What Will Life Be Like in the Year 2008? (Nov, 1968)
Filed under: Sign of the Times — @ 12:16 am
Source: Mechanix Illustrated
Issue: Nov, 1968
More articles from this issue
Well, we do have flat-screen computers you can write on that fit in a briefcase, but I’m still waiting to take my 250 MPH car to a business meeting in another domed city. Perhaps by the end of the year.
40 Years in the Future
By James R. Berry
IT’S 8 a.m., Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2008, and you are headed for a business appointment 300 mi. away. You slide into your sleek, two-passenger air-cushion car, press a sequence of buttons and the national traffic computer notes your destination, figures out the current traffic situation and signals your car to slide out of the garage. Hands free, you sit back and begin to read the morning paper—which is flashed on a flat TV screen over the car’s dashboard. Tapping a button changes the page.
The car accelerates to 150 mph in the city’s suburbs, then hits 250 mph in less built-up areas, gliding over the smooth plastic road. You whizz past a string of cities, many of them covered by the new domes that keep them evenly climatized year round. Traffic is heavy, typically, but there’s no need to worry. The traffic computer, which feeds and receives signals to and from all cars in transit between cities, keeps vehicles at least 50 yds. apart. There hasn’t been an accident since the system was inaugurated. Suddenly your TV phone buzzes. A business associate wants a sketch of a new kind of impeller your firm is putting out for sports boats. You reach for your attache case and draw the diagram with a pencil-thin infrared flashlight on what looks like a TV screen lining the back of the case. The diagram is relayed to a similar screen in your associate’s office, 200 mi. away. He jabs a button and a fixed copy of the sketch rolls out of the device. He wishes you good luck at the coming meeting and signs off.
It amazes me that people from the 40s through 70s have this uber-positive outlook on what the future would be like, almost always describing the future in utopian-like settings, which is so far from the truth. A few things, though, were dead-on; like computers, laptops, intelligent appliances and TV-telephone (home) shopping
The intelligence pill is another 21st century commodity.
Still waiting for this, though. Oh, and what about that flying car?
Still waiting for this, though. Oh, and what about that flying car?
Moller Skycar. Nigh-vaporware at this point, though.
Let’s see though.. pretty much off the mark with the exception of the tablet computer and the internet-like shopping and web-browsing.
Not sure if I want a wall-sized monitor, though. Who needs an eight-foot Goatse popping up? We’re getting closer on the auto-drive cars, with a new fine-tune GPS system coming online soon, and advances in other tech making it possible. Home computer, sure. Most families have one, though it’s not nearly as integrated as the folks would like. Credit cards are everywhere, but cash still preferred for smaller purchases.
Big fail on the four-hour workday, though. A lot of folks routinely work more than that, and if you count that the lady of the house often has her own career, I think they’d be apalled at the amount of work being done.
Oh, and the intelligence pill? They’ve go something that will let you stay awake for a week without feeling sleepy, with absolutely no side effects. Will that do?
The guy was pretty darn right on with the computer gadgetry anyway, even the kind of pen messaging etc. I think most of us during the 60s though DID think we’d eventually have hoovering or flying cars that you’d just punch in an address and all the driving and diving would be up to the vehicle. I think that was wishful thinking and it’s still a wish-thought today.
Climatized homes though, while not domed, some folks are in fact designing and even living in ‘smart homes’ even if they aren’t domed. Maybe sometime in the FAR future they’ll have to be, especially if you move to the Moon or Mars or global warming smacks us harder in the face than is predicted.
Pretty interesting that there may not have been predictions about artificial insemination, implantation of donor parts, or even societal acceptance of alternative lifestyles, women marching to the front war lines etc., or a presidential election centering on a female or black American candidate?
The matter of guessing the future does lay largely not just in the imagination but the desire of the heart. I would guess that if we were asked to project or predict the future in 40 years from today, we might get ideas like cyborg implants for aging parts, or nano machines that repair us even as pieces of us become damaged or die…?
The guy was pretty darn right on with the computer gadgetry anyway, even the kind of pen messaging etc. I think most of us during the 60s though DID think we’d eventually have hoovering or flying cars that you’d just punch in an address and all the driving and diving would be up to the vehicle. I think that was wishful thinking and it’s still a wish-thought today.
Climatized homes though, while not domed, some folks are in fact designing and even living in ‘smart homes’ even if they aren’t domed. Maybe sometime in the FAR future they’ll have to be, especially if you move to the Moon or Mars or global warming smacks us harder in the face than is predicted.
Pretty interesting that there may not have been predictions about artificial insemination, implantation of donor parts, or even societal acceptance of alternative lifestyles, women marching to the front war lines etc., or a presidential election centering on a female or black American candidate?
The matter of guessing the future does lay largely not just in the imagination but the desire of the heart. I would guess that if we were asked to project or predict the future in 40 years from today, we might get ideas like cyborg implants for aging parts, or nano machines that repair us even as pieces of us become damaged or die…?
Cyborg parts aren’t far off. Some current top-of-the-line prosthetics are capable of being classed as cyborg bits. Those new fake arms that allow the owner to regulate the pressure the fingers exert on picking up a cup and all that are pretty shit-hot.
But they INSIST on covering them in latex and plastic. Don’t they realise what people want is chrome? Shiny, metallic parts.
