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Image Credits: Newscom and  Jim Henson Tribute Forum

Novelist Bruce Sterling, who gave a very hip keynote address on designer Norman Bel Geddes (1893-1958) at this year’s Flair Symposium "Visions of the Future," concluded his remarks with a challenge: Which of us has the courage to imagine the future like Bel Geddes did? Larger than life, impracticable, earnest, utopian, democratic, dazzling: can we still dream like that?

In this post, I give it a go with a foray into the sci-fi genre of Alternate History: What if Jim Henson (1936-1990) had lived a further ten years and had gotten involved in the Silicon Valley scene? How might computing have developed differently? 

Henson was the master toy-maker of his generation, and it seems to me the last of his kind. He made things not code; his creations were not merely imagistic but tangible. By mid-career, with Sesame Street, The Muppet Show, and Yoda from Stars Wars under his belt, he stretched the limits of his puppetry with Dark Crystal (1982), about which he said:

But with The Dark Crystal, instead of puppetry we're trying to go toward a sense of realism - toward a reality of creatures that are actually alive and we're mixing up puppetry and all kinds of other techniques. It's into the same bag as E.T. and Yoda, wherein you're trying to create something that people will actually believe, but it's not so much a symbol of the thing, but you're trying to do the thing itself. 

Image Credit: darkcrystalwikia.com

Aughra, pictured above, testifies to Henson's new puppetry, as do many of his later creations, such as those in Labyrinth (1986), The Storyteller (1988), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) and Dinosaurs (1991). 

Image Credit: Mirage Studio, Jim Henson's Creature Shop, and New Line Cinema 1990

Regrettably, as everybody knows, the movies went with computer generated imagery instead of Hensonian advanced puppetry. The scene of the official passing of the torch from animatronics and material models to CGI is Stephen Spielberg’s Jurassic Park (1993). In that film, real-life models are interspersed with computer modeling in a more promising fashion than has been subsequently achieved. The following "Making of Jurrasic Park" is instructive (the pertinent bit starts at 6:30):

Given Henson's influence in television and cinema, it is hard to see how it would not have extended to Silicon Valley had he lived just a little longer. What I'm suggesting is that, instead of cybertronics and iPads and smartphones, perhaps, if Henson had lived, our computing technology would have been embodied and embedded in entirely different ways. Perhaps playfulness and physical configurability would have been valued over information retrieval and display. The present inclination for some time now has been to engraft technology onto our bodies. 

Image Credit: Forbes

But if Henson had lived, I wonder whether our technology would be less egotistical, not to say monomaniacal. So obsessed we are with assessing our environments, ferreting out ever last bit of information, recording every image, every sound. If Henson had lived, maybe we would be looking at one another more directly instead of glancing up occasionally from our iPhones. Maybe our technology would be more fun, would be made more for fun and not for work. Each toy would be unique and textured, not smooth, homogenous and glossy. Wouldn’t you rather have Fiery than Siri?

Image Credit: http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Kevin_Clash

Introducing the brand new Sir Bounderton Stratchingberry: Twist it twice to bring up maps, double it once for text. Bounce and bring up your phone contacts. To answer, throw Sir Bounderton around your neck and bend the Snoozlebroger to your ear! Be warned: Sir Stratchingberry is fond of jumping rope and will occasionally break out in an operatic "It's Not Easy Bein' Green"!