Hindsight is a wonderful thing – It’s really satisfying to be able to smugly say ‘well I would have done it this way…’ and know that you’re right.
For example, it’s really easy (and fun) to look back and laugh derisively at expert’s predictions about science and technology from the 70s and 80s, knowing that they missed the mark like Michael Bay when he made Pearl Harbor.
Between 1968 and 2001 a nation’s hopes and fears about technology and the future were distilled into a half-hour weekly live TV show – Tomorrow’s World.
TW was a massive show, in it’s prime it got 10 million viewers a week, and it introduced a technology-hungry public to life changing innovations such as the barcode (1983), the breathalyzer (1964), and the digital watch (1972).
Check out this title sequence form the show in 1978.
With a ‘T’ made of bread, an ‘R’ made of fire, and an ‘O’ made of eggs – it made spelling fun. Ok, so they ran out of ideas by the time they reached ‘W’ and had to go back to the bread idea (they probably had extra dough left over) but it was still genius. I really want to do a Platform TV ident like this, maybe with a ‘P’ carved out of ham and a ‘T’ made of hope.
What I really liked about Tomorrow’s World was that despite their impressive credo of showing ‘tomorrow’s technology today’ they rarely looked at important stuff like finding the cure for cancer or examining the dangers of nuclear power. Probably because these things are either dull or complicated. Instead they had a magpie sensibility and focused on things that were either shiny, flashy, or noisy. Here are some examples.
But it wasn’t all fun and games, oh no! As well as celebrating the wonders of new technology, the presenters spent a fair amount of time overemphasising how that technology could be used for evil. Yes, it was a dangerous time in the 80’s, when technology was moving so fast that the public was never too sure what they should and should not be afraid of.
This video on computer hacking is a great example. Look how impractical, difficult, and pointless it is to ‘hack’ into another computer. But despite this the presenter still want’s to induce stoner levels of paranoia in the viewer – making them imagine that parked on every street corner is a pervert in a van, bent double over a computer terminal, trying to hack into their computer so he can write ‘cock off’ on your screen.
When TW did tackle more serious subjects they seemed overwhelmed by the subject matter and went a bit overboard.
Now you only need to watch the first 30 seconds of this video, because after that it gets a bit dull, but look out for the bit early on, when to illustrate a point about heart disease the presenter actually makes himself bleed. Then he reveals a test tube of coagulated blood, probably collected form a junior runner or member of the production team. Now that’s a level of commitment you just don’t see today in TV. You wouldn’t see Ferne Cotton making herself vom for a piece to camera about binge drinking would you?
What I loved about TW was their unashamed enthusiasm. Everything was new and exciting, and although it seems ridiculous now to see people in shoulder-padded blazers getting all misty eyed about self-parking cars or the fashion of the future, at least they cared damn it!
Now that we’re actually living in Tomorrow’s World we’ve all become remarkably blasé. Last week scientists reproduced human sperm in a lab out of chemicals and and a few scraps of DNA they found lying around, and no one cared. The only people who seemed to take notice were the lazy panelists on Mock the Week who made bad sperm jokes.
It’s a sad realisation, but people don’t seem to look forward and hope anymore. Yes, they want their iPhone to work faster and facebook mainlined into their optic nerve, but that’s about it. The feeling that mankind can achieve anything and that technology is advancing at such a rate that in 20 years we’ll be living in bio-bubbles on the moon has been washed away by a general Naughties malaise.
Maybe I’m romaticising the past, but like I said earlier, hindsight is a wonderful thing.
Anyway, reporting form Yesterday’s World today, that’s all for now. Bye!
