Help me find the origins of this phrase...

October 9, 2006 5:28 PM

What is the origin of the phrase "The future is now"?
posted by sholdens12 to society & culture (11 comments total)

Good guess only: I heard it for the first time as the song "Future is Now" on Nina Hagen's 1982 album "Nunsexmonkrock."
posted by CMichaelCook at 5:47 PM on October 9, 2006

Perhaps this short film from 1955:

The Future is Now

But I'd reckon is was uttered sometime before that. It does seem to be the sort of sentiment that would make sense coming from the 50s.
posted by TonyRobots at 5:48 PM on October 9, 2006

Nam June Paik
posted by tellurian at 6:36 PM on October 9, 2006

Sorry, that reference wasn't very clear. Here's a better one.
posted by tellurian at 6:43 PM on October 9, 2006

I attach the phrase to Honeywell commercials.
posted by KneeDeep at 9:33 PM on October 9, 2006

/offtopic-ish:

Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems motto: "Where the future begins tomorrow" is an obvious riff on this.
posted by quin at 10:28 PM on October 9, 2006

I always think of Jim Carrey from the Cableguy, but I believe it's originally from Nam June Paik, a Korean artist I learned about in film school.
posted by PetiePal at 8:54 AM on October 10, 2006

This is a very common sports cliche, I probably first encountered it in the early 60's. In baseball, I remember managers being quoted "The future is now!" usually about halfway through the season. I understood that to mean that said manager's club was in the hunt for the pennant, so farm team prospects would be swapped to rival teams for a seasoned veteran to shore up the major league team's weaknesses, before the trade deadline. The team would trade away some of its possible future stars to maximize its chances to get into the Fall Classic.

In those days, it was traditional to nurture players through the farm system until enough players matured to make a run at the pennant. Then the National league entry would lose to the Yankees in the World Series.
posted by shadrivers at 9:26 AM on October 10, 2006

Is there any date attached to the Paik quote? it would seem from TonyRobots IMDB link that Paik would have had to have said that before the age of 23 in order for it to be the origin of the phrase rather than that film or something earlier.
posted by jrb223 at 12:16 PM on October 10, 2006

Damn! I always thought it was from "I think we are all bozos on this bus".
posted by pointilist at 10:18 PM on October 10, 2006

Is there any date attached to the Paik quote?
Yes, jrb223. After some searching, from here: "People talk about 'the future' being tomorrow," he said in an interview with Artnews in 1995, “ ‘the future' is now."
Looks like Burton Benjamin is more entitled to claim it. I thought it seemed a bit strange that wherever it is attributed to Paik that it's usually qualified with something like - "often credited with" or "reputed to have coined".
posted by tellurian at 12:19 AM on October 11, 2006