What Will Life Be Like in the Year 2008?

[CptStern]

taken from an article dated nov 1968

http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2008/03/24/what-will-life-be-like-in-the-year-2008/

 

[Dog--]

hehe.. Yea, my day is pretty much exactly that.

 

[AJ Rimmer]

Why plastic roads?

 

[taviow]

Plastic is the way to go.

 

[CyberPitz]

Are we sure this isn't a part of some Science Fiction book? I mean....what the ****?

 

[Slug Advisor]

Wel, James Berry must feel disappointed...

 

[VirusType2]

Why plastic roads?

It's recyclable. And delicious.


The article was pretty much dead on, except for the whole 'words written on the page' part.


(Random Traffic Jam Image)
http://blog.wired.com/cars/images/2007/06/17/traffic_jam.jpg

Not quite doing the speedy 250 mph, being parked on the highway and all, but perhaps it's too early in the year to call it.

 

[taviow]

Well, at least the car didn't fly...

 

[ailevation]

well you gotta hand it to him about the traffic notifier

 

[taviow]

Everything will be like the Jetsons in 2010. Seriously.

 

[VirusType2]

Actually that is a damn good prediction after reading the rest of the article.

I'm suprised he went there with the domed cities though. Everything else already here (or a similar substitute) or is possible, or may materialize in the next few years. He basically described the internet, GPS, cellphones, video conferencing, pills to help with memory, powerful medical computers, etc. That stuff is here. But for some reason, the doctor still likes to bonk me in the knee with that silly rubber hammer.


I read something recently about house cleaning robots. There are carpet cleaner bots and things like that, but the problem is making the robot understand its environment. Sure you can attach cameras for eyes, but the problem lies in making the robot understand what it is seeing, and how to interact with it properly. Housecleaning robots as described are far into the future. I'd say another 15-25 years at least.

 

[Terminator]

It's not November 18 2008 yet.

We could develop the air cushioned car, the dome cities and the like in the next 8 months!

 

[evil^milk]

2008 is ****ing awesome.

 

[Saturos]

ROFL! I love these futurist types. They are so silly.

They did accurately predict the "flat TV screen" thing though as well as the internet and GPS systems to some degree.

Still, I'd say about %90 of futurist predictions, both back then and today, are nothing but a pipe-dream of sci-fi geeks the world over. :cheese:

I watched that 50 years from now special they showed on TLC awhile back, and I doubt the future of 2055 will be anything like they predicted. I take stuff like this with a grain of salt. I guess because I'm a realist.

If anyone ever reads Popular Science, you'd know what I'm talking about.

An article Popsci back in 1987 stated that PCs will " automatically turn on detecting your presense in your room and simultaneously download all new e-mails for the day." This might be true in renowned universities and IT research centers, but nowhere near mass commercial distribution yet. :|

 

[kineaesth]

Morons. The future will be like this in November.

 

[DEATHMASTER]

Its like they're saying the same bullsh17 now.

 

[Saturos]

Its like they're saying the same bullsh17 now.

Exactly. Today's futurists aren't much different than back then are they?

 

[morgs]

Lol, plastic roads, imagine the melting.

 

[Raziaar]

Plastic Roads!

There's a genuinely intelligent way to use our last remaining petroleum reserves!

 

[Beerdude26]

I, for one, welcome our new plastic overlords.

 

[Terminator]

The future is in the past.

One 'fantastic futuristic' thing that i actually think is well within our capabilities in the next couple of decades is greatly enhanced lifespan and more capability for preventing disease.
Medical and computer tech are the 2 biggies of recent times and will be so for a few years more.

 

[Geogaddi]

Like Virus said, it's actually a fairly impressive picture.

 

[The Monkey]

Four hours work days... I'd like that.

 

[Sulkdodds]

It's interesting to see the things Mr Berry got right - we do have readable news on screen, we do have (rudimentary) car computers, we've got indoor climate control, we've got memory pills and medical computers...

What is really impressive is the extent to which the article predicts the information infrastructure and the linked nature of modern computer systems.

Computers...handle travel reservations, relay telephone messages, keep track of birthdays and anniversaries, and even figure the monthly bills for electricity, water, telephone and other utilities...employers deposit salary checks directly into their employees' accounts. Credit cards are used for paying all bills. Each time you buy something, the card's number is fed into the store computer station. A master computer then deducts the charge from your bank balance.

Computers not only keep track of money, they make spending it easier...

Here the article prefigures the information explosion that leads to what is now a fully digitised world; money is handled, just as predicted, fluidly and invisibly - although, not as predicted, it hasn't disappeared as hard cash. More than that, although most people use a personal computer rather than "buying time on a national computer", such an idea does accurately reflect modern practises: there is a myriad of remote services available over net, like those phone numbers that can identify music through a microphone, or, indeed, automated tech support. Internet and TV shopping are clearly described, while the evocation of modern linked-up business - where assets are virtual and their communication and transfer is easy and frequent is spot on - just replace the attache case with a modern palm pilot and its little graphcis tablet interface.

I think this actually makes the article a triumph, because the casual proliferation of information technology is probably the most important technological change in the last 20 years if not since the article was written. "The world's information is available to you almost instantaenously"? Damn straight.

Where it goes wrong is in its presumption of the schema that such changes would follow. It envisions co-ordinated homes, automatic cars, perfectly marshalled traffic, instant/competent repairmen, and - most strikingly - money having "all but disappeared" and labour being carefully controlled, thus easier. Here it assumes a kind of organisation I can't imagine ever having developed in America - a collectivist commitment to providing central efficient services. But the information revolution has rather resulted in a kind of chaos of alternate disassociation, and de-centralisation, alongside the sometimes excessive control freakiery of some modern governments, particularly in the UK. What has not happened is a kind of technocratic paradise where because everything is linked to a central mainframe, everything is easier.

So the article is on the money with technology but its ideas about how society would change are rather off the mark. As I hope to illustrate, we've become more individualistic, not less:

Observe the message. It's one we're familiar with: not only does the advert appeal to commonly held myths and romances, invoking magic, but it also implicates that the product only unlocks something which is already present in the person who uses it - "a new you".

But as I looked at it the wording struck me as odd. I realised that, today, such an advert would not describe the product, which "awakens", but would fully focus on the individual. "Awaken sleeping beauty," it would read, commanding the user, letting them imagine that to buy and use the product is a positive action of self-help. It is no longer implicated that all the power is with the reading individual, but explicit: by making the statement a personal address, a reader becomes the focus as well as the object of the sentence, and encouraged to percieve the power of their own true shining self as the activator for the product's operation. It is no longer fashionable to highlight the product but to highlight the person, because of the proliferation - especially since the neo-liberalism of Reagan and Thatcher - of the myth of self.

Remember - in the modern world it's you that matters, the individual that has the power - and nobody else (certainly not advertisers)!

 

[Saturos]

Brilliantly explained Sulk. I do agree that many of the technological breakthoughs have come true, but I believe our society is even more "detached" than it has ever been, contrary to the author's belief of a technological and peaceful utopia. IT Technology has only made many people anti-social individualists for the most part. Humans will always be selfish and will never learn to share and/or live in peace imo. :| It has been man-kind's biggest flaw since the beginning and it will always be that way. Technology only gives those humans with selfish desires (90% of the entire race probably) even more convenience to be selfish.

 

[Atomic_Piggy]

Lol 2008 is gonna rock. Shame we have to wait so long to get there.

 

[Nathan]

Untill we get rid of goverment etc, we'll have a nice cool future.

 

[Emporius]

One 'fantastic futuristic' thing that i actually think is well within our capabilities in the next couple of decades is greatly enhanced lifespan and more capability for preventing disease.
Medical and computer tech are the 2 biggies of recent times and will be so for a few years more.

I suggest we work on Africa first before enhancing our own lives.

 

[dumba$$]

They did accurately predict the GPS systems to some degree.
:|

WRONG. IT SAID IN THE ARTICAL THAT THEY WOULD ACTUALLY TAKE YOU TO THE RIGHT PLACE!

sorry. it had to be done...

 

[evil^milk]

Sulk, you never cease to impress me.

<3

 

[Omnomnick]

We could develop the air cushioned car, the dome cities and the like in the next 8 months!

Yeh, the dome city, that'd be great, if loads of people yawn at once there would be no oxygen left.

Anyway, how do you invent a dome city, just go watch the Simpsons Movie, or just put a big bit of plastic over a city. Simple...

 

[Apocalypse89]

I'm always amazed by how optimistic the '50s and '60s were.

Mention the word "future" back then: Flying cars, space vacations, robots, people living happier lives, etc.

Mention the word "future" today: Global warming, pollution, terrorism, war, corporatons controlling everything, etc.

I bet if you took someone from the '50s and '60s and brought them to the year 2008, they'd be disappointed by everything except our electronics and communications. Those are really the only fields where we've advanced anywhere near as much as they predicted.

What happened?

 

[Dan]

I'm always amazed by how optimistic the '50s and '60s were.

Mention the word "future" back then: Flying cars, space vacations, robots, people living happier lives, etc.

Mention the word "future" today: Global warming, pollution, terrorism, war, corporatons controlling everything, etc.

I bet if you took someone from the '50s and '60s and brought them to the year 2008, they'd be disappointed by everything except our electronics and communications. Those are really the only fields where we've advanced anywhere near as much as they predicted.

What happened?

Yeah, but they never would have imagined a global nformation network over which you can give instructions to a man in a chicken suit thousands of miles away and watch him perform said instructions.

 

[alehm]

Reminds me of the Popular Mechanics 1954 prediction of what the 2004 personal home computer would look like

 

[Shakermaker]

Great post Sulk.

And lol @ the pic ^^ I want a big valve like that on my comp.

 

[Geogaddi]

Reminds me of the Popular Mechanics 1954 prediction of what the 2004 personal home computer would look like

*snip

I'm pretty sure this turned out to be a hoax.

 

[Dan]

I am pretty sure that picture was made by The Onion.

 

[theotherguy]

Yes, that's a hoax created by The Onion. That's actually a picture of an old submarine control room in a museum with the man, television and keyboard photo shopped in.

EDIT: As for futurism and the article in general, futurists tend to overpredict some technologies and social changes and underpredict others. This is because futurists tend to focus on current trends and specific discoveries, and extrapolate them into the future, rather than predicting new trends and discoveries, or taking all fields of science into account.

For instance, in the article it is clear that he overpredicted centralized automation and new fields of engineering, while he underpredicted social, familial and political change. Some aspects were right on, like having a home computer that handles the finances and allows easy access to information. The reason he fell short of predicting the future accurately is because these were the sort of trends people saw in the 1960's: big, centralized computers performing fancy calculations which were immensely expensive, an explosive growth of the automobile, explosive growth of cities and urban areas, and radical political change around the world resulting in centralization and control.

Today's futurists likely suffer the same problems. Futurists tend to focus on specific technologies and ignore the culmination of future technologies and the possibilities of entirely different political and social systems. You have genetic futurists, which focus mainly on genetic engineering and personal body modification, but which ignore potential revolutions in computing, robotics and transportation, the cyberpunk futurists, which focus on the growth of the internet and the ability of brain-computer interfaces, but which leave other fields like robotics, genetic engineering and political change alone, the roboticist futurists, which focus on changes made by intelligent machines and robots, but which largely ignore other areas, the political futurists, which focus on political change but ignore changing technologies, space futurists, which predict the future in space based on current technologies without considering changes made on Earth... etc. etc.

Futurists also tend to ignore these days the possibility of a major global depression, a major world war, or a re-establishment of world economic or military power. In 50 years, we may be facing a whole new set of political problems which will overshadow the measly economic affairs of today, or we could experience an increase in stability and globalization. The USA might be overtaken by another superpower. The EU could become a federation. Mexico could fall into civil war. China could become a democracy, and Russia an authoritarian state. Changes on the global scale could greatly affect the outcome of what the world looks like in the future.

Futurists also like to predict utopian societies, which almost never occur, or worldwide totalitarian states, which would be impossible to govern and even harder to put in place. They like to envision global catastrophe, which is unlikely, or see changes as happening too fast or too slow.

Predicting the future with any accuracy is difficult. Predicting the future of the entire world over a half a century's time is impossible. There are some who get it right, others who get it wrong, but most of the time individual futurists get a mix of right and wrong, which is exactly what you'd expect, given the difficulty of predicting the future. For instance, in 1984, Ray Kurzweil predicted the start of Wikipedia, Youtube, DVD players, a touch-screen phone like the iPhone, wall-mounted plasma displays, and easy internet shopping, but completely missed the mark on things like robotic teleconferencing, smart cars, smart houses, and home robotics.

 

[Atomic_Piggy]

For instance, in 1984, Ray Kurzweil predicted the start of Wikipedia, Youtube, DVD players, a touch-screen phone like the iPhone, wall-mounted plasma displays, and easy internet shopping, but completely missed the mark on things like robotic teleconferencing, smart cars, smart houses, and home robotics.

Ray kurzweil is a pretty smart guy, but also terrifiying. Have you seen his freaking health regimin? Christ.

 

[Raziaar]

Reminds me of the Popular Mechanics 1954 prediction of what the 2004 personal home computer would look like

Your computer doesn't look like that?

What do your computers look like? <glances at his computer room door>

I think its amazing owning a computer that looks like the control console for a nuclear missile silo.