Pale Blue Dot - A Reflection on the Futures of Yesterdays and Today

Pale Blue Dot – A Reflection on the Futures of Yesterdays and Today

From a quick glance, the photograph Pale Blue Dot is rather uninteresting. Despite being a picture in space, there are no stars, nothing really sticks out. There are three lines that are slight shift in hue and that’s about it. On much closer inspection, Pale Blue Dot reveals that Earth, our home, is in the photograph, but it’s not like you can see it clearly. Carl Sagan had many things to say about this photograph. “Earth is where we make our stand.” He wrote. “There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world.” His book Pale Blue Dot: A Vision for the Human Future in Space is a vast collection of examinations and thoughts about the human-centric vision we have of ourselves and the universe. The book also argues that we need to focus on interstellar exploration to save the human race. What Carl Sagan ultimately proposes is a future that focuses on the exploration of space and other planets in order to preserve the human race. A future not so Earth centric. Carl Sagan was not the only person to have visions of the future though and even today we have our own visions of what the future might be. The future changes depending on what time we look at it, from the 1900s, the 1950s, and today. How were people treated in these futures, how did they live in these futures? What unexpected issues come up in these visions of the future?

The 19th century’s future is odd. Depicting the far-off future of 2000, 1900 saw automated future filled with visions of aero carbs and aerial fire fighters. A future where one flies using a big-winged backpack and uses automated machines for farming. One illustration even depicts a underwater croquet game, with only a diving helmet to keep them underwater. There is no depictions of space, the 1900s had not thought we could ever explore it. The future depicted in 1900, while wildly fantastical, is held to the conventions of their times. Women still wear 19th century dresses, flying machines must have wings. While this distant future of 2000 created in 1900 looks bizarre and antiquated, it does seem to oddly predict helicopters and some elements of automated farming. Not exact, but close enough. But this future also has its own problems inherently hinged on its own devices. The plane like vehicles all occupy the sky. Books are placed in a machine in a classroom that only has headphones, eliminating any actual need for a school. You do not see the lower class occupy these spaces and war is fought with Battle Cars and Torpedo Planes in very shoddily made vehicles.

The future depicted around fifty years later featured sleek metal landscapes and vehicles that were inspired by rocketry. Wings are smaller and serve as almost filler now, as these machines appear to float within the air as the passengers inside gawk inside of a curved, bubble-like window. Much of the future is told within images. There are elements of recycling with food made from sawdust and clothing made of asbestos. Sputnik was launched towards the end of the 1950s, the industrial revolution had come and changed how we did things back in 1900. This future does depict the lower classes, unlike the 1900s, but seems dedicated to giving them scraps. Powdered grass will give low-income families the nutrition that has been normally reserved for the wealthy. While the future presents itself a lot of good ideas that would be rolled out over the next decades, cars depicted here are in as few pieces as possible. It should be noted that cars are assembled with jig-saw like pieces today, as this is generally safer if an accident happens. The future in the 1950s is less fantastical than the 1900s and instead responds to the events going at the time. Russians head to space and you suddenly see a lot more design based off what’s practical for space-travel. The future is closer to home in the 1950s, with many of its designs being visions for household items such as your kitchen.

It’s actually kind of tough to find current depictions of the future in the modern day without having to look at fiction. You see the utopic visions that people have with a dystopic slant these days, with Hunger Games and other novels that take after that same concept of taking place in a dystopia. You see a prevailing problem and this focuses more on the lower class than any future in the 1950s or 1900s did. The prevailing problem is the elite, more often than not. They have access to futuristic technology but they treat lower classes like dirt, structuring society with so many rules that seem outright bizarre. Hunger Games takes after the Roman Empire with its titular gladiatorial “Hunger Games”. Dystopia proposes the tearing down of the corrupt elite and the struggles that it presents. It speaks to its problems but aside from aspiring to take down the corrupt elite, the future isn’t actually that innovative compared to the 1900s and 1950s. Whereas the 1950s attempted practical ideals and the 1900s attempted fantastical ideas, the 2000s attempt political ones. No utopia can exist, but a dystopia certainly can.

The conclusion one can understand from the fantasies of the past about the future is that it is either fantastical as seen in the 1900s, practical as seen in the 1950s, or political as seen in the current modern day. When we explored space travel in the 1950s, we based design off rockets and spacecraft. When we explored the air and engineering in the 1900s, we based design off aircraft and cars. When we became aware of political agendas and opinions, we based our futures off worst case scenarios. Today, we look at the aspirations of the past with an odd fascination of whether they got it right or wrong. When we look forward, we see a future filled with corrupt politics that formulate rules for a society that can’t be fought so easily. It’s a message of caution. Don’t let it happen.