Spielberg decided early on that he wanted the visual world of Minority Report to reflect essentially that which is around us every day – specifically Washington, D.C., where the story unfolds -- with pieces of the future peaking out. To aid in envisioning this future, Spielberg brought together the men and women helping to shape it. "I thought it would be a good idea to bring some of the best minds in technology, environment, crime fighting, medicine, health, social services, transportation, computer technology and other fields into one room to discuss what the future a half a century hence would be like," Spielberg notes.
From M.I.T. scientists such as John Underkoffler to urban planners, architects, inventors, writers (such as Generation X author Douglas Coupland), the Think Tank came together at a hotel in Santa Monica, California, to hash out the social and technological details of our very near future during a three-day conference. Sitting in were the filmmakers, along with screenwriter Scott Frank, and production designer Alex McDowell and his team. "We sat around in a room and talked through the aspects of how society would be affected over a five-, ten-, twenty-, thirty-year period," McDowell recalls, "what would change, what the trends were, and where they would logically end up. We knew that we would have to learn the answers to those issues we would have to go into a consumer environment."
The conversations encompassed everything from advances in medicine, to how people would brush their teeth, to transportation, urban planning, architecture and art. "Steven wanted backgrounds that we were familiar with, that we could relate to, and within the context of the familiar have spectacular props," notes producer Bonnie Curtis.
The gradual loss of privacy was a near unanimous prediction. "The reason is not so people can spy on you," explains Frank, "but so they can sell to you. In the not too distant future, it is plausible that by scanning your eyes, your whereabouts will be tracked. They will keep track of what you buy, so they can keep on selling to you."
"George Orwell’s prophecy really comes true, not in the twentieth century but in the twenty-first," the director explains. "Big Brother is watching us now and what what little privacy we have will completely evaporate in twenty or thirty years, because technology will be able to see through walls, through rooftops, into the very privacy of our personal lives, into the sanctuary of our families."
Spielberg’s vision for Minority Report was devoid of the natural disasters and wars that shaped many other futuristic films. Notes McDowell, "The technology is benign and getting more and more efficient and serving the world better." Offices would be entirely portable and personal technology like computers and phones would become built-in human accessories.
Generation X author Douglas Coupland dreamed up a number of products for the Washington D.C. of 2054, such as a sick-stick, a weapon that causes involuntarily vomiting, spray meat, and boosted cats, which have been engineered to grow to the same size as dogs.
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