I write speculative fiction, cultural criticism, humor, and journalism, with a particular interest in retrofuturism, video games, fandom, and forgotten corners of pop culture history. My work has been published by Wired, Rolling Stone, Slate, McSweeney’s, Alta Journal, Flash Fiction Online, Underland Press, and Shacklebound Books. I also publish the newsletter Pop Cultural Precursors.
Found: Sony Aibo, Turing Terrier model
Found: Sony Aibo, Turing Terrier modelCompatible with FetchPro© for PlayStation VIII, won’t chew footware or attack mailbots One of my favorite projects when I was an editor at Wired magazine was the monthly back-page item Found: Artifacts From the Future. Each installment was a full-page image of some found object from a speculative near future. All explanation of what the object was and how it worked had to be diegetic—i.e., the page had to explain itself entirely through context and in situ text, with no annotation or caption. This was a great challenge for me as a writer/editor and for all of the designers, illustrators, and photographers I had the pleasure of working with. These pages never made much of an impact online because the fun was always in the fine print—which rarely came through at web resolution. I’m republishing them here to drill down on those cool details.
This page in the November 2003 issue imagines a 30th anniversary edition of the Sony Aibo robot dog. Technology has advanced so much by 2029 that it looks almost real. (A coworker brought their own pup in for the shoot, and we just gave it a bit of a Photoshop glow-up, complete with glowing eyes.) Sony’s line of robot dogs (cyber canines?) is actually still a thing several decades after its 1998 debut. The latest model debuted in 2018, and the programmable pooch received a system software update as recently as March 2025. But it’s hard to convey just how much it captivated the public imagination when it first debuted. This was no Furby or Teddy Ruxpin—with its sophisticated programmable features and a stiff price tag of several thousand dollars, it was very much positioned as a domestic robot, not a kid’s toy. Aibo seemed like the first faint glimmer of a future in which we’d all have virtual pets roaming our homes. Unless Roombas count, this has not yet come to pass. Close-up images and a reprint of the not-very-legible text on the box are below. Apologies to the designer and photographer, who aren't credited on the page. Apologies as well to the model—I’ve forgotten his name, but I distinctly remember that he was a very good boy.
TEXT FROM THE PRODUCT BOX
TEXT FROM THE PRODUCT BOX |
Genre Exercises
I write speculative fiction, cultural criticism, humor, and journalism, with a particular interest in retrofuturism, video games, fandom, and forgotten corners of pop culture history. My work has been published by Wired, Rolling Stone, Slate, McSweeney’s, Alta Journal, Flash Fiction Online, Underland Press, and Shacklebound Books. I also publish the newsletter Pop Cultural Precursors.
Read my dystopian sci-fi horror about End Times Reply Guys. "I don’t enjoy playing the role of That Annoying Internet Guy who reflexively replies with hectoring know-it-all comments like 'Why are you surprised?' or 'How is this news?' But people force me..." Read it here
Sorry, Villeneuve and David Lynch. This version wins even though it never made it past pre-production... Read about it in my newsletter.
NEW NEWSLETTER: In 1985, an ambitious game simulated the ruinous long-term effects of a conservative political agenda on a Midwestern city. It now feels less like dystopian sci-fi and more like current events. Read it here.