#oneaday, Day 304: Head-Up Display

I’m a big sci-fi fan, as many of you will know. But one thing always confuses me when it comes to visual design for sci-fi movies, TV shows and games.

I am, of course, talking about the “information overload” screen displays. Take this example:

And, from the same source (SEGA’s Vanquish, if you were curious):

The future, it appears, will be filled with masses and masses of information floating around us in 360-degree 3D, very little of which we’ll actually need. And this is a pattern that is by no means limited to video games. We see it in movies, too. Any time you see a first-person view from a robot/android/cyborg/guy with mechanical penis that shoots lasers from the bellend, there’ll always be some inexplicable spinning numbers, wireframe graphics, text (inevitably in blue or green), blips or markers implying “scanning”.

Now, consider what a world where you’re bombarded with that much information in one go would be like. It’s bad enough having a hand-held device like an iPhone that showers you with push notifications, text messages, emails and all manner of other nonsense 24/7, but at least you can turn that off, switch it to silent, hide it in your sock drawer, whatever. But it seems that visual designers for sci-fi movies, TV shows and games believe that the future is filled with unnecessary, redundant and, often, meaningless information.

You don’t get sci-fi writers indulging in this, though, usually. Asimov’s Elijah Bailey never spent five pages worth of exposition staring at a green-hued computer screen wondering desperately which set of jiggling alphanumeric characters allowed him to open the door to his apartment, for example. If Charles Dickens wrote sci-fi, his protagonists might well do that. But, well, he’s not around to inflict that on us. Thank God.

In actuality, what we’re more likely to get, should we ever end up with head-mounted displays or computers in our brains, is something akin to a first-person shooter’s head-up display. Perhaps with the capability to install apps. So while you’re sitting in a boring meeting and not paying attention, you can be playing Snake instead. And no-one will be any the wiser, except when they see your eyes darting around to find the next apple. And when curious sound effects start emanating from your nostrils.

Actually, given the amount of time people waste with plain-sight devices like computers and smartphones, perhaps the ability to install apps into your own brain might not be the best idea.

So, the future then. Somehow I doubt it’s going to be quite the way it’s been represented to us in movies over the years. And that’s probably a good thing, since popular representations of the future often end up with most of us being horribly mutilated, raped and/or killed by machines/robots/aliens/demons from another dimension/the government.

The only hope is, of course, Star Trek.