Productivity Future Vision (2011)

I enjoy watching these videos just as much as I love watching the cartoons portraying the future from 1958. Or movies like Back to the Future 2, Minority Report, 12 Monkeys, A Scanner Darkly, or Total Recall to name a few. This video however is mostly humorous to me due to the description about the video on YouTube.

Watch how future technology will help people make better use of their time, focus their attention, and strengthen relationships while getting things done at work, home, and on the go.

Technology now is supposed to be helping people make better use of their time. Instead it just gives us new ways to waste time. I hope that in the future people will start to miss being disconnected, and will want to make real connections and interactions. I hope that we can simplify our lives by not needing to have the most up to date gadget technology has to offer. Also how “green” is all of this “future technology” seems like the entire world is digital and all connected. That seems to me like it is going to take an enormous amount of energy to power this future world. Also where does global warming fit into any of this future world. I would expect to see more boats and less cars. Everyone melting in the heat reminiscent of a “Soylent Green” world.

(Video by officevideos)

*** UPDATE ***

John Pavlus wrote an article about this video on Fast Company’s Design blog. I think his commentary is spot on to what I was thinking while watching the video. In contrast he shared this video by Berg London (Which I’ve already shared on my blog before) that is also full of interesting experimental interfaces, but placed in a world that we can all recognize and actually relate to. This makes it feel more “real.”