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Earlier today, a friend sent me a link to this old-ish post from the excellent history/art/cultural curiosity blog Paleo-Future. It's a document written by John Elfreth Watkins, Jr., for Ladies' Home Journal in 1900. It is entitled "What May Happen in the Next Hundred Years."
I couldn't resist reading the whole thing (see the big version here), and am compelled—as a person of the future—to log a few replies.
The most enjoyable thing about so many of these predictions is the dense mixture of what came true; what didn't; and what sort of came true, only with an ironic twist. Are we taller? Yes. Living longer? Longer than fifty, thank you very much. So surely those ultra-convenient commutes from our suburban homes to our urban or exurban offices are to thank for these incredible gains? Not so much. I'll see your 40 years of added life expectancy, and raise you some appalling late-twentieth-century gridlock.
A few other quick takes follow:
O rly?!
d00d, joo just got pwnt by teh future!
Good prediction! I might take more kindly to air conditioners if I could think of them as 'spigots.' No mention of CFCs, however. Where'd they think that cold air was going to come from?
I guess we, uh, tried.
It's true, strawberries have gotten huge. But the bigger they get, the more bland they seem to taste.
Hovercraft! Will someone please build a giant hovercraft so I can get to England without flying? Paging Richard Branson?!
All that and so much more, sadly.
American public education, you've come a long way, and you've still got a long way to go.
If you consider the internet a series of tubes, then why yes.
It's funny. This probably would be possible, if there were any money in giant, violet-scented pansies. It has me thinking about what other novelty hybrids I'd like to see.
It's kind of crazy how they didn't see plastic coming, exactly. Talk about an invention that really changed the world.
But I think I will pass on the beet-sized peas for now.
Just call me old-fashioned.
Comments
To a fairly young person (I'm 22) the world seems largely static. Yes, I have personally witnessed the Internet take off from virtually nothing to the world-changing network we have today, but aside from that not a whole lot has changed significantly since I became socially aware. Articles like these fascinate me. 100 years is a relatively short time, and it fills me with a sense of awe to think how much we have accomplished in that time. I wonder what completely unpredictable advances the next 100 years will bring?
Posted by: Jolly Bloger | September 17, 2007 3:19 PM
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Posted by: Richard | September 17, 2007 4:39 PM
Fascinating that they didn't predict heavier-than-air flight...when it was only three years away from coming to pass.
No wireless broadcasting either...and Marconi had had his most successful demonstration just a year earlier.
Posted by: Pat O'Neill | September 17, 2007 4:55 PM
The fascinating thing about these old predictions is how much they are coloured by the prejudices of the people making them, and how they can't see the things that are going to change the most.
A French magazine of 1900 (can't find the reference, sorry) had some pictures of the typical Paris household in 2000, with the usual personal helicopter rigs (not expected anytime soon) but it predicted electrical news and mail. However the mail and news was printed off and bought in by a servant on a tray. Where are the servants?
And, of course, HG Wells' prediction that the people of India and China would lose population relative to Europe and the US and become insignificant in the world. Probably the opposite of the truth.
Posted by: Alan Williams | September 17, 2007 6:13 PM
My favorite was the bit about pianos changing their sound from sad to happy, and many devices being used to heighten the emotional content of music.
At first I just chuckled, and then I realized: what could be more emotionally moving then synthesizers!
Posted by: Justin | September 17, 2007 11:04 PM
I spent my summer vacation in northern Minnesota this year and didn't have a single mosquito bite and didn't see a single deerfly. Maybe the future really is here.
Posted by: FS | September 17, 2007 11:40 PM
I liked the comment about a husband in the middle of the Atlantic ocean being able to speak to his wife in her bedroom in Chicago, very very true today. He also predicted that movies would have true to life sound, it just gets better and better.
Posted by: JaminaDavida | September 18, 2007 1:10 AM
Exterminating "the horse" to diminish the number of house flies. Now that was revolutionary thinking!
Posted by: Tilsim | September 18, 2007 1:42 AM
35 years of life expectancy in the "happy" 1900 years? Rather chilling, isn't it?
Posted by: Christophe Thill | September 18, 2007 4:44 AM
Alan Williams - the French illustrations you're thinking about might be the series of cigarette cards by Jean Marc Cote commissioned to celebrate the turn of the 20th century. Many of them are reproduced in Asimov's Futuredays, and probably elsewhere.
Posted by: Barry Jelbert | September 18, 2007 6:21 AM
35 years for a typical life expectancy sounds a bit short. I have done some genealogy for my family, and the average lifespan for my 19th century forebears seems to have been 60-65, with only a few dying in their 40s and many living into their 70s and 80s, and that in areas not notable for a long life expectancy (mostly south Louisiana, plus Arkansas, Mississippi, and Kentucky). I could believe 35 years as an overall population average, given the high levels of infant mortality and childhood disease. However, those who survived early childhood could generally expect lifespans significantly longer than 35 years (albeit less than the 78 year average now).
Posted by: MJ Memphis | September 18, 2007 8:48 AM
@Jolly Bloger:
I am just in my mid-thirties and feel the world has changed quite a bit: When I was a kid, we still had a black and white TV. Colour TV was available, but considered too expensive by my parents. Phones still had "wheels" for dialing. I remember some time when mobile phones were something CEOs had installed in their cars. People were rather stuck in 300 miles of traffic jam than take a plane from Germany to Spain or Italy. I remember when computers became something you had at home for fun. Can you think of a time when people were not running around with a cell phone in their pocket and desks with a keyboard drawer didn't exist?
Posted by: Oliver | September 18, 2007 9:53 AM
It is interesting to note that the writer missed out oil entirely!
Posted by: Peter Melia | September 18, 2007 3:21 PM
d00d, joo just got pwnt by teh future!
More like "u just got pwnd by teh Mark Twain!" That's one of his....
Where are the servants?
I've heard that Agatha Christie saying that when she was a kid, "I never dreamed I'd someday be rich enough to afford a motorcar, or too poor to afford a servant".
I am just in my mid-thirties and feel the world has changed quite a bit:
An even forty here.... I remember wheel dials on telephones too, but I also remember trying to take a telephone apart, and finding it full of Vaseline... Ma Bell didn't want you looking in their stuff! I grew up watching Batman and Star Trek in black and white. My first computer was a 4K Commodore PET, with a chiclet keyboard, and a bolted-on 6" screen -- monochrome display, but they had block-graphics characters! When you called somebody on the phone, they asked you where you were, not vice versa. The first ATM I used printed its transaction records directly into my bankbook. (Remember those?)
The shift toward ready-cooked meals is certainly happening, just not as extreme as the article hoped. I cook a lot of my own meals, but I also buy frozen dinners (rather better than the "TV dinners" of my childhood). I use a lot of vegetables from the freezer, and even precooked meats. Back in NYC, most of the supermarkets had a delivery service, with some of them using outside services such as FreshDirect or PeaPod. Restaurants are certainly more plentiful then they were back then, and I suspect they're relatively cheaper.
Coal is indeed no longer used for "heating or cooking". The seacoast hydropower sounds like an early crank idea -- the basic problem there is the lack of a significant potential difference to exploit. (There had been some recent work on wave-powered generators.) Hovercraft have been relegated to niche uses; as noted above, it's HTA flight that carries us across the ocean overnight. On the other hand, a ship has the advantage that engine failure is survivable!
There are plenty of oversized roses and other flowers about, if not quite cabbage-sized. Oddly, the blue and green roses have turned out to be unexpectedly difficult -- I believe there is a black one out there.
But yes, some of the biggest differences came from things they had no way of predicting....
Posted by: David Harmon | September 18, 2007 6:48 PM
Oh, yes, and that 35-year life expectancy he mentions is almost certainly from birth, and yes, the drastic increase in LEFB has been mostly reductions in infant mortality. LE from age 5 has surely gone up somewhat, but not even close to double.
Posted by: David Harmon | September 18, 2007 6:53 PM
Bah, in my longer comment, I see a "has" mutated into "had". The wave-powered generators are "breaking" news in the present day.
Posted by: David Harmon | September 18, 2007 7:37 PM
Hovercraft! Will someone please build a giant hovercraft so I can get to England without flying?
Actually, the ship described (a catamaran) is the current Blue Ribband holder for an Atlantic crossing of just over 2 days. So that one is kinda true. She's the Master Cat, a Norwegian ferry capable of carrying 800 passengers and 200 cars.
Posted by: Graculus | September 18, 2007 10:58 PM
While the article shows some amazing insights into the direction of technology, it completely misses when trying to predict social change. It is depressing to compare the reality of today with the writers optimism about universal physical fitness and improvements in education.
Posted by: Kevin | September 20, 2007 9:26 PM
The 35 year life span is depressing but (as others mentioned) that is probably based on average affected by infant mortality.
Too bad that the English alphabet hasn't changed since 1900. When I first took a Spanish class, the alphabet contained ch and ll but 2 years ago I attended some refresher courses and those letters were notably absent. Obviously, this class was following the lead of Spain unlike the more traditional class I had earlier. If Spain can lose a few letters, I think English speakers can deal with a few less. For example, 'kut' for 'cut' and 'aks' for 'axe' is fine with me.
Posted by: Jared | September 22, 2007 9:54 AM
Yikes! Missing article: "based on an average affected by infant mortality"
Posted by: Jared | September 22, 2007 9:57 AM
So ... why don't we have universal health care yet?
Posted by: mollishka | September 24, 2007 5:06 PM
So ... why don't we have universal health care yet?
We do! Oh... you're from America. I see.
:(
Posted by: SmellyTerror | September 24, 2007 8:23 PM
Why the fixation on growing giant-size plants, rather than, say, more of them, more nutritious ones or with new tastes?
Posted by: kai | September 25, 2007 5:27 AM
Actually, the hovercraft prediction wasn't completely off: http://www.vincelewis.net/ekranoplan.html
Posted by: Craig | September 25, 2007 8:09 PM
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Posted by: sex shop | December 22, 2007 11:33 AM