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What May Happen in the Next 100 Years (Predictions from 1901)
Eóin:
Some of these are fascinating. Attached is a scan but also linked is a typed up version which is much easier to read.
Predictions of the Year 2000
from The Ladies Home Journal of December 1900
The Ladies Home Journal from December 1900, which contained a fascinating article by John Elfreth Watkins, Jr. “What May Happen in the Next Hundred Years”.
Mr. Watkins wrote: “These prophecies will seem strange, almost impossible. Yet, they have come from the most learned and conservative minds in America. To the wisest and most careful men in our greatest institutions of science and learning I have gone, asking each in his turn to forecast for me what, in his opinion, will have been wrought in his own field of investigation before the dawn of 2001 - a century from now. These opinions I have carefully transcribed.” -http://www.yorktownhistory.org/homepages/1900_predictions.htm
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What May Happen in the Next 100 Years (Predictions from 1901)
mouser:
nice. :up:
Eóin:
In any collection of predictions there are always some ridiculous one but what impressed me are the ones which got concepts bang on even if the small details are off.
40hz:
What I find most interesting is that everybody (futurists, sci-fi writers, etc.) all missed the single biggest thing that changed just about everything - the ubiquitous microprocessor.
I was talking to some 20-somethings last week, and I realized they couldn't really grasp (or maybe they just couldn't believe) what life was like back in 1970. I think that speaks volumes about how radically different are the ways we work, live, and play compared to just 35 years ago.
Lashiec:
It's a shame some of the best predictions didn't turn out to be true (like those silent streets), and ironically some of them are told to be happen in the future as well, or are being researched at the moment. I wonder what was the reasoning behind those bigger fruits and vegetables, or the disappearance of the C, the X and the Q
What I find most interesting is that everybody (futurists, sci-fi writers, etc.) all missed the single biggest thing that changed just about everything - the ubiquitous microprocessor.
-40hz (August 24, 2008, 11:13 AM)
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Sci-fi writers understood some kind of "machine" was needed for certain tasks (there you have HAL9000 or the Navigators in Dune), but the miniaturization needed for consumer adoption was a difficult thing to predict. Heck, not even those directing computing companies were sure about it.
I was talking to some 20-somethings last week, and I realized they couldn't really grasp (or maybe they just couldn't believe) what life was like back in 1970. I think that speaks volumes about how radically different are the ways we work, live, and play compared to just 35 years ago.
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Then illustrate for us, youngsters, how it was back then :)
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