Futures Bingo
Who doesn’t love popcorn? Ok, I’m sure there are a few of you out there in the world, but I’ll just quickly say - you may be wrong and you may be missing out on a lot.
Now, I’m bringing up popcorn because we’re going to be talking about movies! Especially the fun, speculative and sci-fi genres. As a futurist, watching sci-fi and future-themed movies offers so much food for thought.
Obviously, watching a movie set in the future allows our imaginations to run wild. We ask ourselves if this is a future we’d like to experience, or one we’d like to avoid. Now, watching sci-fi and future-themed movies is especially important as we’re influenced by what we see in these movies. What we’re shown subconsciously influences our thoughts and decisions about the future. If we see enough neon signs in these sci-fi movies, we’ll naturally associate neon with something futuristic. Seen a nifty piece of tech in a movie? You’ll likely expect it to exist in some shape or form in the future.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. The “danger” happens when we’re consistently shown a stereotypical view of the future. You know the kind, the one that’s often technology heavy and filled with flying cars. It’s a genre, and one that we’ll be the first to say we enjoy watching. We just think it’s important to call out the stereotypes and repetitive patterns that we’re fed in order to critically inform our assumptions about the future (what we unambiguously believe will be true).
Remember: the future is full of possibilities!
As such, we’ve developed two sets of bingo cards for you to print out and use the next time you watch a futures-themed movie. First, the expected future bingo card, for helping you spot if the future is tech-heavy and a little stereotypical in its depiction:
But what if the future could be richer?
As a counter to this stereotypical view of the future, we encourage you to use this Dynamic Future Bingo sheet to see if you can spot any of these hints that the future might be a little more multifaceted and human than typically depicted. We’ll quickly point out that sometimes we don’t see some of these aspects of “the future” in movies because it doesn’t do much to advance the plot of the movie. For this reason we tried to select some subtle “background” information that could be observed or included in passing in conversation.
For example, is there any trace of “our” world in this future? What’s happened to the heirlooms, the old pieces of technology (similar to how you can still find fax machines and pay phones today, despite videoconferencing and cellphones being dominant)?
Is there enough variation in the clothing? Think of today - there are many sub-genres of fashion walking down the sidewalk. Not everyone shops at the same store.
What about arts and crafts? Do people still have hobbies?
Get your magnifying glass out and see what you find!
So go ahead, grab your favourite future-themed movie and get counting. See whether it depicts more of a basic/predictable view of the future or whether it tries to show a more human/unexpected scenario. We’re curious to find out how various movies fare.
Tag us on social media with your completed sheets using #futuresbingo