Category Archives: Video Clips

Retro-futurism and Disney’s “Magic Highway USA” (1958)

This cartoon is a brilliant piece of retro-futurism. It’s fascinating to look back half a century at how the visionaries of the day imagined the world we live in now. Many characteristics of the imagined cars have come to pass (most involving video screens and computerized assistive devices). Superhighways that “expand the commuter’s radius” have too, but they’re not the panacea they were imagined to be. Nor are they built in minutes by the absurd devices envisioned here. Also not represented: rampant health problems resulting from living in a world where even the smallest amount of physical exercise is made obsolete.

The music is beyond awesome. The latent sexism, not so much. The idea that technological advancement equals utopia is not only incorrect, it’s become laughable.

I still want a “sun-powered electro-suspension car that needs no wheels” though.

Source: Take a guess.

Were we really once so easily amazed?

Technology has come a long way since the ’80s. I remember this commercial. I don’t remember it seeming so utterly stupid. Maybe that’s because I was only about 10 when it originally aired. Or maybe it’s because back then this was cutting-edge.

All I know is, the phrase “sneaker phone” sounds way more natural to me than it should. I guess this commercial embedded itself in my subconscious all those years ago, permanently tainting my worldview.

Source: Merlin Mann

Update: 1991? Holy crap. Yeah, I didn’t watch it far enough when I first posted this to hear the voice-over guy say, in a semi-lewd tone, “the revealing 1991 Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue” (cue whistles). Since that comes out in February (or so I’m told), that would mean this commercial is most likely from 1990 or very early 1991, meaning I was 16 when it aired. You’d think by then I’d have been old enough, or at least jaded adolescent enough, to see how utterly stupid it was. Maybe.