Zeerust Lust
Science and science fiction has predicted a lot of technological innovations that never came to pass. So often do we wind up with antiquated ideas of what the future will look like, that there's a neologism (coined by Douglas Adams and John Lloyd in the Meaning of Liff) to describe things that are at once futuristic and badly outdated- "zeerust". These ideas are usually based on current technological and social trends, ignoring the impact other trends may have on the technology of the future, or simply due to inability of the predictors to relate to the population at large. A good example would be early personal computers- the Honeywell 316 was designed for the home, created in '69 by people who could not think of any possible home use for a computer other than organizing recipes. Purchase of the $10K 100 lb unit included a two week crash course in programming- there's no evidence that so much as a single unit sold.
As absurd as the H316 seems, especially with its painfully sexist advertising slogans, i have a certain strange love for the style. There's something wonderful about the World of Tomorrow (that never came) that was so ubiquitous during the middle of the last century, perhaps due to all the old Disney and Warner Bros animated shorts I viewed as a kid.
What's your favorite zeerusty concept? Personally, I wish we had automats everywhere. I love the notion of walls of vending machines with every kind of food item you could desire, there's something delightfully absurd about it that makes me giddy.
As absurd as the H316 seems, especially with its painfully sexist advertising slogans, i have a certain strange love for the style. There's something wonderful about the World of Tomorrow (that never came) that was so ubiquitous during the middle of the last century, perhaps due to all the old Disney and Warner Bros animated shorts I viewed as a kid.
What's your favorite zeerusty concept? Personally, I wish we had automats everywhere. I love the notion of walls of vending machines with every kind of food item you could desire, there's something delightfully absurd about it that makes me giddy.