Smithsonian Magazine: Thinking About Futurism

Solar-powered houses, computerized education, flying cars, and strawberries the size of your head: that’s how artist Arthur Radebaugh once imagined the future. In the 1950s and ‘60s, he published a series of newspaper cartoons entitled “Closer than We Think,” in which he illustrated a shiny, grand, and technologically revolutionized world of tomorrow.

Radebaugh is but one of many thinkers who have creatively theorized about what the future might look like. The Smithsonian Magazine is exploring their ideas in a series on “Thinking about Futurism;” a collection of articles that explores the past, present, and future of thinking about tomorrow. A great resource to explore ideas that turned into reality, ideas that crashed and burned, and ideas that might inspire your own futuristic thinking!

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The Long Now Foundation is a nonprofit established in 01996 to foster long-term thinking. Our work encourages imagination at the timescale of civilization — the next and last 10,000 years — a timespan we call the long now.

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