Retrofuturism Blog Post

     Retrofuturism is defined as "the practice of looking back to see how yesterday viewed the present." Also referred to as techno-archaeology, it's a process of looking back to find past miracles that never happened. An example of this is the cover page of the Byte Magazine:


     This picture shows a tiny computer as a wrist watch, with the entire QWERTY keyboard and a small screen. This picture was created to make fun of future technology, because the editorial in the magazine pointed out this wasn't supposed to be a serious depiction. However, some people still believed this was the direction technology was heading in. Imagine having a keyboard so small it would fit on your watch... it raises questions about it's usability, because how is someone supposed to type when the keys are 1mm wide. In addition, the screen is also tiny, leading one to question what they thought people could do on that wrist-computer. One thing to point out is that smart watches aren't a new idea. This magazine is from the 1970s, and they were already thinking of watch-sized devices with various functions, so some of their ideas carried over to the present. However, the idea of wrist-computers never caught on, and it makes sense, because I don't see how anyone would be able to use it. 

Picture source: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/02/2c/ef/022cef469c7c613b9ff27a4a760ae912.jpg 
Information source: http://time.com/60505/this-1981-computer-magazine-cover-explains-why-were-so-bad-at-tech-predictions/

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