This NASA Art Contest Asked Kids to Imagine How Technology is Bringing the Future into the Present

The 2014 NASA LaRC Art Contest prompted kids to depict how technology is bridging the gap between the future and the present. See the full gallery, which covers themes such as robots, mars, and global warming, here. Gizmodo’s Matt Novak reports:

Much like the drawings and written predictions of American kids from earlier generations, there is a healthy mix of both optimism and pessimism. Optimism, it would seem, that we will one day conquer the stars in a way that our grandparents had only dreamed. Pessimism, in a way that can only be communicated with a handful of arctic animals surrounded by melting ice and an oppressive sun rising behind them.

The kids of today see the future a bit like the world of WALL-E, I suppose — complete with the “moldy apple trashin” recycling/compost robot above. But they also see robots on Mars. The only issue might be that we already have robots on Mars, leaving us to wonder whether kids today aren’t thinking as futuristically as we might have hoped.

Read more.


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