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Tech NewsNuclear Holocaust Before 1999
Didn’t think it could get any weirder? Someone has found an audio recording of Hal Lindsey lecturing about the “End Times” coming in the 1980s. The LP shares the same title as the book, The 1980s: Countdown to Armageddon but doesn’t appear to be a direct reading from it. Talking about the Russians UFOs and … Continued
By Matt Novak -
Tech News
EPCOT’s Horizons
The EPCOT attraction Horizons was a great introduction into the world of paleo-futurism. The ride took you through past visions of the future as well as “present” visions of the future. For this ride the “present” meant 1983, the year it was built. The ride was permanently closed in 1999 but Horizons is not completely … Continued
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Tech News
Desolation Row
CantikFotos has a great collection of photos from Taiwan of a housing development that was never completed. The set is called Desolation Row and has a companion set called Desolation Row Redux. Someone posted it to Digg back in July. I contacted the photographer and he didn’t know the backstory to the development but “ahfoo” … Continued
By Matt Novak -
Tech News
The Futurists of 1966 Looking Toward A.D. 2000
“Nearly all experts agree that bacterial and viral diseases will have been virtually wiped out. Probably arteriosclerotic heart disease will also have been eliminated. Cells have only a few secrets still hidden from probers, who are confident that before the year 2000 they will have found the secret that causes cancer. The most exciting, and … Continued
By Matt Novak -
Tech News
Space Colonies by Don Davis
Donald Davis was commissioned to do paintings for NASA in the 1970s and is now offering them to the public domain. The “toroidal shaped space colony” above is an incredible piece of paleo-futuristic art from 1975. Click on the images to make them larger or visit his site to see all of his space paintings.
By Matt Novak -
Tech NewsThe Simpsons go to EPCOT
Fans of Disney’s Epcot, (the theme park formerly known as EPCOT Center), seem to fall into three categories: 1. Angry 2. Bored 3. Nostalgic There are a number of websites devoted to EPCOT that critique the theme park and Disney management for letting it become the laughstock it now seems to be. (For the Simpsons’s … Continued
By Matt Novak -
Tech News
The 1980s: Countdown to Armageddon
Every so often you stumble upon a book that makes you wish you were illiterate. In Hal Lindsey’s The 1980’s: Countdown to Armageddon he boldly proclaims, “The decade of the 1980s could very well be the last decade of history as we know it.” I bought this book (originally published in 1981) at a Goodwill … Continued
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Tech News
Proposed Amendments to the US Constitution
While flipping through my pocket-size U.S. constitution I came across a section about amendments that were proposed but never ratified. There have been over 10,000 such proposals since 1789 and, “fewer than one percent of them have received enough support to actually go through the constitutional ratification process.” Looking through this abbreviated list I can’t … Continued
By Matt Novak -
Tech News
The Future World of Transportation
I remember checking out this book at my elementary school library and being fascinated with the prospect of futuristic transportation. In the second grade I even did a science project on “Cars in the Year 2000.” (In 1992, the year 2000 still had some significance to a second grader.) My cars traveled on an electric … Continued
By Matt Novak -
Tech News
Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy
I started reading the 1888 classic utopian novel Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy. I’ll be blogging about it on a “whenever I damn well feel like it” basis and I invite you to follow along at home. You can either read it free here or here or you can do what I did and buy … Continued
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Tech News
Jetsons
I downloaded an episode of the first season of The Jetsons yesterday. It occurred to me that there is nothing more paleo-futuristic than the pneumatic tubes used to transport the characters. I can’t wait until the world of transportation catches up to 1960s bank teller technology. According to the Wikipedia post I linked to, (and … Continued
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Tech News
Astuter Computer Revue
I don’t remember much about Communicore at EPCOT in Walt Disney World. It closed in 1993 and was converted into the half-rate Innoventions Pavillion. However, I did find a little gem of a song that was featured in the Communicore exhibit for just a few short years. The song is called The Computer Song and … Continued
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Tech News
The Most Well-Documented Lives in History
Today we have two men that are either geniuses or completely crazy. While that fine line is usually difficult to discern in any worthwhile endeavor it is especially difficult in the context of futurism. We begin with Richard Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983), perhaps most famous for inventing the geodesic dome. What may be most compelling about … Continued
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Tech News
Chicago’s Grant Park: Fighting for the Future
I finally finished the PBS American Experience documentary, “Chicago – City of the Century” and found plenty to talk about in the paleo-future department. One particularly interesting element of the doc was the creation of Grant Park. Apparently plans were set in place to use the park for commercial purposes after the Great Fire of … Continued
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Tech News
The Future was Built on Steel
Apparently U.S. Steel never saw Dustin Hoffman in 1967’s The Graduate. According to this U.S. Steel commercial from the 1970s, the future will be built on steel rather than plastic. The future will also be built piece by piece in beige factories to make beige buildings. Disney’s Contemporary Resort in Walt Disney World, Orlando is … Continued
By Matt Novak -
Tech News
Hello and Welcome
I first came across the word “Paleo-Future” in a Flickr group of the same name. However, the topic first sparked my interest when I visited Walt Disney World’s EPCOT Center, (now Epcot), and realized that Disney’s version of the future was based upon what they thought the future would look like in the 1980s. As … Continued
By Matt Novak
Matt Novak
Matt Novak is a reporter at Gizmodo covering news and opinion, with a little history thrown in for good measure. Novak started at Gizmodo in 2013 and has been writing about past visions of the future at Paleofuture.com since 2007. Novak is fascinated with the history of technology and got his start writing professionally for Smithsonian magazine. Emails telling him to "stick to tech" can be sent to [email protected].
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