The upwardly mobile characters in Jon Armstrong’s Grey, live in a futuristic world where they dine on exotic, fried whale sandwiches and are able to travel via private international highways. The idea of a private highway gives new meanings to Faith Popcorn’s predictions about the future of personal zoning. (Personal zoning, as described by Popcorn in her Dictionary of the Future, is any cordoned area reserved exclusively for the wealthy, e.g. VIP seating in nightclubs, or special service times where the rich can receive personal attention without having to come in contact with the general public).
Themes of transportation and the future of the social class structure are important elements in the T.R.U.E. project, and I have a feeling I’ll be thinking a lot more about Popcorn & Armstrong….
