One of my favorite projects when I was an editor at the Wired Magazine was the monthly back page item Found: Artifacts From the Future. Each installment was a full-page image of some found object from a speculative near future. All explanation of what the object was and how it worked had to be diegetic—i.e. the page had to explain itself entirely through context and in situ text, with no annotation or caption. This was a great challenge for me as a writer/editor and for all of the designers and illustrators and photographers I had the pleasure of working with. These pages never made much of an impact online because the fun was always in the fine print, which rarely came through at web resolution. I’m republishing them here to drill down on those cool details.
This piece ran in the April 2004 issue. It imagines a futuristic version of an asthma inhaler that’s specially designed for smart dust allergies.
The concept of tiny microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) that were dubbed “smartdust” emerged from a RAND workshop and a series of DARPA studies in the early 1990s. Science fiction luminaries like Neal Stephenson and Vernor Vinge explored the idea in their stories of this time period.
I think I was particularly inspired by “toner” in Stephenson’s Diamond Age when I was writing the packaging for this product. I remember my colleagues particularly enjoyed an ailment I dreamed up called “Data Miner’s Lung.”
Full text from the product packaging below, followed by a higher resolution scan of the page. The page scan crops out any info on the artist who designed the product and the packaging, and the photographer who took the picture. Sorry!
NEW!
Nanodryl®
Antihistamine for Smart Dust Allergies
0.75 Fl. Oz. (23 ML)
Debug Your Sinuses!
Cross-Platform
Non-Drowsy Formula
Temporarily Relieves: Runny nose, itchy eyes, coughing, and sneezing associated with inhalation of MEMS (microelectromechanical systems)
IF SYSTEMS PERSIST: Perform a cold reboot of your home and consider upgrading to a hypoallergenic sensor technology. If coughing worsens and discharge is high in RAM, you may have Data Miner’s Lung. Get a CT scan at your local pharmacy.
©2018 by Phat-Pharmaceuticals, a subsidiary of [unreadable]
