Dreamers Wanted

A recent article on renowned futurist and designer Norman Bel Geddes inspired some thinking about dreams, design and direction.

Bel Geddes (1893–1958) was a visionary who began his career as a theatrical designer, working his way to become part of Broadway’s most successful productions. He gradually evolved into architecture, interior design, and the then-new field of industrial design, and later became known as the leader of the “streamlining” trend in product and transportation design.

Bel Geddes’ most famous work was the design of the Futurama exhibit, sponsored by General Motors Corporation, for the 1939 World’s Fair in New York. The almost full-acre display was a huge animated model of the envisioned America of the future – 20 years hence, the 1960s – representing almost every type of terrain and habitation indigenous to the country. Over a half-million individual buildings, a million trees and fifty thousand vehicles were included in the model’s incredibly realistic landscape – all tied together by Bel Geddes’ vision of the highway system of the future. More than 30,000 people viewed the exhibit each day, riding above the display in chairs, 600 at a time, on a sweeping conveyor system that simulated the flight of a low-flying airplane.

At the time, the country was in the waning stages of the Great Depression. Few people owned cars, and there were no such things as freeways, so a glimpse into the future, and all the wonderful things it would bring, was more than mere entertainment; to many, it helped release long pent-up feelings of optimism, and provided inspiration to a nation that had just gone through hell and was slowly climbing back. To label the exhibit as merely spectacular was akin to calling Babe Ruth “a fairly decent ballplayer who helped the game a bit.” (In fact, a great deal of the envisioned infrastructure and systems that Bel Geddes featured in the exhibit later became reality.)

As one who was born with a high percentage of wanna see the future DNA, the article, and Bel Geddes’ thought processes, completely captured my attention. Imaging how the exhibit’s visitors must have felt, seeing a future that experts thought not only attainable, but probable! Wow…movin’ on up. Sky’s the limit!

What brought me back to earth was the feeling that this sense of optimism – the sky’s the limit – is not nearly as evident in our country today. Sure, in communications and information disbursement we’ve made great strides: computers, the internet, personal devices, etc. But even given these truly amazing things, we’re somehow managing to let them collectively evolve into around-the-clock sources of personal entertainment, not necessarily bent on improving the lot of mankind. (Unless you think that knowing if Lindsay is in jail or not this week somehow improves your life.)

But what about the other things: food, housing, transportation, energy production, the environment, space exploration, world peace, yada, yada, yada? Seems to me that progress is considerably slower in these areas, if it’s being made at all.  (Yes, a few exceptions do exist, especially for commercial applications. Virgin Galactic’s plan to soon make suborbital space travel available to industry and select individuals is a good example.)

What happened to the unwavering optimism? The American no holds barred spirit? The nothing but positive attitude? Instead we have an endless stream of doom and gloom (sandwiched around another endless stream of mind-numbing, repetitive “entertainment”). Who the hell wants that fed to them day after day? Apparently, boatloads more than you’d want to believe.

If you’re one of the dreamers and are in seclusion, please come out. We need you now, more than ever. You’re a lot more fun than this group, and WAY more inspiring. And, now think about this, if someone with no apparent skillset can be a star — like Kim Kardashian as just one example — not only the sky’s the limit for you, but the whole solar system, too.