When was the last time you bought a tech product that actually seemed futuristic to you? For me, it was the PlayStation Portable that I bought with my birthday money in 2006. Not only was it a huge step forward in portable gaming, but it was also a portable media powerhouse that looked cooler than anything I’d ever seen. However, soon after, Apple released the first iPhone in 2007. Looking back, this moment may have been the first sign that our reality was diverging too far from the futuristic technology trend that began in the 1960s.
You see, it’s hard for a new smartphone, tablet, or gaming device to look futuristic when it looks like every other black slab that’s come before it over the past 15 years. On the other hand, the electronics of the 1960s and 1970s shaped an entire generation. And now, young people are turning to these once-futuristic gadgets with a sense of nostalgia. This aspiration is an example of retrofuturism: the collective interest in how the idea of ”the future” was perceived in the past.
The technology we use perfectly reflects how we envision the future. Today, our technology is sleek, minimalist, and arguably designed to become obsolete. That’s why some people crave old-fashioned technology that’s passionately creative and obviously optimistic. But why is this desire so strong? Here are four reasons why ’60s technology still seems so futuristic after more than half a century.
Old-school technology was built to last
A number of appliances and other technological products were manufactured in the 1960s and lasted for decades: refrigerators, televisions, and various power tools, to name a few. This made each new innovation look not only futuristic, but also future-proof. That’s why so many of them are now nostalgic gadgets that all baby boomers will remember – because they were able to use them for much of their childhood.
Compare this to today’s technology, which is so easy to criticize for planned obsolescence. Profit-hungry companies are all too eager to design products that consumers will frequently replace with additional purchases. We see it every year when phones, smart home gadgets, and so many other pieces of technology deliberately become obsolete due to planned outage, discontinued support, or incompatibility with new features.
Of course, the concept of planned obsolescence didn’t just appear in the 21st century. The term is believed to come from a 1933 manifesto by real estate agent Bernard London titled “Ending the Depression through Planned Obsolescence.” However, the concept was heavily criticized throughout the 1960s and beyond. Bestselling author Vance Packard’s 1960 book “The Waste Makers” highlighted the reprehensible aspects of planned obsolescence and predicted a bleak future for American consumerism; a prediction that ultimately came true.
Aesthetic design was as important as function
When today’s young adults look at ’60s technology through the lens of retrofuturism, the first reason they may think these things look futuristic is simply that they look futuristic. Take a look at this vintage 1960s space age television by Zarach to see what I mean. Even now it feels like something from an alternate future.
This can be explained by a principle expressed by German companies like Braun and Dieter Rams in the 1960s. Both followed the credo that “form follows function”, which can be interpreted to mean that the aesthetic design of a product directly reflects its purpose. In the case of the iconic technologies of the 1960s, manufacturers like Buick and Cadillac were optimistic about the future and had their eyes set on a better future. This naturally translated into a futuristic aesthetic for products like their spaceship-inspired cars. So why is modern technology so minimalist and monolithic in appearance?
Consider that much of our current technology is just a way to interact with digital content. TVs stream shows from the cloud, our phones can play digital music, and many video game consoles don’t even have disc drives anymore. Digital content is the main product, so the design of the physical hardware no longer matters much. This is starting to not appeal to today’s youth, which is why Generation Z is abandoning streaming in favor of physical media.
Science fiction was in its golden age
If you look at some pieces of 1960s technology, like AT&T’s Picturephone from 1964, as shown by Business Insider, you might think they look straight out of a classic work of science fiction. Well, the Picturephone may have been directly inspired by a similar video calling gadget first seen in “The Jetsons” way back in 1962. Beyond “The Jetsons,” the ’60s represented a golden age with other sci-fi classics like the original novel “Dune” or the film “2001: A Space Odyssey.” These works inspired creative technology, some of which became 1960s science fiction gadgets that predicted the future.
The original “Star Trek” series also aired in the second half of the 1960s. It was from this famous space series that the Altair 8800 microcomputer was named, the device that is said to have launched the personal computer revolution in the 1970s. When the product was to be featured in the January 1975 issue of “Popular Electronics” magazine, the daughter of the magazine’s technical editor suggested naming it “Altair” because “It’s there where the Enterprise is heading tonight.” When some of the greatest technological innovations are directly linked to works imagining a fantastical future, it’s no wonder that the actual products have also proven futuristic.
Space age optimism was at its peak
The 1960s were the height of the global cultural “space age.” In fact, the sci-fi boom of the ’60s mentioned above can itself be attributed to that era’s global fixation on the stars. It was a time when nations were engaged in a technological race to see who could be the first to reach the Moon and beyond. While there were certainly political agendas, the bigger picture helped fuel societal optimism about what technology would soon be able to accomplish.
NASA was innovating at breakneck speed, and consumer-facing companies were happy to capitalize on consumer enthusiasm. This gave rise to futuristic technologies of the 1960s, like the cassette tape, which actually served to move society forward; the New Yorker went so far as to say that the cassettes “were a means of overthrowing these authoritarian gatekeepers” behind state-controlled radio and music distribution systems. This is a far cry from the current reality of capitalism, in which consumer interests are blatantly ignored in order to focus on the rise of AI despite the collapse of everything else. Authoritarian guardians once again hold all the power.
The current retrofuturism movement can be seen as a sign that people want to feel more optimistic. I like to think of “the future” as synonymous with “hope” or “excitement,” which is why the renewed popularity of things like vinyl records feels like a more futuristic development than where reality actually ended up. And it’s not just them either. Many retro gadgets are making a comeback.
