This is the reading I read today. In it, Dr. Vannevar Bush of 1945 speculates about the future of scientific in a post-World War II setting. What could scientists set their sights on in peacetime, since they wouldn’t be pushed to design weaponry and other technologies to help in wartime?

Before continuing, I think it’d be best to acknowledge this person’s name again.

Vannevar.

Bush.

Vannevar.

Hey Doc, what vehicles do you drive to the lab?
A truck most times, but a Vannevar.

I like how the readings Bush students to speculate.

Okay, moving on.

My ‘take away idea’ from this reading, or what stood out to me most, was Dr. Bush’s extended speculation into the future of photography and camera technology. His ideas were centered around the notion that cameras could be as small as walnuts, and could be stuck to the forehead of a photographer and would be able to focus at nearly any distance, auto-adjust exposure, and produce images in full colour.

What was interesting about this speculation was how good old 1945 Vannevar had both tremendous foresight and was able to influence the development of technology greatly, yet at the same time still get things completely off track. The Big Doc Bush claims that this is the ‘logical. if not inevitable’ fate of cameras, and while he gets a lot of things uncannily correct (focus, exposure, colour, stereoscopy), as people living in the twenty-first century, we know that the state of camera technology now is vastly different from what was thought of as the unavoidable and ultimate outcome.

Firstly, VanMan believed that photographers would be walking around with things this size stuck to their foreheads.

You’re nuts, man.

Sadly, our society has not evolved in such a way that it was a trend to walk around with metallic cysts coming out of our faces.

Or your nuts, man?

Or has it?

Now people can watch me trip in the mud from MY perspective!

Nevertheless, it is still evident that V. Bush’s (#innuendointheresomewhere) vision is still being held back by the world he was living in at the time. His dream camera still needs a string to activate the shutter, and a dark room is still needed to develop the images. Digitization flies completely under the radar as well as the fact that ordinary people can take high definition photos of everything, especially food.

I’m looking at you, Kevin.

So a doctor with an awesome name left out smartphone cameras, Instagram and hipsters brandishing DSLRs in his otherwise very influential and visionary piece of speculation from 1945. What does this mean? For me, it says that speculation can give you a window far into the future, but at the same time it will probably end up being a future far different from the one you will actually end up in. Nevertheless, despite any speculation becoming bogged down by the limitations of a mind living in the present (it is extremely hard to let go of the technologies that exist around us, as our projections of the future build on what we have now), that speculation will still shape what happens, and will better prepare you for whatever world in which you find yourself.

And I guess, when you’re thinking about what the future might hold in store, take the advice of a grenade-launcher-wielding-dream-thief-with-a-brilliant-accent.

You have no idea how much weird fan-art I had to scroll past just to find this picture.

“You musn’t be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling.”