I watched The Island this past week and it hit me that the future is always portrayed as slanty. The Island takes place in 2019 and all the cars, planes, and buildings are all slanty. A forward slant to be specific.

If I can get all deep for a minute, I assume the slantiness of the future is a metaphor/symbol for progress. As though saying, “the future will be fast and trailblazing.”

That’s nice and all, but it seems the future has been slanty for a while and we’re still not there.

When Walt Disney added the monorail to his theme parks, what design did he choose? Slanty. And in movies about the future it always seems to be slanty. Look at some recent prophecies from Minority Report and also from The Island - all slanty.

In the 1950s, 1960s, and seemingly every decade after the future has always been slanty. I’m all for slanty things, I guess, but instead of predicting a slanty future, how about we start creating our slanty future?

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 16th, 2006 at 1:19 pm and is filed under All. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.