Creating an alternative to our Minority Report future

There’s a famous scene in the 2002 movie Minority Report, where Tom Cruise’s character John Anderton walks through a mall and is barraged by personalized holographic ads popping up everywhere he looks, asking if he wants a Guiness or a Lexus. It’s facilitated by omnipresent surveillance cameras and AI powered ambient computing. It’s all very dystopian.

Back in 2002, that future seemed a little far off. In 2018, it’s starting to feel pretty close to our actual experience. Re-targeted ads follow us around the internet. An alarming amount of our behaviors are tracked by our servant technology and services. And increasingly ambient devices recognize our faces and voices eager to sell us the next thing.

And while all of this represents everyday miracles of innovation and ingenuity, more and more people I talk to feel a fatigue about technology.

For all the wonderful things technology enables, the world that’s being created seems to be taking a toll on our collective psyches.

It’s sleek but cold. Hyper-functional but without a soul. It’s relentlessly distracting and spiritually exhausting.

It’s with this backdrop that I’ve started August & Wonder.

In a world inundated with information, where the promise of technology has given way to feelings of isolation and fatigue, August & Wonder creates connected decor objects that evoke and inform.

We are asking if the future can feel different. Can technology fade into the background, letting us be present to our surroundings while still connected? Can our tech inform us and make us feel something other than stressed? Can it be warm and inviting?

Our first object is The Market (pictured). It’s an artful kinetic sculpture of made of wood and metal. Yet, beneath it’s analogue steam punk exterior, beats the heart of the internet of things enabling the market to track in real time day-over-day percent change of eleven global market indices and four major cryptocurrency to an accuracy of up to 1/10th of a percent.

Having lived with the production prototype for some time, it’s still gives a jolt when The Market moves and I realize that the world has changed, if ever so slightly.

Of course, setting it to track Bitcoin is much more dramatic. All the drama of the events in the markets distilled into a beautiful object that moves when money moves

It is giving people that that jolt, that sense of magic and wondrous real-time connection to the world that is the driving purpose behind August & Wonder.

Our dream is that someone could sit in their room or office, and without any screens, without having to shout, yet know exactly what’s going on, simply because the objects have arranged themselves to show it at a glance.

It’s more Harry Potter than Minority Report.

If this vision future resonates with you, please join us on this journey.

Visit www.augustwonder.com to pre-order The Market or sign up for our mailing list to keep apprised of our latest releases.