shadowprison (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} shadowprison) wrote,@ 2008-09-10 08:23:00 |
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bold predictions for the far-off future of now
I've been fascinated with a show on the Discovery channel called Nextworld.
Some of the current technological breakthroughs are amazing and scary, but it's also interesting
to look back at what people expected our modern society to accomplish.
Here are some good ones that were listed on their website:
I've been fascinated with a show on the Discovery channel called Nextworld.
Some of the current technological breakthroughs are amazing and scary, but it's also interesting
to look back at what people expected our modern society to accomplish.
Here are some good ones that were listed on their website:
- "The actual building of roads devoted to motor cars is not for the near future, in spite of many rumors to that effect."
- Harper's Weekly, 1902
- "By the turn of this century, we will live in a paperless society."
- General Motors chairman Roger Smith, 1986
- "Automobiles will start to decline almost as soon as the last shot is fired in World War II. The name of Igor Sikorsky will be as well known as Henry Ford's, for his helicopter will all but replace the horseless carriage as the new means of popular transportation. Instead of a car in every garage, there will be a helicopter.... These 'copters' will be so safe and will cost so little to produce that small models will be made for teenage youngsters. These tiny 'copters, when school lets out, will fill the sky as the bicycles of our youth filled the prewar roads."
- Harry Bruno, aviation publicist, 1943
- "There is practically no chance communications space satellites will be used to provide better telephone, telegraph, television or radio service inside the United States."
- Federal Communications Commission member T.A.M. Craven, 1961
- "[By 1985], machines will be capable of doing any work Man can do."
- Nobel Prize-winning economist and artificial intelligence pioneer Herbert A. Simon, 1965
- "[In 2000] remote shopping, while entirely feasible, will flop -- because women like to get out of the house, like to handle merchandise, like to be able to change their minds."
- Time magazine, 1966
- "During the next 50 years, most of our clothes will be made in this way. The weaving process will largely be eliminated. The entire suit or dress may be turned out on great presses like those now printing, folding and mailing our color-illustrated magazines."
- Economist Roger W. Babson, 1950
- "In 15 years, more electricity will be sold for electric vehicles than for light."
- Inventor Thomas Edison, 1910
- "Plastic waste, by the year 2000, ought to be a comparatively minor problem ... non-returnable containers of any kind would certainly be illegal."
- Futurist M.W. Thring, 1973
- "[By 2000] houses will be able to fly ... The time may come when whole communities may migrate south in the winter, or move to new lands whenever they feel the need for a change of scenery."
- Science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, 1966
- "Before man reaches the moon your mail will be delivered within hours from New York to Australia by guided missiles. We stand on the threshold of rocket mail."
- U.S. Postmaster General, Arthur Summerfield, 1959
- "Remember 'The Jetsons' cartoon show where they would talk to neighbors on a television screen in their house ... now it's just around the corner."
- Futurist Steven Millett, 1996, predicting that the the television set would become a "interactive, videoconferencing device" by 2006
- "Two years from now, 'spam' will be solved."
- Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, 2004
- "Nuclear-powered vacuum cleaners will probably be a reality in 10 years."
- Alex Lewyt, president of vacuum cleaner company Lewyt Corp., 1955
- "Fooling around with alternating current is just a waste of time. Nobody will use it, ever."
- Inventor Thomas Edison, 1889
- "The coming of the wireless era will make war impossible, because it will make war ridiculous."
- Radio inventor Guglielmo Marconi, 1912
