Conor Carroll b. 1998 (Ender’s Game)
Estella Warren b. 1978 (Planet of the Apes)
Corey Haim b. 1971 died 10 March 2010 (Silver Bullet, The Lost Boys)
Stefan Arngrim b. 1955 (Land of the Giants, Fear No Evil, Strange Days, The X Files, Battlestar Galactica:Razor, V, Caprica, Fringe, Arrow)
Charles Herbert b. 1948 (The Fly, Men Into Space, 13 Ghosts, Twilight Zone)
Robert McCall b. 1919 died 26 February 2010 (artist, LIFE magazine, 2001: A Space Odyssey)
Odd coincidence today. Four of our six birthday folk got their start as child actors. Stefan Arngrim was on Land of the Giants, did a little work in the 1970s and 1980s, but from the mid 1990s on has worked very steadily. He lost his baby fat and is not recognizable from his childhood pictures. I'm not sure he even qualifies as an "Oh, that guy" actor, despite a lot of roles. The late Corey Haim is the best known face of the four child stars, Estella Warren easily qualifies for the Pretty Girl = Picture Slot criterion, but for a change the picture is an illustration, Robert McCall's poster painting from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Like Syd Mead and others, McCall drew a bright shiny future, very unlike the dystopias that are depicted as the probable future today.
Predictor: OMNI Future Almanac, published 1982
Prediction (score): The Office of the Future! Here are ten innovations that OMNI thought would be in effect by the end of the century.
1. Electronic Mail. (1 for 1.)
2. Data Banking. (They mean large data storage systems. 2 for 2.)
3. Teleconferencing. (3 for 3.)
4. Supergraphics! (Well, they don't leap tall buildings in a single bound, but compared to what was available in 1982, this has to count as a hit as well. 4 for 4.)
5. Automatic translation of speech. (This is still not practical, so I'll count it as the first miss. 4 for 5.)
6. Voice activated typewriter. (Again, this wasn't available by 2000 and is still in the early phase, so let's call it 4 of 6.)
7. Programmable sound silencer for open office space. (Things started out so well, didn't they? 4 of 7.)
8. Electronic blackboards that store images for later use. (5 of 8.)
9. Faxes will reproduce tens of thousands of pages a second. (Umm... no. 5 of 9. Also, at that speed, can you imagine how often the machine would jam?)
10. Videodisc storage of data. (Well, kind of. CD-ROM is the same idea as videodisc, and for a while that was a popular data storage device for big stuff until flash drives became so tiny and cheap. If we count 2000 as the cut-off date, I'm going to give this one a full point, bringing the whole prediction up to 6 of 10.)
Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!
Looking backward, I pick my five favorite predictions of the year and put them up in our Year End review. Tomorrow, my man crush returns. Longtime readers need no further explanation.
Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!
Like Syd Mead and others, McCall drew a bright shiny future, very unlike the dystopias that are depicted as the probable future today.
ReplyDeleteApple is working their asses off to fulfill the bright shiny future.
Except, ummm, for the people in overseas sweatshops working to produce it. So more like Elysium, I guess.
Great illustration, though.
One quibble; if you count the blast faxes, and email, production of tens of thousands of pages per second seems to be in the ballpark. Although with a cutoff date of 2000, maybe not so much.
I was not aware of blast faxing. Sending a couple pages out to thousands of sites definitely would count.
DeleteI know some people still use it, but fax seems like pagers to me.
the only faxes I ever get in my office anymore are junk faxes. Health insurance, Who's Who, phone directories and vacation deals.
DeleteCory Haim has the best line from The Lost Boys, "Great, the bloodsucking Brady Bunch."
ReplyDeleteTee hee.
Delete