In a previous post, I introduced you all to the Monsanto (tm) House of the Future as a way into thinking about ideologies of domesticity in the 50s. Well, Boing Boing reports that they are rebooting the Disneyland attraction. I agree with Cory Doctorow, the vision is not very futuristic at all. Futurist discourses still do tell us a lot about today.
From Boing Boing:
"Disneyland is reviving its old "House of the Future" attraction -- originally, this was a wheel-of-gouda-shaped plastic house sponsored by Monsanto that opened in 1957, featuring futuristic technology like cordless phones, giant TVs, electric razors, and kitchen appliances that rose out of the countertops. It was inspriringly goofy -- and so indestructible that the wrecking-ball bounced off it and so the structure had to be disassembled with cutting torches and chainsaws.The new version will look like a suburban McMansion and will feature stuff that sounds like rejects from CES: touch-screen home automation, automatic lights and temperature (oooh, a thermostat!), and assorted junk from HP, Microsoft, and a couple other sponsors.
I'd rather see Disney give us something built out of surplus shipping containers, filled with just-in-time blobjects that track their existence through spimes and gracefully decompose into the manufacturing stream at their end of life. Something that at least looks like the future, rather than the model home in a pre-subprime-meltdown housing development.
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