Disneyland's Monsanto plastic House of the Future -- video
Dan sez, "A nice Populux movie from Monsanto about the X-shaped House of the Future attraction at Disneyland. In the future, we won't have fridges, but 'cold zones' that descend from kitchen cupboards at the touch of a button; our plastic dishes will be washed with ultrasound; and best of all, we will have a nice view through our plastic windows of Sleeping Beauty's castle."
The Monsanto House is one of my favorite lost Disneyland attractions, the epitome of goofy, futuristic industrial optimism. The fridge even had a compartment for "irradiated food!" The plastic materials were so hardy that they reportedly stayed fresh and clean looking for decades, despite the trammelling of millions of feet, and the legend has it that the wrecker's ball just bounced off of it, necessitating deconstruction by force majeure (e.g., a blow-torch and chainsaws). Link to Part 1, Link to Part 2 (Thanks, Dan!)
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Amazing! Rapid technological change with just about no social change to speak of! Introducing new technologies and media should be changing and stretching that family rather than letting them be more the same than ever.
What's more, the technological changes only follow from a 1960s social vision: technology makes housework easier and relaxing after your day job easier. There seems to be no hope of having technologies that blur the line of work and home: computers, telecommuting.
Marshall McLuhan would have a fit!
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous, and it is among the virtues of science that it equips the future for its duties." == A. N. Whitehead
Would that be the Monsanto house with genetically modified cockroaches that eat the furniture and then you?! Or am I going mad? Or is that a different Monsanto??!!!
And of course this being the 50s the family is white, dad doesn't go near the kitchen and they apparently have an invisible son that just didn't want to go to Disneyland that day.