Back casting - Guitars in the past

The guitar is actually an evolution of the design of the lute - the popular instrument in the period before.

The original design is of Spanish origin, and was considerably smaller, with four paired sets of strings or 'courses'. The modern day design has 5 single strings and is now primarily electric, solving the earlier issue of volume in large venues.

A lute player - (Antiveduto Grammatica 1620)

An early guitar, note the extra strings and small body - (Miayf.com 2010)

A modern guitar for comparison of design - (Musicplayer.com 2010)

It would be interesting to see what kind of instrument will succeed the guitar in its role as a staple instrument in popular music. If it is an adaptation of the guitar, what design features would change? Will the number of strings increase again? Will they revert to the old paired string format? (these guitar designs exist but are not widely used as of yet).

In the late 80's, Bill and Ted's excellent adventure was the start of the stoner-comedy movement, present today with films such as the 'Harold and Kumar' series. In the movie the main characters are in a fictional band, "Wyld Stallyns". The movie is arguably the first instance of air guitar in popular media, starting the phenomenon now present with the world championships sees in my present research.

 Bill and Ted 'Air guitar-ing' - (DEG 1989)

Another good example of guitars on the Hollywood scene is the movie Spinal Tap - a parody of the heavy metal music scene in a documentary format (a common format for detailing the lives of bands and musicians). The movie was popular enough to warrant the fictional band achieving some success in real life - a feat which has now been improved upon with the likes of the Gorillaz, an entirely animated band! (perhaps the next feat will be a band entirely computer synthesised, with literally no human involvement in the creation of their songs and appearence?).

Spinal Tap - (MGM, 1984)

The Gorillaz - (Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett 1998)

On television, there were a number of cartoon series that had heavily guitar based theme tunes to relate to the music tastes of the time, I myself remember the themes of shows such as Biker Mice from Mars and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and they influenced my taste in music today.

The Teenage mutant hero turtles original comic - (Mirage studio 1987)

The Biker Mice - (Rick Ungar 1993)

If music from popular cartoons works as a direct inflence on music taste as it has for me in the past, could companies use this to their advantage by running various shows and genres in tandem?