The technological optimism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries could not be destroyed or even shaken by such catastrophic events as the sinking of the Titanic, the Hindenburg or even the devastation wrought by two World Wars. Even the era’s satires of technology were optimistic 
and affectionate. In the 1880s, the French illustrator Albert Robida produced what has now turned out to be stunningly accurate visions of what the technology of the future would come to look like. Robida’s fantastical illustrations, depicted often as tongue-in-cheek episodes of absurd dreams and time-travel journeys, were amazingly prophetic in their depiction of the chemical warfare, flat screen TV’s, and test tube babies of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Compare these images on the other hand with the mechanical visions of Rube Goldberg--
the famous inventor of bizarre and convoluted thought experiments represented in notoriously gratuitous and redundant contraptions. Goldberg’s work is a tribute to the importance of empirical system construction and represents thought provoking ways of executing simple procedures in unnecessarily complicated ways. While Rube Goldberg contraptions are usually benign and very tightly coupled in their choreography, the greater implications of Goldberg’s constructions may be mildly sobering in their critique of the formal devices we often use so regularly. That is, Goldberg’s apparatuses represent, albeit very playfully, our culture’s compulsion to devise overly complicated ways of performing typically very simple procedures. Electronic calendars for instance, electric knives and even mechanical pens and pencils are just a few modest examples of sophisticated and overly complicated iterations of traditionally very simple instruments. The apparatuses included here are illustrations of devices that are both simple in their construction and their performances but represent the limits of sophisticated material and engineering to accomplish relatively unremarkable ends. The contraptions describe important distinctions in the way the “user” interfaces with different types of devices as well, while offering an equally as satirical counter-illustration of the less fantastical realities of Robida’s predictions.
and affectionate. In the 1880s, the French illustrator Albert Robida produced what has now turned out to be stunningly accurate visions of what the technology of the future would come to look like. Robida’s fantastical illustrations, depicted often as tongue-in-cheek episodes of absurd dreams and time-travel journeys, were amazingly prophetic in their depiction of the chemical warfare, flat screen TV’s, and test tube babies of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Compare these images on the other hand with the mechanical visions of Rube Goldberg--
the famous inventor of bizarre and convoluted thought experiments represented in notoriously gratuitous and redundant contraptions. Goldberg’s work is a tribute to the importance of empirical system construction and represents thought provoking ways of executing simple procedures in unnecessarily complicated ways. While Rube Goldberg contraptions are usually benign and very tightly coupled in their choreography, the greater implications of Goldberg’s constructions may be mildly sobering in their critique of the formal devices we often use so regularly. That is, Goldberg’s apparatuses represent, albeit very playfully, our culture’s compulsion to devise overly complicated ways of performing typically very simple procedures. Electronic calendars for instance, electric knives and even mechanical pens and pencils are just a few modest examples of sophisticated and overly complicated iterations of traditionally very simple instruments. The apparatuses included here are illustrations of devices that are both simple in their construction and their performances but represent the limits of sophisticated material and engineering to accomplish relatively unremarkable ends. The contraptions describe important distinctions in the way the “user” interfaces with different types of devices as well, while offering an equally as satirical counter-illustration of the less fantastical realities of Robida’s predictions. 
No comments:
Post a Comment