Here in the Future

From the 1952 novel “The Space Merchants” by Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth, about an advertising agency of the future: 

“I don’t have to tell you men that Point-of-Sale has its special problems,” Harvey said, puffing his thin cheeks. “I swear, the whole damned Government must be infiltrated with Consies! You know what they’ve done. They’ve outlawed compulsive subsonics in our aural advertising — but we’ve bounced back with a list of semantic words cues that tie in with every basic trauma and neurosis in American life today. They listened to the safety cranks and stopped us from projecting our messages on aircar windows — but we bounced back. Lab tells me,” he nodded to our Director of Research across the table, “that soon we’ll be testing a system that projects direct onto the retina of the idea.”

Just think how happy they’d be with Google Glass. In their world, congressmen and senators do not represent states, but are owned by corporations.

And here I thought this was supposed to be science fiction.