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 March 2008 issue. I remember that everyone loved the QVC, home shopping, RonCo angle on future tech. I believe there was an initial attempt to do laser knives. But we ended up going with cultured meat. The onscreen artwork of the home vat-grown meat-growing appliance is by John MacNeil and the surrounding context is a Corbis stock image. Full text and image detail below.
Offer Expires 2/29/2016
Ronco™ Meat-O-Matic
Vat-grown Kobe beef in the comfort of your home!
RETAIL VALUE: $900
QVC PRICE: $699.95
FREE S&H
Stare here for 10 seconds to initiate
RetinaScan Purchasing® or Buy at QVC.com
No Bones! Kosher! Halal! Plus if you act now ...
... you'll qualify to receive Iberian ham, veal, whale, swordfish, and woolly mammoth tissue cultures AT NO EXTRA CHARGE!
ITEM KL-805262.1-V17001 QVC Kitchen Ideas