Did the Jetsons have a jukebox? Did they ever cut the rug? Dance cheek-to-cheek? If not Jane and George, then daughter Judy, or their boy Elroy?
Mosh Pit?
Don’t ask me what prompted thoughts of Jane Jetson, mid-century visions of the future, or spontaneous fits of dancing.
But here we are, memories triggered by who knows what – of childhood, adolescence, and my twenties. And where does that lead me? To picturing my teenagers flailing about in mosh pits. Frankly, I think I’d rather ponder the Jetsons and their jukebox. My former vision of the millennium. The mix of past and present, in formulating that vision. And it begs the question – how do we imagine the future for our children?
Jetsons web cam, Star Trek cell phone
I was a kid at the time of the Jetsons. I did think videoconferencing would come, but a slab of metal the size of a notebook with a keyboard? The ability to map locations in another hemisphere? A tiny lens through which you chat with friends across the Atlantic? Today’s laptop? Skype?
I certainly didn’t imagine the ease with which we’d talk to one another, or have access to information, though I was familiar with France’s Minitel. (Extraordinary!)
As for the all-purpose communicator of Star Trek? Our cell phones that go beyond what Captain Kirk whipped out of his tool belt – so much technology we take for granted that was the stuff of science fiction and cartoons. Certainly not a future I envisioned in my lifetime.
Why we shouldn’t imagine the future
So did the Jetsons have an “antique” jukebox? Date night with samba lessons? A mix of their present and past in our past vision of the future?
Let’s face it – thirty-something George spent his days pushing a single button on a computer. Wouldn’t his BMI be shameful given the sedentary, robot-assisted lifestyle of sixties-future-chic?
Did George’s love life need some juice? Disagreements with a teen in the house (Judy) and a mischievous seven-year old (Elroy), even though Rosie dealt with the domestic duties? Surely there were sleepless nights and turbulent talks over adolescent rebellion, arguments over money, Jane wanting to pursue her career goals, and lulls in the marriage that invited injection of a little space-age spice.
However we imagine the future, will human nature stay the same?
21st century mid-century?
So how might you ground a teenager when you live in the cosmos? Reduce the purple stocking shopping budget? Take away the keys to the hover craft? Scream “turn down the damn music” – whatever its source?
And wouldn’t Jane and George need a little rock ‘n rollicking romance? And music of their own?
Enter the jukebox! Does anyone remember if the Jetsons had one? No visits to an orbiting diner? Red leather seats, retro dinnerware, and nostalgic access to a little vinyl and tunes beneath the moons?
Dancing to the oldies
Let’s bring back the jukebox!
Wouldn’t we be a healthier and more energetic nation if we were dancing fools, sock-hopping to our evening mopping, boogieing to our baby-tending, and grooving to our online maneuvering? Even if the slamming gets a bit out of hand, maybe our kids in the mosh pits have the right idea. Do adults need to get up and move spontaneously, wherever and whenever we can, and without a plan?
A little Jumping Jack Flash while texting or sexting?
I used to be a dancing fool
I will cop to shimmying up and down the corridors of Dorm-Land in college (or did I just imagine that?) and hanging with girlfriends in my twenties, feeling fabulous when we’d put on music and dance, dance, dance. As for my past imagined future? It wasn’t exactly what I’m living, but it’s amazing how many elements of “now” resemble “then” and no doubt more will resemble “future.”
So should we imagine that future three decades out? Four? A half-century? I don’t mean what our children will be like, but what our “collective” children will be dealing with – the good and the bad, the legacies of past and present and their own controllable and uncontrollable creations? Can we ever picture the elements of the future, other than the immutability of human nature? And maybe, the need to dance?
Visions of the future
And the future, as you dream it?
- What sort of world do you envision for the next generation?
- What wild gadgetry might become real in the 21st mid-century?
- Do you think we shouldn’t try to imagine the future?
- When’s the last time you danced?
I was so holding out for that robotic housekeeper!
There is a theory entitled Structuration that explains how technology is designed for one purpose but is then used and altered for another purpose by society. Take for example Twitter – developed for social intercourse but now being used heavily for marketing purposes. E-mail, now old school, was designed for similar purposes but people and organizations have also expanded its use to include knowledge capture and file organization.
Now I KNOW if my cell phone had the capability for teleportation (beam me up Scotty) I certainly would be using it for that purpose 🙂
Very few predictions are ever even close to right. But, I do think it’s interesting how humans evolve and change through the ages. The change is minute when you look at it year to year, but over the course of centuries and millennium humans have managed to change quite a bit. If you believe in evolution (which I do) then it stands to reason that we can’t be completely static. However, the change happens so slowly that it looks like we’re making no progress at all. The problem with predictions is that they always speed up the course of evolution. While we might technologically be able to produce mind blowing adaptations to our environments our human nature is not so quick to change. Thus we can only go as fast as our tendency to screw things up allow us. That’s why the Jetsons aren’t closer to reality.
Once again, you and I are receiving inspiration from the same mother ship. Just yesterday I made a long drive during which I was conjuring images from the Jetsons and comparing them with reality.
I don’t spend much time imagining the future. The “what if?” I wonder about for my boys’ lifetimes is space tourism (apparently already a reality for the super-rich).
And, yes, we dance all the time. Music plays often and we dance, dance, dance.
While I was reading your post and remembering my own Jetson and Flinstones childhood, I also remembered marveling as a kid at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago – especially the video phone! It was supposed to look just like a rotary dial phone but have some big, lumbersome TV screen of the 60s attached to it. This is how we always envision the future, attached to the now. But when it shows up, it’s very, very different.
I’m not really good at imagining this stuff and tend to be surprised by every single innovation, but there are things I can hope for in my kids’ adulthoods, the medical treatments of Star Trek: run a scanner over it and it’s healed. That would be great.
Funny! I pulled a picture out a while back, from when #1 was little. The picture was of him hitting the keys on what IBM called their portable computer back in the mid-80’s. At that time, I worked in computer sales and had the Portable home on loan. It was so big it would not even be considered carry-on luggage these days. It might actually be over the 50 pound weight limit also but of that I am not certain. Who would have thought of a netbook now that is so small?
But what caught me was the dancing in your post. I love to dance. I did a little moving last night as I went out to hear a co-worker’s band play but not real dancing. I went out earlier in the month but didn’t dance then either but wish I had. I will have to get on the dance floor – one other than my bedroom or living room – soon. Last time I was it was July and that is too long ago.
Love this post. I think it is good to imagine the future, but not to get too involved in its imagining. Yet another thing that distracts and distorts Now. Chez Rowley, we dance all the time. In the morning. During the day. After bath, before PJs. For us, dancing is part of living. We are terrible and we don’t care. Baby who is all of 15 months has her own little jig. It is priceless.