Up until the AI revolution, my vision of the future has always exceeded my ability to extract that vision from my brain.

I’m trained as an architect and I can draw, build models, illustrate renderings, etc. But two decades ago, producing a single futuristic concept image meant days of work.

Case in point: my Master’s Thesis at Harvard’s GSD in 1999-2000. I was painfully constrained by the technology of the time. I was literally shooting 35mm slides of 1/4″ scale models illuminated by other 35mm slide projectors, taking those to the camera store to be developed, waiting, scanning those slides, saving to Zip Drives that regularly corrupted.

I was working in Photoshop 4.0 on 400mHz computers, where basic changes like levels took serious processing time, and Photoshop still had no history palette/multiple undo. Saving the (relatively) large files was also slow. That meant that every single click counted…don’t screw up!

And early 3D modeling software was clunky to use and could take hours to render a single phong-shaded frame.

And while I was trying to explore a futuristic vision of spatially interactive digital surfaces, my out of touch architecture professors were eulogizing hand drafting pencil-on-velum or ink-on-mylar like some sacred craft. It was garbage.

So as a most-satisfying experiment, I took the 4 key images from my thesis and dropped them in Midjourney. And finally, in literally less time then would have taken me to walk to Ferranti-Dege’s in Harvard Square to pick up the damn Kodachrome, I can actually share with you what I had in my head back then.

So enjoy my old vision of the immersive digital future.