How Would You Build Tomorrowland?
from the or-would-you-build-it-at-all dept
The Washington Post is running long look at the relaunch of Disney's "Tomorrowland," that doesn't sound all that impressed. Actually, the article gets into the details of the original Tomorrowland and even dips into the way people viewed the future (optimistically/pessimistically) over the intervening years. However, the end result is that the concept of "Tomorrowland" is a rather difficult one to build. As the reporter notes, it has to be something that is far enough out that it actually doesn't need to be revamped all that often. But, at the same time, it still needs to be realistic in a way that people aspire to create themselves. All in all, it sounds like the latest Tomorrowland fails. But, it does raise a good question: if you were building Tomorrowland, what would you do?
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Filed Under: disneyworld, tomorrowland, walt disney
Companies: disney
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Tommorowland
$15 entry, please.
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Re: Tommorowland
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Bill gates tombstone, covered in feces?
Anyway, I don't think it's hard to think ahead to the future if you ask the right people in the right fields - grab people from each relative field to see what they might have as prospective fields. Find someone who is willing to ponder the future and keep asking them "what about further on down the road" past each existing idea and see what can be conceptualized.
Thus, it's more about asking the right questions to the right people, not a "whether or not it can be accurate".
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Re: Bill gates tombstone, covered in feces?
But I think futurists get a bad rap here.
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Re:
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greeny
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Re:
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how about a museum of past futures?
each section could be devoted to decades past, or perhaps to unifying themes like the utopia, cyberpunk, post nuclear, and maybe something with zombies.
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Re: how about a museum of past futures?
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Re: how about a museum of past futures?
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Re: how about a museum of past futures?
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First...
Then I would imagine a world where a Patent lasted 12 months....and all patent litigation had to be filed in Marshall, Texas, by law.
Then, for perverse entertainment value, I would imagine a world that insisted upon summary executions for Trademark infringement. (No more Bolex watches for you!)
Well, all my fantasies can't be rational, now can they?
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Dosen't Disney mak e movies?
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Re: Dosen't Disney mak e movies?
They confiscate your camera if you take pictures of anything, as everything you can see in the park by that point is copyrighted by them and you cannot have a "copy" of it.
They would charge you extra for buying a genuine licensed stuffed toy from their gift shop if more than one person is allowed to "use" it. Furthermore, they could not be resold, there would be a huge fine if it were lost, and the toy could not be soiled or damaged as it doing so would present their property in a bad light.
In one ride they would probe your mind with a futuristic mind-reading machine to see if you've been downloading something of theirs and your vehicle would be singled out and detoured into a waiting "downloader's detainment area" where technologically advanced torture devices are used. I guess one of them would hold your eyes open and force you to watch some of their emo teen TV programs.
Did they catch you humming one of the songs from their parade in front of other visitors? Then one of the costumed characters would come up to you and hand you a takedown notice.
Isn't that the sort of future they're creating?
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It's a tough chore
A home computer that can out-think me (not a tough chore but still).
A car that runs on the carbon in the air by using solar power to turn it back into gas
A version of windows that can go a month without needing to be rebooted and can run on hardware that doesn't cost the same as what a worker in China makes in a year.
A government that actually works for the people instead of working against them
None of that could be easily shown in a Disney park. and the last one would be against Disney's best interests.
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My tomorrowland
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This was probably the most revealing statement of the article:
The future views are kind of negative. The most positive future-oriented stuff in the United States is around global ecology and sustainable living and that sort of stuff.
The "future" as we optimistically envisioned it is dead.
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mmm..Dave?
Not saying we want full pollution, but hey, the tree's got to live on something :)
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Re: mmm..Dave?
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Re: Re: mmm..Dave?
You're welcome, Bob.
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Re: Re: mmm..Dave?
catalytic converter!
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That's not Tomorrowland...
What the writer of the Post article is getting at is actually the original rationale of EPCOT (which stands for Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow) at Walt Disney World. There is a lot to be said about how that original idea went awry (in fact, I believe there's an entire book out there about it).
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And the future is:
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impossibility
To my mind, the simplest way to predict the future is to study that divide. What can't we do now that we want to do? Supposing then that in the future, some enterprising soul will answer the where's and how's of the implementation of the solution to that problem, we are then free to just create an arbitrary, *magical* device that suddenly exists in this future vision.
Hypothetically, teleportation could solve the problem of the transportation of large and small, organic and inorganic objects across vast spaces. Whether or not this is ever scientifically achievable matters not, but the solution to the current problem could introduce other more significant problems to the future that creates it, and the solution to those problems would surely be fantastic.
That's my penny.
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They need to hire crazy people
Don't ask someone who's in the field to speculate. Ask someone who is free to think without educated restraints. Ask someone who finds no problem in breaking the rules.
Had anyone really asked an engineer back in the 1960's if they thought they could build a flying car the engineering answer is "No." There's no currently feasible way to do it and there continues to be no feasible way to do it. But the general public is still in love with the idea thanks to the Jetsons.
Don't ask experts. Read about a few and let your mind roam the vast fields of human creativity and see what lies ahead.
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Or, if I had my way. . .
Tommorowland would be totally enclosed in a huge dome as we'll all need to live in protected bubbles to be safe from the radiation that the terrorist dumped on us with dirty bombs all acrossed the country since the liberals took over.
The restaurants would only serve "protein paste" since all of our food was either irradiated or used for biofuels....since the liberals took over.
When you enter tommorow land you would immediately be escorted to a "work zone" where you would spend the next 10 hours doing things for no pay, totally relying on "The Overlords" (ie, liberal government) to provide us with clothing (consisting of loin cloth style underwear), housing and our entertainment which would consist of brain washing videos expounding the good of "the overlords".
Anyone over 30 would automatically be directed to the main ride attraction called "Carousel".
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Re:
It's a device to keep you under control-according to modern dictator theory, without an "enemy image" a country will turn on itself (discovering what terrible leaders and problems it has).
Terrorists are a perfect enemy image. You can never catch and identify them, so it's an enemy image that can be used forever.
You fucking dupe.
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Uh, Did You Read The Article?
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Tomorrow won't happen unless America elects Ron Paul.
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Is it 1995?
They changed their old version (microwave ovens! hand-held phones! robot maids! cars that get 50 miles per gallon! flying cars!) to more of a Jules Verne-style "future that never was".
Personally, I think this kind of sci-fi version is much easier to manage than the ever-changing real future.
Over at Epcot's Innoventions pavilion, they have to constantly keep the displays up to date.
2000: Ooh... look, they have that "IT" that's been listed on Amazon. I wonder what "IT" is.
2008: Okay, it's a Segway. Nothing to see here. Move along.
2000: Motorola is coming out with a video phone! A phone with video! Can you believe that?
2008: Who doesn't make a cell phone with a video screen.
2000: Coming soon from GM, the "Hummer of tomorrow" which gets up to 18 miles per gallon.
2008: The Hummer G3 is still on display, but gets 15 miles per gallon.
1980: Look at that! A new concept car from GM: the "Lean Machine", a three-wheeled vehicle that looks like a rounded motorcycle.
2008: Look at that! The Hummer G3 which gets 15 miles per gallon.
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The Reality
Hmmm. Storefronts hiring people with signs that read "Must Speak Hindu", A gasoline station advertising $10.00/gallon, and miles upon miles of abandoned homes with yellow and dirt-filled yards. Abandoned cars everywhere. An American Red Cross building with a sign that says "Donate Blood get $10.00" and line of people out the door.
Why No Outrage? Makes me sick to my stomach.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121642367125066615.html?mod=fpa_mostpop
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we're jaded, tomorrowland is a waste of time
People know that many of the things that we should already have today are indeed possible or have already been prototyped. The problem is, new stuff doesn't come cheap unless or until it's produced in large quantities. Unfortunately, some stuff just won't be made or improved as long as people keep buying the crap that's available.
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