Did he anticipate YouTube? Photograph: Eamonn McCabe
He has been credited with foreseeing the Reagan administration, the arrival of gated communities, the architecture of Canary Wharf and widespread ecological disaster, but has the most prescient science fiction writer of the last three decades also anticipated something else? Did JG Ballard anticipate YouTube?
As far back as 1984 the Oracle of Shepperton was quoted in an interview as saying, "I'd like to organise a Festival of Home Movies! It could be wonderful - thousands of the things... You might find an odd genius, a Fellini or Godard of the home movie, living in some suburb. I'm sure it's coming..." Indeed it was. Ballard's obsession with home movies might have seemed a little perverse back then and yet today watching them on YouTube is as routine as switching on the telly.
A group of Ballard devotees have instigated The 1st Ballardian Festival of home movies, a kind of belated realisation of the author's vision using nothing more than a video-enabled mobile phone. You can watch the entire collection at Ballardotube ("the net's only dedicated Ballard channel"). Ballard has always revelled in the mundane underside of contemporary culture, once remarking that the Los Angeles Yellow Pages was "richer in human incident than all the novels of Balzac".
The festival organisers admit that they have yet to find the Fellini of the very small screen, but it is early days. "Next year, who knows?" reads a statement on the festival website. "Perhaps we'll get entrants to simulate the filmed ratissages in Super-Cannes, or Bobby Crawford's home porno movies in Cocaine Nights."
