I went to The Future of Us exhibition a week ago. It was promoted and shared on Facebook and there is a particular respond that prompted me to go book a ticket fast. Someone actually said,” The Future of Us shall stay but not the exhibition!” This statement pressed my urgency button and the next moment I was there all geared up ready to experience something great!

The Future of Us exhibition claimed multi sensory experience and in my understanding, it means it involves all our senses: see; touch; smell; hear; taste or more. For a while, I began to associate multi sensory experience to the likes of the Transformer Ride at the Universal Studio. The feeling is pretty awesome if you have taken that ride before. You experience 3-D imagery; movement; surround sound; vibration and even explosion in front of your face. That is the multi sensory experience that I know! Perhaps this is a bit off the map. Maybe something like the world you see in the movie Avatar would be equally impressive if our future environment looks like that. I wouldn’t mind if this is not the real deal.

The reality, however, is not anything like what I described but merely something similar to a polytechnic multimedia open house but just on a larger scale. The exhibition is more of a multimedia presentation at most combined with a touch of Science Center’s gadgets plus a few ‘high-tech’, mega size lookalike HDB flats that reminded you of visiting the HDB Hub! The content of the exhibition is not something alien or very futuristic that will send a ‘WoW’ here and there but gives you the impression that you don’t even have to step out of your house to work; play; learn; buy grocery or attend any function. Just imagine that our grandfathers who once lived in kampong and had embraced the ‘kampong spirit’, the future of us is the total opposite of this. Our future is ‘Ultimate Isolation’! The shopping malls are located not next, but within your apartment. You don’t have to attend a cooking class physically but your teacher will still mark your attendance because the projected hologram of yourself has attended the class. You can also experience the force of the Jedi! Raised your palm, the lights will turn on; palm facing downwards the light becomes dimmer; wave your hand in a circular motion and you hear classical music; do everything at combo and fast speed and you will see smoke coming out from the device (joking of course). These are just a few interesting example among others.

I may sound sarcastic but there is one that is worth praising. This is the best part. Nothing fanciful but plain swings for everyone to enjoy. That is the only place you see adults became a child and swinging happily away. There is a catch though. Everyone will need to swing as hard as they can to power up a generator that will puff out a foamy stuff! “ROAR” (sound) coming out from a constructed lion… Perhaps this is the multi sensory experience they are talking about!

The Future of Us exhibition is still worth a visit in my opinion. It is not all disappointment for me though it doesn’t live up to my expectation. I returned home feeling satisfied because I have gathered some potential ideas for my cartoon jokes. But seriously, is this the future for us? Do we really desire such a future? I don’t have the answer.

The Present Us

The Future of Us