friday night retro-futurism

Sometimes our retro-futuristic dreams do come true. Just not in the form we expected...

When you first take a look at the 1970 Ferrari Modulo designed by Pininfarina's Paolo Martin, you don't know what to make of it's sharp lines, aggressive angles and extremely short stance. It was built to showcase how futuristic concepts of the time would look in reality.

Almost forty years after this concept was built, it still looks bizarre, resembling a cross between a stealth jet and an alien spacecraft. If it passes you on a dark highway in the middle of the night, I wouldn't blame you for calling in a UFO sighting. Also, note the sliding canopy which recently appeared on another concept car, the Saab Aero X, a machine I hope to see put into production…

If function is more your thing, take a look at this video from 1969 which seems to have a very good grip on the technology we use everyday. Security and surveillance systems accessed via computer terminals, electronic banking and e-mail, they're all there in hauntingly accurate detail.

The only slight flaw in this video's otherwise impressive predictive powers is the lack of computers with graphical interfaces. But then again, computers of that time were a far cry from the technology we know today and it wasn't until the 1980s when PCs were used in mainstream business and at home.

And speaking of technology, could this machine from London, England circa 1935 really be a foreshadowing of Twitter? Take away the two hour time limit on the public messages it displays and the per message charge, and it sure does seem an awful lot like a primitive version of twittering.