Zap It's The Future Analysis

Assignment Eight
Discussion of how effectively the image reflects the content of the magazine article

“Zap! It’s the future”, a magazine article by author Chris Wood. The magazine article consists with the idea’s, that how the future will affect our life, and what will be the technologies that we will be using in our daily lives. In the magazine article there is also an illustration, by Leif Peng. If we look at illustration very carefully we can see that every detail in the picture is highly connected with the technologies mentioned in the article. Let’s start with the simplest detail we see in the picture, which in this case is a T-shirt. T-shirts are really simple to make! Nowadays they are made just from simple fabric, as we know. But what about the future, what will they be made off in the future? According to the magazine article the scientists from
Japan’s Fuji Spinning are hoping to sell a new kind of a T-shirt, and real soon. They are saying that they are making a new kind of T-shirt which will exude our daily dose of Vitamin C, which will be absorbed through the skin, through more than 30 washings. The scientists also say that other vitamins and medicines are also promised. In contrast the scientists from Tactex Controls Inc. of Victoria are making a thin rubber film, likewise embedded with optics, which can be placed beneath fabric so they can make it responsive to touch.
Besides Tactex, Israeli Vission Enterprises Ltd. are putting video on textiles by weaving them with fibre-optics threads that glow where they crisscross. The Tactex president Rob
Inkster imagines new technology married to a fabric display like Visson’s: “There’s a patch on your T-shirt or sleeve. It looks like a cellphone and you can use it like a cellphone. A moment later, it looks like a video game and you can play it.” Or as he says maybe it just goes back to looking like a T-shirt. These technologies are really something; who would imagine few years ago to put on a T-shirt which gives you vitamins or medicines, or you can use it like a cellphone or a video game, and who knows what the scientists will be making after 20 or 30 years. The next thing that comes to our eyes in the picture is jogging pants or the jogging suit, which nowadays are made of nylon or polyester. But in the future they will be made of something that we could never imagine, so what will that be? According to the article the biotechnologists from the university in Dartmouth, Mass., have increased the possibility with fibres that contain living bacteria. Their idea is to make textiles impregnated with micro-organisms that eat dirt, perspiration and body oil. So we will be wearing clothes with bacteria, in the future! “You could end up having feed your shirt instead of wash it,” as jokes the researcher Alex Fowler. Therefore our future will be really interesting; we will have T-shirts which turn into cellphones or video games, and that will give us vitamins and medicine, and our jogging suit will contain bacteria’s that will eat dirt. The other thing that comes to our eyes is the technological box holded by the character, and also the buildings behind him. According to the article the scientists say that there are also other advances, in micro circuitry and manufacturing, they are making it possible to combine new materials with computer processors in places we would never think of before nor imagine. Let’s say for example, in colour-changing clothing (that our character probably is wearing), self-adjusting spectacles or a motorized suitcase that follows its owner. Therefore the technological box holded by the character is in case a suitcase which follows his owner. At Shanghai University in China, researchers have unveiled paint that changes from (heat-reflecting) blue in summer, to (heat-absorbing) red in winter. So the buildings behind our character are probably painted with unveiled paint. Also a Toledo, Ohio, glassmaker has developed self-cleaning panes that break down specks of dirt, allowing the grime to rinse away in the rain. Who knows what other purpose the buildings behind our character have, they change color they have self-cleaning panes, or such as we will have suitcases that will follow us, and color changing clothes, and who knows what else. By wrapping up all things from above, every detail in the picture tells us about the contents of the magazine article; if we know how to look at it.
The future withholds many things for us which we can never imagine. Such as: jogging suit which contains dirt eating bacteria, color changing clothes, T-shirts which will provide us with vitamins and medicine or T-shirts which change to cellphones and video games, suitcases that will follow us or buildings that will change color to absorb heat or reflect it, but these are the technological things that scientists are making right now according to the magazine article, and who knows what will they be doing 20 or 30 years after. Maybe we will have shoes with rockets that can make us fly; or have glasses with TV on them like in movie “Back In The Future”; or maybe they are making them right now; who
knows?
Our future is uncertain and what it withholds we will know when we see it! That’s the beauty of it.

By:Beni Cufi