The History of Futurism: The Distant Past to the Second World War
Past cultures had different ideas of progress, but there are numerous examples of futurism being used to consider their specific tomorrows. In the modern era examples of futurism cropped up for similar reasons but the focus shifted towards a better future rather than the sustaining of past values. With industrialization, the idea of progress began to shift from a focus of national economic prosperity to quality of life. Communication technologies then facilitated the first major shift which transformed how futurism was distributed and absorbed by wider audiences.[3] Furthermore, as technology improved and ideas became accessible to wider audiences, the ability for futurists to imagine new uses of technology was facilitated and increased on an exponential level.[4]
From the last decades of the nineteenth century to the First World War, a theme began to emerge in literary works which involved the use of imagined technology in future societies. These technologies involved new ways to harness energy, the introduction of flying machines, and even early concepts of artificial intelligence and life. While there were instances of these imaginings in previous centuries, it wasn’t until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a period defined by the proliferation of industry and science, that there was an increase of interest in these subjects as evidenced by the amount of literary and textual materials produced as well as the introduction of new publications such as Popular Mechanics and Popular Science magazines. Countless sketches and prints exist of models and plans for machinery which would not be realized for another fifty to a hundred years. Fiction writers such as Jules Verne and H.G. Wells ignited the public consciousness towards imagining the future.[5] While some of these works introduced an air of apocalyptic and dystopian warning, the majority maintained that progress in machinery and the sciences was a necessary step for society’s future. Even those works with a bleak outlook could be classified more as adventure stories rather than the cautionary tales which would not emerge until the aftermath of the First World War.[6] Also in the growing United States economy, industry was witnessing innovations in design such as that done by futurist King C. Gillette with the safety razor and Henry Ford’s assembly line produced automobile.
The 1920s was a time of economic prosperity for many Americans. As such, consumerism transformed along with marketing, and as a result concepts of the future began to be seen in many forms of popular media. However, despite the early attempts to market consumer products and with so much new technology available the public wasn’t as receptive to these early efforts to promote futurism. Cities and industries were growing and transforming but many technological changes had not yet taken root on a wide scale as they would by the start of the Cold War (see embedded video 01 "Wheels of Progress" on right produced by the US Department of Agriculture in the 1920s). During the interwar era, science had made significant advances, but much of what was being done in physics in relation to missile research remained classified.[7] The concepts of alternative energy gained popularity with particle research and advancements in science.
Moving closer to the Second World War the interest in researching nuclear energy and power can be attributed to reports of European scientists fleeing to the United States with knowledge and rumors of super weapons being researched in Germany.[8] These reports created a duel effect of advancing technology for national security, national pride, and national progress as well as launching a new wave of speculative cautionary works regarding the dangers of going too far with technology.[9] However, changes in the American industrial complex facilitated new technologies and accessibilities of new products to wider audiences. These innovations created an initial burst of excitement over the potential of the new and also an initial spike in futurist visions in advertising. While there are many examples of futurism from the 1920s to the 1940s, the end of the Second World War marked several significant changes in this theme. For one, technological advancements, such as household television, altered the way American citizens received information. Additionally, it took time for those ideas of progress to root themselves in societal consciousness, rather than being viewed as a passing trend.
Above all, however, was the dropping of the atomic bombs on civilian populations towards the end of the Second World War, which not only altered the popular American conception of what could be accomplished with science but it altered their moral perceptions and raised the questions of what should or should not be explored with science. The bombs not only introduced the world to an important new advancement in science but they did it in a way which negatively shaped the public’s view of nuclear technology as a whole and with such influence much of the work involved since has been either kept hidden or been reported on with deliberate vagueness.[10] There was support for nuclear research with the argument and promotion of renewable resources, however there was also a significant amount of warning in the advertising in the form of safety preparedness. In response, dystopic science fiction grew as a genre and trend in other media forms.[11]
[1] Robert Heilbroner, Visions of the Future, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 1-12.
[2] Ibid, 12-43.
[3] Ibid, 42. The industrial era highlighted the idea that progress was on a linear timeline and signified the idea of betterment.
[4] It should be noted that until the 1950s, scientific innovation was promoted as a venture for individual genius. Vivian Sobchack confirms a trend of biopics and media celebrating scientists such as Edison and Bell through the 1940s, which highlight the individualist approach. The post-war era begins a trending emergence in media of science as an institutional and communal effort. Vivian Sobchack, “Science Fiction Film and the Technological Imagination,” in Technological Visions: The Hopes and Fears that Shape New Technologies, ed. Marita Sturken, Douglas Thomas, and Sandra J. Bal-Rokeach (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004) 152.
[5] Jules Verne, Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), From the Earth to the Moon (1865), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870), Around the World in Eighty Days (1873); H.G. Wells, The Time Machine (1895), The War of the Worlds, (1898), The World Set Free (1914).
[6] Jerome Franklin Shapiro, Atomic Bomb Cinema: The Apocalyptic Imagination on Film, (New York: Routledge. 2002) 13.
[7] James Mahaffey, Atomic Awakening: A New Look at the History and Future of Nuclear Power, (New York: Pegasus Books, 2009) 180.
[8] Ibid, It remains under debate whether or not the rapid advancements from the start of the war by American research teams were because they were under pressure of an invented arms race.
[9] See page on Democratization of the Sciences for more on reflections on nuclear technology.
[10] Mahaffey, Atomic Awakening, 17.
[11] Mick Broderick, “Is This the Sum of our Fears?” from Scott C. Zeman and Michael A. Amundson’s, Atomic Culture: How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2004) 127. Broderick tracks and categorizes the changes in dystopic and apocalyptic themes in media from the end of the Second World War through the 1980s.