that makes Oyster cards work) is enabling new digital objects like Skaal and Mir:ror to be very close to being indistinguishable from magic. This video by Timo Arnall from Nearfield and Jack Schulze from Berg London explores the magical properties of RFID in such a beautiful way you could say it’s like watching something supernatural.
This “internet of things” is about creating objects with online and offline locations simultaneously. We’re creating a world of two planes of existence - the physical and the digital. They’re really beginning to overlap and it feels familiar doesn’t it?
So if we’re heading toward an ecologically sound but high tech future maybe it should be closer to Swords and Sorcery than Star Trek. I’m joking but you know what I mean.
I’ve never liked Star Trek anyway.
