Portability as a tech feature, while today accepted essential, was introduced by science fiction writers and developed visually through the techniques of editing and montage. Beginning with the first sci-fi films by Georges Melies, combination and montage defied the existing limitations of movement in space and time of the real world and created the magic of the invention. My argument here is that the formal properties and set designs from sci-fi novelists and screenwriters have formed audiences’expectations and demands for the properties and functions of gadgets.

According to my findings from Playboy, since its launch in 1957 and all throughout the 1960s, the popularity of radio-broadcast devices, portable and personalized, was going up. The communication marvels presented excessively on-screen were tied into the advertisements of the available radio-communication systems.

And some peculiar ads that I found hilarious because if there’s supply, there’s also a demand…

For Playboy, selling “status” goods was the main marketing target. Among the gadgets of the 1960s, still in a very limited range because the semiconductor industry was very young, the devices for capturing radio broadcast and fleeting memories were most popular. They were marketed as something you can give as a gift in exchange for some favorability points with your “playmate”, they were targeting a wide audience, and they were designed for pleasure. Hedonic goods at their prime.

The images of future have always been attractive, but in the 60s future has become a cult. There wasn’t an item you couldn’t advertise using the space industry imagery.

(Cover image: Playboy, Dec 1966 vol 13 iss 12)

I selected the Playboy Magazine archives as the main research source because, besides its longevity, it is famous for printing many iconic sci-fi writers. Those authors, like Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Robert A Heinlein, Frederik Pohl, Rod Serling, Theodore Sturgeon, William Tenn, and Ursula K Le Guin, have predicted designs for the future, both in the real world of technology and in terms of film imagery. I have reviewed copies of all Playboy Magazine issues from 1957 to 1970, locating communication-related gadgets and sci-fi influenced aesthetics.