Excerpt from Jessica Helfand, "Future Shocks." AIGA Journal of Graphic Design, 12:1 (Winter 1994) 12-15.

H.G. Wells once observed that in England, there is a comfortable lag time of fifty years to a century between the perception that something ought to be done and a serious attempt to do it. Here in the U.S., the opposite may be closer to the truth: our own erroneous perception is to equate speed with progress. This behavior is epitomized in the character of George Jetson, who, when asked to make an extra stop at the dry cleaners one day, lamented his space-age frustration. "But it's 500 miles out of my way," he whined. "It'll take an extra 30 seconds."

The future, most likely, lies somewhere in the middle: between the classical traditions of the nineteenth century and the supersonic fantasies of the twenty-first; between conventional wisdom and creative license; between method and madness. A 1958 Cosmopolitan article on the 'push-button future' promised a utopia of automated appliances and self-propelling products in what was then a particularly American fantasy of chore-free domesticity. Today, advances in digital electronics suggest similar scenarios: the cordless phone, the paperless office, the virtual environment. What's next? "Prediction is very hard," Yogi Berra once said. "Especially when it's about the future."

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