Peter Adamson

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1,322 appearances 7 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard yesterday

Peter Adamson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 7 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 2.

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History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps · Bonus Episode: Glenn Adamson on A Century of Tomorrows · 16 Aug 2026 podcast

Interesting character, kind of charlatan, called Norman Belgeddes, who was an industrial designer, first generation of industrial designers, by the way, a whole profession that organized itself very much like trend forecasters around

trying to persuade companies that they knew what was going to come next.

And Belgeddi's, among other early designers, was particularly well known for this look that was called streamlining, where you would take not just vehicles that are actually moving, but also things like toasters and pencil sharpeners, and you would make them aerodynamic.

as if they were going to arrive in the future a little bit faster than everything else.

Or almost leaning forward temporarily.

And so that becomes the defining aesthetic of these early industrial desires for good reason, which is that they're presenting themselves as these kind of stylists of futurology.

And what Belgadius does for General Motors in the Futurama at the nineteen thirty nine World's Fair, which is the most popular exhibit at the World's Fair and has seen many millions of people over the course of the two years of the fair, is to create

what we would now think of as a kind of Disney esque people mover.

Of course Disney actually took it from him, not the other way around, because he's this is before Disneyland.

And he made a model City of the Future.

So this is nineteen thirty nine, the City of the Future is nineteen sixty.

And what he shows you is that America is going to be completely covered with highways and it's going to be a whole country and culture that's driven by the logic of the automobile.

As I said, General Motors is the sponsor.

So it wasn't surprising that he came up with that argument.

And he has the

Visitors in this these people move around a track and seats sort of flying above the city of the future, which is a gigant busy with like a giant train model, you know, hand built scale model of the landscape of the future, including cities, farms, et cetera.

And people are so arrested and convinced by this that you have to think that the mass experience of the Futurama just in this one building actually did have a dramatic effect on

the post war highway system and everything else that is driven literally and figuratively by the highway system.

Yeah.

That is the world we wound up living in actually here.

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