The Future is....now?

As we approach the second decade in the twenty-first century, literature and pop-culture predictions are all coming together to tell us one thing: the future is now. As any good film geek would know, we are only four years out from the week in October, 2015 when Marty McFly visits the futuretopian version of his hometown in the Back to the Future II.

And while we may be years away from flying cars, hoverboards and power shoelaces (albeit not for lack of effort), many of the inventions showcased in the film are now part of our everyday lives: Doc brown’s “binocular card” resembles a thin digital camera, thumbprint scanners exist—albeit not often on residential homes, kitchens and restaurants are digitized, and some of our pop culture icons (read: Lady GaGa) seem to have taken a cue from the HIll Valley 2015 fashion catalogue.

While it’s impossible to know which technological developments are a result of the self-fulfilling prophecy phenomenon created by movies such as this, one thing that struck me while re-watching the film was the various marketing advances in the town square, most notably the Jaws 3-D shark that startles Marty, the holographic billboard that pops up across the street advertising hover-conversion systems. Discounting the 80's VHS quality of the movie, the billboard looks strikingly like GKD's MediaMesh, shown below on the American Airlines arena.

Seeing such a dynamic media installation, especially one that looks so familiar to that which was invented by set designers of twenty years ago, makes me jittery with the thoughts of our future, and where medialized technology will be going in years to come. For those of us in the business of pushing the boundaries of marketing and advertising and public relations beyond the outer realms of Hollywood's imagination, we must ask ourselves where the next phase of development is going. Should we limit our best creativities and efforts to the ever-evolving internet sphere? or should we aim to integrate the technology of the future, the technology of today, into our own "Hill Valley" town squares?

As the technology continues to improve and become more widespread, I predict that facades like this will literally be popping up all over the place, from supermarket aisles to hotel marquees to residential homes--and with screens this big and this "futuristic", everyone is in the front row.

jessi probus
public relations specialistFUNCTION:we’re into building things through marketing, design and public relations