What are you going to be doing twenty years from now? Wrong. Whatever you pictured wasn’t nearly crazy enough. Technology is advancing too quickly for anyone to know what kind of amazing things await us down the road. We could all have gadgets and toys that make James Bond look like a caveman with sticks, or we could be ruled over by a race of intelligent bacteria. No one knows. But that doesn’t stop us from dreaming up some outlandish concepts. Here are a dozen videos, culled from the bounty of the internet, that give us reasons to love the future. Most simply look neat, some are pretty freakin’ weird, a few are sublime. Enjoy.
Don’t Worry, The Future Will Have Beer
For those that know no greater joy than knocking back a pint or six, the guys at Heineken have a message: the future will be full of beer. Not only that, but it will be served by a sexy, sexy robot.
And in case you don’t appreciate what it took to arrive at our current situation of inebriation, here’s Guinness with a look at the evolution of drink. Pond scum just doesn’t compare with a cold one.
Sports Will Be Flashier, and With Energy Rackets!
Well, if we’re going to have beer, we probably need to have something to watch while we drink it. That’s why the future has to have sports. But not regular sports with regular equipment. No, no, no. The tennis player of the future will have laser rackets! And clothes that make them super fast and able to control the flow of time, apparently.
Only The Fittest Technology Will Survive
Have you ever wondered how mobile phones are like dinosaurs? The big and clunky ones don’t survive forever. Evolution of technology is a key ingredient in guaranteeing the future will be filled with cooler and more powerful stuff. Here’s Saturn Electronics vision of survival of the fittest tech, complete with diesel dinosaurs and laser eyed gorillas. You know what? Screw the future, I want to live in the bizarro robot world that this video takes place in. So cool.
Robots Would Kill Themselves to Look Like You
Had enough with the beer chugging, sports playing, pterodactyl chomping man-bots from above. Do you worry that the future won’t be Emo enough for you? Don’t fret my emotionally fragile friend, there’s going to be tons of introspective and thought provoking consequences to our little accelerating technology race. Case in point: how do we deal with robots that want to be human. The following is Andy Huang’s Doll Face, a disturbing look into how the creation mirrors the creator. Or something like that. Personally I find this video more than a little unsettling. Although I must say that nothing makes me feel prettier than having an artificial life form risk it’s own survival just to look vaguely like me.
We Already Live in the Future
Back in 2006-2007, Scott McLeod and Karl Fisch designed a little presentation called Did You Know?/Shift Happens that sought to give us modern folk some perspective on where globalization and technology had taken us so far. The message: the world has already changed far more than we may realize. That original video took the internet by storm and Fisch and McLeod got design firm XPLANE to give it a facelift. Here’s Did You Know/Shift Happens 2.0
Screw Traditional Media, New Media Will Lead To Space Exploration!
The latest update for Did You Know/Shift Happens focuses more on the development of new media and Internet 2.0. It ends with a great quote from Ray Kurzweil. (You knew he’d be in here somewhere, didn’t you?). But that video is pretty tame compared to the predictions from the Casaleggio Asociati that you can see in the second video below.
The Future Will Be Filled With Cool Gadgets and Sarcasm
Microsoft reaps a profit from about half of what you do on a computer, so its seems only fair that they spend a little bit of that cash on developing cool new products. Well…I’m not sure they’re doing that, but they did make an awesome video of what those products may look like if they did make them. Here’s their vision for what the year 2019 may hold for all us technorati:
Of course, no discussion about Microsoft is complete without a scathing parody of their work. Here’s IGN’s Sarcastic Gamer with a hilarious take on the video above.
No, Seriously, REALLY Cool Gadgets
How do you make Microsoft’s hand held computers and interactive touch surfaces even cooler? Build them out of nanotechnology. Nokia teamed up with the Cambrige Nanoscience Centre to design the futuristic concept technology called Morph. Built out of nanomaterials stronger than steel and more flexible than silk, the Morph computer can transform from tablet to bracelet to phone to video screen without pause. Pretty awesome…but does it come in blue?
Robots Will Be Soulful Artists That Serenade You…While Making Out
Say what you will about the Icelandic singer Bjork, but her work has been well ahead of her time. Her 1999 single All Is Full Of Love is a trippy number that mixes piercing soprano vocals with trance inducing electronic and industrial sounds. The music video…has lesbian robots making out. So, you know, something for everyone.
So there you have it, folks, a dozen different visions of the years ahead. What are the chances that any of these videos will come true? Who knows. From robots to virtual reality the future is like a new candy store – you may not know what’s going to be in it, but you can bet it’s going to be pretty sweet.
