Dystopia

In this project there is much potential to look at past visions of the future, and the often satirical or ridiculous inventions and ways of life portrayed in novels and films. The dystopian futures shown in many of these pieces are often reflections on the time that they were made or written, and often not genuine predictions. That being said, aspects of these fictional works have come true long after they were thought up.

The most obvious example of a dystopian future coming true is 1984. George Orwell's 1948 novel had grim visions of the mid eighties, most prevalently the idea of 'Big Brother'. This idea, at the time just speculation, was essentially that of modern day CCTV - the thought of constantly being watched. This was combined with other concepts made famous by socialist authors after the First World War, novels such as Aldous Huxley's 'Brave New World' and Yevgeny Zamyatin's 'We' use the concepts of '2 + 2 = 5', and people being numbered and entered into giant government databases. All of these concepts are beginning to come into play, with the idea of ID cards in the UK being the latest step towards a 1984 for this century.

One film that's imagery and ideas have survived into the future they were predicting is Terry Gilliam's 1985 comedy Brazil. Apparently Brazil was once under the working title of 'Monty Python's 1984' and you can see why. As well as the pollution, Brazil makes satire of beaurocracy, with the single nationwide corporation 'Ministry of Information'. There is also a big emphasis on terrorist bombings, which have been in the news every day since 2001.

With these dystopian works of fiction being some of the best predictions of the future, perhaps for my Design Futures I should look at what we would not like to see, or if all the things we don't like at the moment being continued for 10 years. That way I might actually make an accurate prediction.