{"id":907,"date":"2010-11-15T10:13:00","date_gmt":"2010-11-15T18:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2010\/11\/the-past-envisions-the-future.html"},"modified":"2010-11-15T10:13:00","modified_gmt":"2010-11-15T18:13:00","slug":"the-past-envisions-the-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2010\/11\/the-past-envisions-the-future.html","title":{"rendered":"The Past Envisions the Future"},"content":{"rendered":"

LOOKING back at mid-century optimism is always both fascinating and depressing. All the labor-saving devices and exotic holidays — weekends on the moon! — we were going to get by now.<\/span>

<\/span>
<\/a>The science-fiction writer Gregory Benford, who teaches at UC\/Irvine, and the editors of Popular Mechanics have put together hundreds of these predictions, from asbestos dresses to personal jetpacks, along with the original art which accompanied them in the magazine. <\/span>Here<\/span><\/a> is my story from Sunday’s LA Times on <\/span>The Wonderful Future That Never Was<\/span><\/i>.<\/span>

<\/span>
Benford, who also teaches physics, writes insightful essays that puts the whole future-looking enterprise into context. As any close reader of science fiction knows, we can tell a lot about an era by how it envisions its future.<\/span>

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<\/p>\n

Benford has also recently co-edited a tribute to science-fiction novelist Arthur C. Clarke, whose powers of predictions, especially re satellite communication, he praises. Sentinels: In Honor of Arthur C. Clarke<\/i>, edited with George Zebrokwski, includes essays on the writer himself as well as stories by Heinlein and Asimov that speak to Clarke’s ambitions. (It’s published by Hadley Rille Books.)<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LOOKING back at mid-century optimism is always both fascinating and depressing. All the labor-saving devices and exotic holidays — weekends on the moon! — we were going to get by now.The science-fiction writer Gregory Benford, who teaches at UC\/Irvine, and the editors of Popular Mechanics have put together hundreds of these predictions, from asbestos dresses […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[209,35,144,151,137,29],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-907","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-arthur-c-clarke","7":"category-books","8":"category-orange-co","9":"category-science","10":"category-science-fiction","11":"category-west-coast","12":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/907\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}