The Smithsonian’s Virtual Exhibit Predicts What Your Life Will Be Like In 2050
Still from Your Future Guide digital museum experience for Smithsonian Arts + Industries Building’s FUTURES exhibition; Courtesy Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, produced by Unicorns & Unicorns. Image provided by the Smithsonian
What innovations do you think will be part of the norm 30 years from now?
The Smithsonian’s latest exhibit brings the museum into your home. Called Your Future Guide, it’s an interactive, game-like experience forecasting the year 2050, based on your personal expectations for the future. Advertising agency Goodby Silverstein and Partners and creative production studio Unicorns and Unicorns lift this concept off the ground.
To kick off the showcase, the exhibit presents a series of questions to assess the visitor’s personality and lifestyle habits. Then, using machine learning and storytelling, it assigns you to a guide from the future who will give you a personalized tour of what life may be like decades down the road if positive change is made.
Still from Your Future Guide digital museum experience for Smithsonian Arts + Industries Building’s FUTURES exhibition; Courtesy Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, produced by Unicorns & Unicorns. Image provided by the Smithsonian
The show is an extension of the Smithsonian’s ongoing FUTURES exhibition at its Arts and Industries Building (AIB). With that being said, Your Future Guide can be toured by anyone anywhere since the experience lives online, at no cost.
Still from Your Future Guide digital museum experience for Smithsonian Arts + Industries Building’s FUTURES exhibition; Courtesy Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, produced by Unicorns & Unicorns. Image provided by the Smithsonian
The exhibit’s organizers acknowledge that while the public might be keenly aware that they have a hand in how the world will turn out, it’s difficult to drive change when people cannot visualize the future. Your Future Guide gives people the opportunity to time-travel and be assured that life can indeed get better.
According to Your Future Guide, some inventions that could significantly turn the future around include sustainable foods, new transit systems, cryopreservation, and pulling clean drinking water out of thin air.
“We are much more likely to care about a future in which we can see ourselves,” says Rachel Goslins, director of the AIB. “Through the magic of these cutting-edge technologies, we are able to give users the otherworldly experience of time-traveling to a possible future.”
“That experience can lead all of us to being more engaged citizens and better creative problem-solvers,” Goslins continues.
The exhibit will run until the end of September. Explore it here.
[via Smithsonian Institution]
