I can't wait till the year 2000 its ALL going to kick off. Im also a huge fan of sci fi tv serials like Space:13 Years Ago. They got it spot on.

We we not supposed to work fewer hours and have much more leisure time whilst robots worked their metal arses off for us?

The future ain't what it used to be

Now is always the future, what happens in 1 day 1 month 10 years depends on what you do today

Good point. Where are those damned robots?

time-saving devices, my ass. i hate the future.

Care to expand?
Or do you actually like washing the dishes in the sink?

I quite enjoy washing the dishes in the sink. But seeing as I don't have a dishwasher the other options aren't too appealing.

I'm sorry but I just don't get this. Seriously. Are you sure you haven't just trained yourself not to mind it out of necessity?

For me, dishwasher = essential.

I dunno. As long as the water's warm I'm fine with it. It's something to do, I guess. Pass the time before inevitable death.

DJ booths should look more like this by now:

: ) i like washing the dishes too. especially if there's a view out of the window! i think it just one of those few almost timeless tasks - i remember as a youngster being right happy washing up sunday tea at my auntie's. i do some of my best thinking when i'm doing something fairly simple like that - much more so than if i'm just sat on a train or trying to think about something!

the future's here already innit! The US Patent Office came a little bit close to closing shop in 1900 because they thought that everything significant had already been invented. This current era I reckon smart phone with wireless internet is pretty much magic level technology - to the point where it might have frightened me if I saw it in 1982 when I was 10 and washing the dishes at my auntie's!

what's weird is how quick we all are to adapt to hi-techness to some degree - the way even toddlers can cats can figure out ipads. this whole forum is a bit about future shock though isn't it? lots of musical reminiscing rather than embracing freshness. a bit like having a 8mm film filter to use with an iphone camera footage

the maddest science fiction of the short term future is defo coming from the world of nanotechnology. There's this epic filing classification for new Patents and nano just has the one class! which is like in the 1900 we only had electrical gadget compared to thousands of classifications currently (ha!)

there's footage of a lost tribe being massively spooked at seeing their first mirror - fully freaked out and hiding the reflection with a leaf. what the fuck would they make of an iphone!!! which makes it incredible that it's no drama at all for a kid growing up amongst it all

Domestically, there have been absolutely loads of labour saving devices/new technology, so it genuinely is much easier to runa household now than it was when I was a kid.

Iron baths were common when I was young. While I was living at home, we got central heating in the mid 60s, a fridge around the same time, a proper washing machine in 1972, a car in about 1972, a phone in 1974, a colour telly in 1974, a freezer in the late 70s.

Wash day before the arrival of the washing machine, meant putting it into this massive tub with a mangle, with the kitchen swimming in water, then into a primitive tumble dryer that two people had to hold to stabilise. Washing took all day. Now it's something you quickly do in between the other shit. The future's what happens while you're living, innit.

However, I don't consider a dishwasher a labour saving device. It takes as much time loading and preparing it as it does washing the fucking pots. Then it uses a load more water to wash and does it badly, too. We were bequeathed a dishwasher in our latest house and I'm always having to re-wash stuff the following morning.

Right, we're going to have to agree to disagree on dishwashers, I'm afraid. I'm just not budging on this one.

Let's get back to the way the future was much better in the 70s:

i don't hate the future, i just hate the notion that some time-saving device would divide my workload in half.

because whatever they are; they don't often operate correctly, but they sure as shit double my output expectancy.

Weren't we meant to have jetpacks by now...

I quite enjoyed that last woody allen film - midnight in paris - which is sort of about dreaming of living in a different era. The lead in the film loves the idea of living in 1920s paris and hanging out with hemingway and all the rest - he sort of waking dreams his way to that era but the lover he meets longs to be in paris when toulouse letrec(sp?) and the folly begere was all the rage. For dance music fans is the dream place to be in new york city in the late 70s? or maybe on a beach in goa in the mid 80s? or living in jamaica when reggae was morphing into existence in the 60s? maybe being right here in the uk for wave after wave of summer of loves? I'm more optimistic that the very best music I'll hear in my lifetime hasn't been made yet and the best scenes are over the horizon and unfolding right now.

Romantic nostalgia is very present amongst music fans and listening to music of different eras, scenes and cultures is a fascinating way to explore different sonic landscapes, ways to dance and gain inspiration for fresh creativity. I think I'd rather be alive now than any time in the past but I most want to live in a different future.

This has made my day. Thanks.

And now I've just googled it and found it's not old. Boooo.

it might not be old but is just about brilliant. featuring steve joliffe from tangerine dream and merv pepler with input from propellerhead's will white on the 1s and 2s and ozric tentacles guitarist - released on part of simon posford's record label. every home should have one!

hi-fi companions - swingers in paradise
"Much like the artists that made it, its a mature look at lounge music, sound images from their main influences, Ennio Morricone, Russ Meyer’s movies, really musicianship mixed with a modern electronic twist, very much like Ralph Myerz recent stardom with his porn sound tracked beat cocktails, Hi-Fi Companions reekes of 50’s parties, 60’s saxophone and synthesisers yet has the modern breaks and beats of today’s lounge music. This is lounge with style, not throw away background music, but modern engaging music, full of real instrumentation from classical trained musicians but with a depth that can only come from experience and a real sense of history. Old and new combine to form a modern electronic music on the rocks"




space is the place, baby : )

From a 1979 book. The caption reads:

Section through a Torus Space Colony. Any type of Earth-like landscape or climate would be possible to manufacture inside the colony: rural Oxfprdshire, the Rocky Mountains, or the Amazon forest. A space colony of this size, constructed of materials from the moon or Asteroid Belt and manufactured in space, could support a population of two hundred thousand to several million. Inside Torus, the largest of four colonies proposed by Dr O'Neill of Princeton University, the Earth-like gravity would be produced by the rotation of the large cylinder every 114 seconds. In order to produce days, nights, and seasons, sunlight coming through the glass 'windows' would be controlled by mirrors outside."

Do you think anyone at Princeton is still proposing such things?

this book helped teach me to read. however, the promise never delivered. fuck the future. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Will_Go_to_the_Moon_(book)

on the factory floor putting the men and women who did their job on the dole - didn't mention that when they said we'd have more leisure time did they

Bill's right dishwashers are shite

Syd Mead Visual Futurist concept designer for the film Blade Runner among many things.



His Mobility scooter ideas unfortunately didn't forsee obesity !

yeah Syd Mead is the don dadda

anyone watching that house of the future thing on channel 4? 3-d printing in particular was interesting to me, the model they had in the house was superdeluxe but you can get a reprap one in kit form that basically does the same thing for about 650 quid

It looks as if Scotland embraced the space age and lot earlier than the rest of the world:

The George Bennie Railplane. A propeller-driven suspended monorail car that was intended to link Glasgow and Edinburgh in the 1930s.



And they haven't given up on it either. The Falkirk Wheel from 2002.