Description
What does 'the future' look like? You could be forgiven for thinking of a neon-lit dense cityscape somewhere in Japan or Hong Kong, during a perpetual rainy night. But why do we have these associations? This vision of 'the future' has remained largely unchanged since the 1980s - once again confirmed in recent sci-fi blockbusters. However, visions of the future have nothing to do with the future at all. The opposite: they are mirrors of society at the time in which they are written. They are an exaggerated zeitgeist, rather than a forecast. This vision of a neon-lit Japanese future appeared in the 1980s because that was the rise of Japan as a superpower, during the personal electronics boom, when we walked around with Sony Walkmans and neon signs were the hottest trend. Now, of course, we find ourselves in a different society, with different hopes and fears. Japan as a rising superpower has given way to China or India, and even the neon lights of Hong Kong have been mostly replaced with