What Gadgets Will We Find in the ‘SkyMall Catalog of the Future’?
There are many ways to imagine, and speculate about, the future — from the prognostication of techno-pundits to the inventions of science-fiction writers.
Here’s another option: dreamed-up products that don’t actually exist … but maybe could … someday … although probably not.
That’s the approach offered by the TBD Catalog, aptly described by BoingBoing as “a SkyMall catalog of the future.”
Within its 112 pages, the preview site tells us, you’ll find descriptions of 166 conjectured products and services. For example: The MeWee Monitor, evidently a toilet rigged for “persistent biological monitoring” of everything from “alcohol levels to hormone quotients” of its, uh, user. “Share with your family and friends,” the catalog suggests, listing social-media link-up possibilities.
Or maybe you’d prefer some Weather Sensing Hair Extensions & Emollients? How about Networked Pillows, whatever that might mean?
“Part satire, part industrial brainstorm, [the catalog is] a mix of impractical ideas and thought-provoking future goods,” BLDG BLOG observes. “Whether that means … absurd weather-sensing hair extensions or (entirely plausible) DIY home-bioluminescence kits.”
TBD is a creation of the Near Future Laboratory, a sort of design firm/think tank whose members split time between client work and independent initiatives like this one. And clearly their point is not to suggest that any of this is likely to exist — or even that it should.
Instead, they’re deploying the increasingly widespread tactic often referred to as “design fiction,” commenting on possible futures by way of imagined products and services. The real idea is to ask: Do we want the future this hypothetical represents? If so, why? If not, why not? And thus: How should we proceed?
In short, the TBD Catalog offers “today’s exuberance about a fantastic near future,” as the site puts it, “translated into its inevitably fraught, low-battery, poor reception, broken firmware, normal, ordinary, everyday sensibilities. It is neither boom, nor bust. It is just the near future now. It is the near future we’ll wind up with for our sins.”
If you like the sound of that, order yours here. I did. And I can’t wait to read more about the imaginary future.
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