Freepik

This Matt Yglesias tweet caught my eye:

That picture reminded me of a TV show called The Jetsons, which premiered in 1962. So where did the producers of The Jetsons get their ideas for the look of a futuristic city? Perhaps from this building at LAX, completed in 1961:

Or how about this building, completed in 1962:

Or this 1962 building:

Or this 1962 building:

What’s my point? When people envision the future, they look around at current things that seem futuristic. That’s no surprise. The futuristic buildings of 1962 looked nothing like the futuristic buildings of 1912 or 1862. That’s no surprise.

What is surprising is that a 2023 picture of a futuristic city still looks like a 1962 TV show. And like a bunch of cutting edge 1962 buildings

So what’s going on here? I suspect that progress has basically stopped at the macro level, and micro progress in areas like like biotech and computer chips doesn’t affect the way things look at the macro level. And I haven’t cherry picked the building industry; I could have shown you an airliner from 1962 and today and you’d be hard pressed to tell them apart.

I have no idea what cities will look like in 2123. Perhaps they will look futuristic. Maybe they will look much like current cities. But I can predict the look of sci-fi movies in 2123. Their futuristic cities will look like the Jetsons. Like 1962. The eternal modern.

PS. When I was young, we drove through Chicago once or twice a year, on the way to visit grandparents. I’ll never forget the look of the Marina Towers (above) which blew my mind. I had a plastic model of the Space Needle in my bedroom. The future seemed really bright.

Little did I know . . .

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