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Miracles Of The Next Fifty Years, As Of 1950
jonwiley writes: "There is a reprint here of an article by Waldemar Kaempffert, published February, 1950 titled 'Miracles You'll See in the Next Fifty Years.' Taking an approach that examines the current scientific results and activities of his time, while ignoring political and economic factors, he paints a picture of the technology of 2000 A.D. His level of accuracy is surprising, and offers insight on how we may view our own future. What he gets wrong is equally intriguing." Sure, some details are rather off -- but Kaempffert's observation that the future arrives piecemeal is perhaps the most important part.
When it came to predicting the future, this guy was accurate, and Fuller (unfortunately) was not. So what's your point?
You can make this at home:
To one gallon of rapidly boiling water, add 8-12 pairs of dirty underwear. Boil for ten minutes. Add 4 cups of sugar. Boil until the volume is reduced to 1/4 of the original volume. Pour onto a baking sheet and let cool. Cut into desired size pieces.
My favorite flavor is herpes thong.
You can't equate abortion and contraception you egg-sucking liberal scum!
Actually they do something very much like this, but with a kind of dye. It is used mostly to observe suspected blockage of flow, particularly in the kidneys. What's more, they actually shoot the X-rays lengthwise down your entire body, so your brain gets a good dose as well. Of course, this is not useful for the heart, and it is only used if something has gone rather wrong with you. Also I doubt they use a fluorescent screen, but the principle is of course the same. Also I have seen an X-ray emitter and CCD array in a device used by doctors to manipulate bones and observe them in real time, with very low dosage due to the sensitivity of the detector. But only small CCD arrays are practical as yet.
Hmm, has anyone read this Isaac Azimov book? It was named Futuredays, and Asimov basically commented on a set of French cigarette pack trading cards, published in 1900, which were about the Year 2000. Some of the stuff was pretty scary (heating with radium, war zepplins), but it was still kind of interesting...
I note that most of his predictions are extensions of 1950's technology and 1950's society in a "more of the same" trend. But when we look back, a lot of major events were disruptive, not evolutionary (computers, women's liberation, civil rights movement, Internet). So I bet that in the next 50 years, while some of us are predicting "ubiquitous Internet-connected computers" and the like, something else will come out of left field and surprise us all.
He mentions that factories are automated and only monitored by technicians who might "replace a vacuum tube". His biggest miss, is the greatest life changing technology of the latter half of the 20th cenury, the transistor. Other than the products that solid state devices have enabled, we still live the same way as we did in 1950. I still drive a car with four wheels (although improved) at about the same speeds; I talk on the telephone (although wireless); I watch television (although color); I listen to my choice of radio station or music on-demend, but I wouldn't say that now being able to do that anywhere has changed my life. The greatest lifestyle improvements really came in the first half of the century. Automobiles, air flight, central heat, electrical wiring, telephones, television, etc. What will be the "transistor" of the next half century?
No, you don't.
Actually I have heard talk about NASA (or maybe Boeing) developing a rocket much like the article talked about. It basically shoots the passengers into space and flings them across the country in a couple hours.
Of course, it's not practical yet, but it may not be far off.
Yikes! I don't suppose you can point out a reference to that???
The point that I want to get at is that, with all of the prediction floating around for 2050, 2100 etc, we (assuming we are not any smarter than people 50 years ago - and I dpn't think we are) haven't got a clue what miricles of technology will have the greatest impact on our lives 50 years from now.
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"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
It's interesting to compare your scorecard with that for Robert A Heinlein's predictions of 1950 for the year 2000 (http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/heinlein.html) . Heinlein scores far worse - 3.6 out of 18, or 20%.
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Xenu loves you!
Smallpox.
It's cured. The cure saw the light of day.
This, more than anything else predicted about the 21st century, is true. From what we wear, to the music we listen to, and even the software we access the Internet, it seems that society (at least the organizations that influence it most) ostracizes you if you step outside of the "approved channel"
It became obvious to me how bad this had gotten when jukeboxes began to feature a button to select whatever's 'popular' rather than what you want to hear.
1. Take space travel. 2000 was always seen as a time when people would travel into space, to the Moon and Mars on a daily basis, like taking the train. Today, not only is this not happening, but there is absolutely no reason for regular people to go into space. And there will not be for a long time to come, until there is money to be made out there.
2. Computing power. Always greatly underestimated. We have discovered that we can use the modern IC to extract great computing power. This is a development which could not have been predicted 50 years ago. Vacuum tubes only go so fast. We are at a point now where we can predict the upper limit of this technology (though it is being upgraded all the time with better conductors and smaller traces), and we see new technologies on the horizon (optics) which are expected to provide a huge leap in power, and of course quantum computing about which no one can make predictions on expected practical speed. It has been relatively easy to extract more and more speed from IC technology.
3. Diametrically opposed to #2, we still can't talk at computers. This is a theme found in any sci-fi or future sci story. Even though we have so much computing power at our finger tips, there's just not enough. No one could have predicted _how_ computers would be able to understand spoken words, so it seemed a relatively trivial feature. We now know (barring a breakthrough in linguistics or algorithms) speech recognition is a time consuming process, and it will probably not be prefected in our lifetimes.
So these future predictions are fun, fun to make and read, but they often miss in fundamental ways which could not have been forseen. Now for example, we stipulate that if a quantum computer is built it would be many orders of magnitude faster than anything we have today. But for all we know it will not be possible to build such a computer to run fast (or at all), or maybe that it can only be used in very specialized applications. We just don't know at this point, and anything we predict today will probably turn out to be as silly as space travel.
Unless you can describe how a certain thing can be accomplished, you can't predict if it will happen. Suppose we knew how make a quantum computer, but didn't have the technology to actually make it happen, we could at least say, in the future there will be quantum computers, they will be faster than we can possibly imagine today. Otherwise you will have the prediction that we'll be able to talk to computers, we don't have the faintest idea of how, but we'll be able to.
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
One of the most interesting ideas I found (that seems silly at first sight) is the water cooled house. Assuming you use ocean water (wasting such amounts of fresh water today, especially in California, probably is a crime), this is a very effective way to cool. This is what most air conditioning systems on office towers do today. Water has an excellent ability to absorb heat. The problem is of course the necessary infrastructure to bring so much water to every house. As an added bonus, water reflects more sun radiation than anything else we use on our roofs (which usually comes in very dark colours to boot!), and would help somewhat in reflecting more heat back into space.
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
I think it will happen eventually. If there is one thing I have to do every day that I absolutely hate more than anything else it's shaving. And I'm sure many others do as well. It takes time, it's never good enough, and by the end of the day (in my case in a few hours) you look like you haven't shaved anyways. It's irritating and harsh to the skin (but an excellent exfoliant ;) it feels unpleasant (tell me you like the feeling of shaving around your Adam's apple), and there's always the potential for cuts (even with 3 blade razors, and as an aside, I think the Mach 3 inventor deserves a Nobel, it's absolutely brilliant, better than sliced bread). I really hope I will live to see the day when I can just shlep on some goop on my face, wash it off and have not a trace of hair left for a couple of days.
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
Removing facial hair using a depilatory cream.
The creams exist, and they work, they're just not terribly practical because sensitive, or even moderately resistant skin gets very irritated by it's repeated use.
Inconceivable!
hawk
Try starting a garden grown entirely in granite
i've been looking around at houses lately, but i haven't found these $5,000 ones. where are they? i have that it in cash. no mortgage for me!
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Are you kidding? Do you have ANY historical perspective? In 1950, wearing a shirt without a collar to school would get you labeled as dangerous. Forget even thinking about things like trenchcoats. Chewing gum in class could get you detention. In that environment, how do you think that expressing ideas outside the norm was treated? For modern deviant ideas within a narrow band may be worse, but in 2001, schools have nowhere near the level of repression that they had overall in 1950.
LetterJ
Head Geek
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
All this green stuff is very nice and trendy, but what Joe serf in the third world really needs is clear title to his land so he can mortgage it and buy a tractor. Then he needs simple tax laws and a non-corrupt government that let him keep most of what he makes so his kids can go to school and get better lives. All this angst about relatively clean and efficent first world economies (compare energy consumption to value-add) is a waste of time.
I wrote parts of this stuff
And what's really weird are those people who use vacuum tubes to display information on one of the glass sides! I've even heard of people who use tubes like that more or less all by themselves without any significant computer at all. Strange, man, strange.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
29. Ariel busses that hold 200 people for 100 mile commutes to work
While he was slightly off. This is more of a hit than it appears. Replace 200 miles with 350 miles.
Then, consider how many 737s fly between SFO/Oakland/San Jose and LAX/Burbank/Long Beach/John Wayne/Oantario every day. I don't he was off, but not by as much as it would appear.
Ethanol is the alcohol found in alcoholic drinks. It isn't 'alcohol-based'.
>Plastic waterproof furniture - only deck chairs.
:)
>Although... you can buy entire suites of
>inflatable furniture.
I love inflatable furniture. If it was more sturdy and less prone to punctures, I'd have my entire apartment done with inflatable stuff. As it is, I enjoy my chair, which can be stowed under a VW Golf's seat for easy transport.
>"The Dobson house has light-metal walls only four
:)
>inches thick."
>I have two words for this: Thermal expansion.
Asuka rubbing her breasts is going to solve all housing problems?
Sorry, I couldn't resist.
You're assuming that everyone lives in a warm climate where heat is a problem. :) As someone who lives in a climate where we typically only see +20 degreee temperatures between April and August, inclusive, I'm happy with all the heat that homes here can trap.
I want a completely vertical house, all rooms stacked on top of each other. There would be a firepole for going downwards and some kind of electric-powered rope pully for going upwards. Of course, I also want inflatable furniture so that moving in would be easy.
Rubella, Whooping Cough, Smallpox, Typhus, Meningitis, Scarlet Fever, Tetanus, Syphilis, Polio, Pneumonia, Diarrhea, Fever and a 1001 other maladies both major & minor are now generally non-fatal and of little concern to most of us.
Whether this is due to mass-vaccination, individual vaccination, palliative care or direct remediation isn't the issue and to argue is only playing inane semantic games: The point is that they're no longer nearly the danger they were in the 1940's.
Common infections we treat routinely and without thought today were deadly dangerous then. Take a look at the survival rates from those years after surgery due to infection - daunting indeed. Fevers were to be feared, diarrhea was life-threatening.
Today the only thing comparable in the first world would be HIV/AIDS. Ebola and other exotics remain that. In the past a pandemic would sweep the world every generation or so killing some percentage of the human population: We haven't suffered one in three generations now.
I think the real proof is that folks are left quibbling over colds & flues and not recounting deaths in their immediate families. We're the first generation not to have first hand knowledge of a pandemic; for the folks of the 1940's (from where this article was written) epidemics & pandemics were a real and immediate threat. To them the quarantine sign was something they were terribly familiar with.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Hits:
Misses:
Biggest miss?
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Sorry, bubba, but they eat "cellulose byproducts," by and large. There are several feedlots in my area, and all of them have a mountain of woodchips that the cows graze on. The woodchips are waste product from our timber industry.
A lot of that wood will be coniferous waste, mainly varieties of pine. Pine contains pine oils, which are used in pine-sol household cleaner ("pine solvent" would be the source of that name) and the like.
It surprises me that the cows don't get deathly sick from the pine chips.
Yes, they are also being fed "traditional" processed feed, which does contain rendered animals in it, including bits o' cattle (though, apparently, not any sheep this week, according to the delivery sign at the local byproducts rendering plant).
Now, the rendering plant, there's a whole other topic for discussion. My god, the shite that goes into that place is appalling. Not just the kibbles'n'bits left over from cutting animals into meat, but also a lot of whole dead animals. WTF they die from? If they were sick, WTF you wanna put 'em into animal feed for? Good god.
On the whole, the entire scene is enough to make a person turn vegetarian.
One person I met had an interesting perspective: "Eating factory meat is disrespectful to the animal." Ain't that the truth!
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I think it entirely depends on location. WHere I live, you can barely purchase a single-wide mobile home for $36k... with no land.
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Cheap electrical heating - a hit, where there's hydroelectricity.
Roads reserved exclusively for business traffic - a possible hit, when considering high-occupancy vehicle lanes.
Lightweight metals in large building construction - a hit, for sure.
Houses that cost $36k. My god. If only. If only...
Plastic plates that decompose at 250F - surely this is a hit. Biodegradeable/recyclable, no?
Plastic waterproof furniture - only deck chairs. Although... you can buy entire suites of inflatable furniture.
Loss of culinary skills - damn straight that's a hit. Way too many people can't boil water without burning it these days.
Woodpulp into food - a hit: ever seen a cattle feedlot? Those poor buggers are eating nothing but woodchip waste, it seems. Ugh.
Videophones in every home - QuickCam, perhaps?
Rocket-powered planes - in his terms, probably a hit: what else would you call some of the military jet engines? Nearest thing to a rocket.
Cars running on alcohol - a hit. Brazil has shiploads of 'em. Hellva thing.
Yes, some of these are hair-splitting.
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The hay-bale thing is being done more and more up here in parts of Canada (in central BC, at any rate).
Actually, I think it's straw. And I don't think concrete is dripped over it.
You start off with a shipload of straw. It's compressed like hell into a massive, dense brick, and sprayed with fire retardent. Damn stuff won't burn anyway; it's packed hard enough that there's no airspace, so at worst you could drop a torch on it and it *might* eventually sorta smolder.
You pour a bit of a concrete base for the bales, raise 'em up off the ground, and have rebar spikes. You spike the bales, using 'em like bricks.
Then you use adobe/concrete/whatever to finish.
You get a house with walls a couple feet thick and extremely insulated. There's nearly no heating cost: your computer, dinner-time cooking, television, and body heat will probably heat the place adequately through most of the winter.
And best of all, you get huge windowsills. Oh, yah, baby. Lotsa plants and pillows...
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I can't really find anything reasonably accurate in the article. That's hardly surprising, because most such attempts to predict the future advances in science made my science fiction authors neglect to take one important factor into account: politics. Many technological advances are suppressed because influential interest groups would rather keep an old technology that they can control (consider the OPEC or the RIAA) than support something that improves everyone's life. So, while authors certainly make desirable predictions, they - unfortunately - aren't really reliable.
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
Except that it wouldn't be oil companies feeding off their government-granted monopolies on hard-to-find and expensive-to-exploit underground reserves. An ethanol-based fuel economy would be dominated by large agricultural companies scattered all over the globe. Not that these companies are likely to be any better behaved than the oil companies, but there are more of them, and therefore more competition.
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Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
3. Cheap electrical heating
It exists, but there has been little financial incentive to promote it.
11. Use of plastics to construct houses
Ditto.
13. Houses that cost $36,000 (year 2000 dollars) and last only 25 years
Ditto.
14. Chemical removal of facial hair
Depilatories are widely available, but they're uncomfortable, smell bad, and not typically used by men. There are also chemical treatments to kill hair follicles altogether.
15. Use of plastic plates that decompes at temperatures above 250 F
Ever heat a plastic plate to 250 F? Of course, I'm not sure I'd call that decomposition...
16. Cleaning plastic waterproof furniture by turning a hose on it
Well within the reach of existing technology, but only for people who don't live in humid climates.
18. Loss of culinary skills due to all food being delivered "fresh frozen"
A near miss. People lost their culinary skills because women are no longer required to be household slaves, and most men are content enough with frozen foods not to bother learning.
19. Processes to turn wood pulp and sawdust into edible foods
They exist. The problem is that edible != yummy.
20. Discarded paper linen and rayon underwear turned into candy
Then WTF are Gummi Bears made of?
21. Videophones in every home
Obviously, the technology exists and has existed for decades. Problem is, almost no one wants to worry about how they look on the phone.
27. Cars burning denatured alchohol as their primary fuel
Possible, even practical. But the oil companies have a vested interest in preventing it.
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Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Cooking is probably a dying art. But it's not dead yet, and is not likely to be for some time yet, unlike the implication given in the article.
:-)
I kind of have to disagree on that.
What people have not figured upon is the rapid development of new kitchen appliances and improvements to pot and pan technology that have dramatically reduced the drudgery of cooking food.
As an owner of a set of Wearever non-stick pots and pans, I love them because cleanup is now 1/4 the time it used to take with regular metal pots and pans (no stuck-on foods that require way too much elbow grease to remove them).
Kitchen appliances have made some amazing strides in the last 20 years. The development of food processors and high-speed hand-held wand-like mixers have made it possible to make foods that would have been difficult if not impossible to do from scratch in the past.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
One thing the article mentioned was the concept that houses could be assembled from pre-fabricated whole rooms.
In fact, this has become reality in a number of countries. In Japan, this has been the norm for a couple of decades; we're starting to see this becoming widespread even here in the USA. Imagine the idea of a custom house where you mix and match pre-fabricated rooms to create the house--that will be the future of homebuilding. This concept could be applied to condominium and townhouse design also.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
14. Chemical removal of facial hair
Nair, anyone? Sure, they have a woman's leg in the ad but it can be used for facial hair.
-- Grey d'Miyu, not just another pretty color.
> How is a flexible rock more disastrous than the 100 km of rock that we're living on?
Try starting a garden grown entirely in used styrofoam.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
The article mentions that in 1950, most people were using "safety razors". I'm not sure if he meant ones like this or this. Either way, most people today usually use cheap disposable razors or electric ones.
I guess he never predicted what a revolution the Mach 3 disposable razor would be.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
Microwave cooking just isn't the same as traditional cooking. Microwaves are great at making cold things hot, but try toasting a piece of bread in your microwave.
> American people cannot cook anymore
While I won't argue that Americans have not had the greatest culinary influence on the planet, I don't think they've necessarily gotten any worse in the last 50 years.
My folks assure me that my aunt's famously bad cooking pre-dates 1950.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
> Housewives in 50 years may wash dirty dishes-right down the drain! Cheap plastic would melt in hot water.
Reminds me of a comic I once saw. In the first panel, "Scientists in 1950: Wow! Plastic lasts for ever!" This scientists are in awe. In the second panel, "Scientists in 2000: Ugh. Plastic lasts forever!" Scientists realize the ecological disaster...
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
Water @212F boils at or below sea-level. When water is under pressure, its boiling point is increased.
So, 250-degree water = steam at (or below) sea level is true. 250-degree water = steam under pressure is not, necessarily, true.
Sorry for sounding rude, but please take a physics class.
-JL
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Sig Return: 204 No Content
Hamilton and Bear don't write sci-fi. They write SF. Godzilla is sci-fi.
TA
"we've seen the end of religious philosophy as the major force in the world"
With all due respect, I disagree with this assertion.
We've seen a substantive shift in religious philosophy, but our current religious heavyweights seem to be scientific naturalism, materialism, pragmatism, and existentialism.
We haven't rejected "religious philosophy." We're simply adherents to a new religion.
Christianity, once a broadly accepted philosophy within the US, has become so watered down within the mainstream of American churches that it essentially compromises the basic message of the original texts.
Authentic Christianity is world-changing. The foundation of the church was a band of 12 rag-tag men from different parts of society. Their non-violent message changed the known world in a profound way.
Profound changes are occurring once again, but these philosophical shifts are leading to "money-grubbing and power-mongering as the predominant forces " not to mention self-actualization and personal fulfillment.
Anomaly
PS - God loves you and longs for relationship with you. If you would like to know more about this, please contact me at tom_cooper at bigfoot dot com
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
With all due respect, in what way is the so-called "reproductive right" of women being constrained?
In the US, you are free to choose to abort your fetus if you desire to do so.
The social status of women is limited? In my "Fortune 100" company, the stated goal is to double the number of women and minorities in senior executive positions. Sounds like a good time to be a woman or a minority, if you work for my company.
I'm displeased with our current social valuation of life in general.
Scientifically, all of the necessary genetic material is in place for a person at the time of conception, and viability is a moving target rapidly approaching the time that the sperm penetrates the egg.
The question becomes, at what point does your self-declared 'reproductive right' stop, and the fetus' consittutionally defined 'human rights' begin?
Additionally the "right-to-die" movement is tearing down barriers that protect the weak and ill.
It won't be long now until people like my grandparents are put to death because of "poor quality of life." (My grandfather has alzheimer's disease, and my grandmother exhibits signs of has senile dementia sometimes.)
I know my position is unpopular, but what is right is frequently unpopular, and what is popular is not always right. (eg Jewish persecution in Germany 70 years ago.)
Anomaly
PS - God loves you and longs for relationship with you. If you would like to know more about this, please contact me at tom_cooper at bigfoot dot com
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
I'd say one of the biggest changes we probably don't think about is our awareness of ecology. Even the most conservative pro-business modern person would find it difficult to offhandedly suggest:
Before it has a chance to gather much strength and speed as it travels westward toward Florida, oil is spread over the sea and ignited
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Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
How about the "reproductive right" to have a society that values children?
How about the "reproductive right" to have a society that also values those who choose not to have children?
Hell, how about a world where women don't lose 25% of their income simply because they are the child bearers?
bah.
rark!
5. Highways with different decks for different speeds
:)
:)
Actually, I'd say he was right on this. In Seattle, for example, there's a commuter-lane only road that runs express under the other one, under the city with no exits actually taking you into Seattle. Definately different speeds.
11. Use of plastics to construct houses
Well, it could be argued that this IS a miss, but not in the sense that it's not done at all, but it's just not the prevalent form of building materials.
16. Cleaning plastic waterproof furniture by turning a hose on it
Thanks god this was never invented! Imagine the smell after a week. Or has mold been eliminated in the future?
Just my nitpicks.
-- If we were in any other industry they would've shot us a long time ago.
"Nobody has yet circumnavigated the moon in a rocket space ship, but the idea is not laughed down."
To me, this seems like the biggest miss. When this was originally written, we were only 19 years away from a landing.
Show how fast things can develop when we're motivated as a society to do it. I think that had that motivation lasted, we would surely have made Mars by now.
GRH
You left out Shaving With Chemicals. (It was one of the "cartoons.") I think it is called "Magic Shave." I was introduced to it in high school, me being a swimmer and shaving many things about myself. With Magic Shave, you apply it, let it sit for a few minutes, then scrape it off with a stiff edge, such as a butter knife. I was told people who are prone to shaving bumps find it a very nice alternative.
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
My Mom was a teenager in the 50's, and she says "yes."
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
It's not even that alot of things are wrong and only the relatively obvious ones are right, but that the picture on the whole is completely wrong. I mean an average joe sixpack's life is nothing like what you would imagine after reading this back then - and that was the purpose of this article, apparently.
-- ATTENTION: do not read this sig. It doesn't say much.
27. Cars burning denatured alchohol as their primary fuel
:)
It's not denatured alchohol, but Ford Motor Company sells flexible fuel vehicles that run on E85, which is a mixture of 85% ethanol (an alchohol-based fuel made from corn) and 15% gasoline. So if it wasn't in exact hit, he was pretty darn close.
My journal has hot
Who cares if the head of some corporation don't do as it says what you have to do? Usualy the rules for "heads" are diferent then those for common people. Rulers usualy work under the "Do as I say, don't do as I do" rule.
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"take the red pill and you stay in wonderland and I'll show you how deep the rabbit hole goes"
[]'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins
^[:wq
I submitted this over a year around new years 2000
It was rejected.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
14. Chemical removal of facial hair
Uh, we do have that. May not be widely used, but it's there.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
How about a responsive article link instead ;)
</joke>
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ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
He predicted a decrease in messenger/telegraph services due to high-speed transportation such as jet planes, and the proliferation of fax machines. He missed the jet-plane-caused overnight messenger/package services, and the GPS-map-equipped wireless-dispatched messenger services.
Your Moller flying car is being tested in the lab now. (Notice the "update" link at the top of the page)
Damn, that comment almost made me spray good Canadian beer.. Although in all fairness, in my last trip to Oregon, I had some great beers from the small brew-pubs...
I still have trouble putting the three words, "good","beer" and "American" in the same sentence... c'est la vie.. ;)
Yes, one day I may actually learn to spell...
Not to point out the obvious, but if you're not the proud owner of a nice LCD display, you're staring at a beeg-ass vacuum tube right now...
Yes, one day I may actually learn to spell...
Good 'ole Canterbury Dark from PWB.. Pretty good stuff seeing as it is a fairly large volume product from these guys. But yes, I definately agree that the beer "Down There" is getting much better...
Yes, one day I may actually learn to spell...
13. Houses that cost $36,000 (year 2000 dollars) and last only 25 years
Yeah. They're 360,000 and only last 25 years.
1. Airports in the centre of town You haven't been to Phoenix, have you? Our airport is rather large and is downtown. It's actually pretty convenient since no place in the metro area is too far a drive from the airport. But I guess Phoenix is a little different from most older or geographically-restricted cities.
Well.. Phoenix is kind of a special case. We're so sprawled out that everything is flat (except for downtown, and Sky Harbor is far enough away that it isn't a problem), and we can stick the airport basically anywhere. It's pretty cool though, because pretty much no matter where you are there is a nearby freeway which leads to the airport.
Tottenville is illuminated by electric "suns" suspended from arms on steel towers 200 feet high.
Oddly, what he's describing here sounds virtually identical to the "Moonlight Towers" that were popular from the 1880s to the turn of the century in many cities. Austin is one of the few places where they are sill in operation - there a probably a few dozen left, including the big one they use to make the Christmas tree in Zilker Park every year...
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Hong Kong's old airport used to be more or less in the middle of town. Very impressive place to fly into and out out. The new one is further out, but still only 25 minutes by train and you can check your baggage in at the train stations, so it's pretty convenient.
dave
When was the last time you lost an email? I've had an email address of one form or another for fourteen years and I think it's happened a small handful of times, if that.
dave
Oh I don;t know about the punch cards - I still have to use some Engineering programs which require input in 80-column text files...
dave
It didn't work. :(
load "linux",8,1
14. Chemical removal of facial hair
load "linux",8,1
He's right about one thing... cooking has changed, but not the way he had anticipated. If we use old 50's sit-coms as our guides, cooking was primarily done by the housewife with the possible exception of the occassional bar-b-q handled by the husband.
Cooking today for many folks in our rich American suburbs is a hobby. Men and women both enjoy experimenting with cuisine from all over the world and all the cool new kitchen "toys" that we can spend our money on. Here in the south, men are considered to be the "experts" of regional cuisine.
Many people cook at (not for) parties as a social thing. Kitchens are opened up to the community areas of the house so the cooks can mingle with guests.
There is a whole TV network devoted to nothing but food and food preperation.
In most larger cities there cooking classes with a social atmosphere that go on all the time. We pay $50 to sip wine while watching a guy show us how to bread for 2 hours.
load "linux",8,1
The article stated that after the place was hosed down and the water ran down the drain that a heater was turned on that dried everything out.
If dried sufficiently, there wouldn't be a mold problem.
So that's a HIT! oh, no, sorry...
load "linux",8,1
Chemical removal of facial hair -- this one's been around for a while. In the U.S. it's typically only marketed to blacks; I have no idea why -- never used it, personally, nor spoken to anyone who has. I've seen it on shelves in drugstores since sometime in the '70s, though.
Oh, go on, check out my job.
Well, America is weirdly racist in some pretty surprising ways, but as the other respondent mentioned, I guess there's a reason this product is marketed to blacks. As to how one goes about doing such a thing, it's actually pretty straightforward: one only puts pictures of black men on the box, and one puts the product on the shelves in drugstores located in neighborhoods which are principally black. I used to live, work, and go to church in a predominantly black neighborhood, and that's when I saw this stuff. Now I live in a predominantly Asian neighborhood (Chinese & Korean, mostly) and I don't see it on the shelves. But I do see lots of foodstuffs (kim chee, udon, soba, etc.) that one didn't see in Inglewood.
So long as demographics and geography map onto each other, marketing like this remains easy.
Oh, go on, check out my job.
Ahhh, that makes sense. Ingrown hairs. Yeah, those are a major pain in the neck. *ahem* They're one reason my father has a beard.
And of course, this is only one product. Anyone remember Nair?
Oh, go on, check out my job.
My father uses the stuff, and there's actually a reason it's heavily marketed toward black men. If you have very curly hair, you often get what's called "shaving bumps" when you use a razor due to the hair curliness factor. I don't know quite how it works, but at any rate, this isn't a problem which affects white guys. :)
So yeah it exists and there's a reason. Magic Shave is the oldest kind.
~LK
When Jane Dobson cleans house she simply turns the hose on everything.... Of course the Dobsons have a television set.
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
True. The sun's power source is a gravitationally contained fusion reactor in the core. However, this only applies to the solar core. The rest of the body of the sun is heated by radiation and convection of energy from the core. Indeed, the sun's outer layer DOES emit a glow that is excited from radiation coming up from below.
Google cache of this article
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
Vaccines aren't cures; they're preventive measures. Try getting the flu sometime and then get a flu shot; see how much good it does you. It doesn't matter if you're talking about a widespread nuisance like the common cold or a killer such as HIV or Ebola...no viral disease has ever been cured. The best that has happened was that some diseases have been contained and no longer exist "in the wild;" this is the case with smallpox (no new known cases since the late 60s or early 70s, IIRC), and polio is supposed to be almost as close to practical non-existence at this point.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Check out this auction on eBay. The scary part is that someone bought the item. I wonder if it'll be put to its intended use.
(whowouldbuythat.com is a pretty neat site for tracking down weird auctions. It's usually good for a chuckle or two.)
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
I think the author vastly overestimated the concern of society for the environment (or vastly underestimated the greed and strengh of economic lobbies..). With Bush Junior wanting to drill more petrol in Alaska, I don't see a "ban on coal burning" and such things as ubiquitous solar power coming anytime soon in USA.
If they don't teach a minimum "standard" dressing code in school - those kids are in a for a rought surprise once they look for a job (where having piercing all over your face is not really helpful to get a job at the Chase Manhattan Bank ;)
"The only obstacles to accurate prophecy are the vested interests, which may retard progress for economic reasons, tradition, conservatism, labor-union policies and legislation
My great-grandmother was in a rest home in the 80's and sometimes I would go and have a pleasant visit with her. One time however, just after the place put in a couple of microwave ovens for the use of the "guests", something unusual happened. I was watching as a nurse showed one of the old dodgers how use the thing. Just as the steaming plate was placed in front of a grey old man with visible shaking in his limbs, another guest suddenly jumped and yelled in a slightly germanic accent "I predicted it! I predicted It!!! No one believed me, but I predicted it! Look it up!!! I predicted it!". The nurses ultimately wrestled "Crazy Waldo" down and injected him with something that seemed to calm him down. I later heard that these outbursts occured for years before and after the incident that I witnessed. Waldo finally died in 1994 during surgery to remove the paper plates he had injested whole.
Let's also not forget that many Americans eat out many times a week, something that was unheard of in the 1950's, as well as in the most of the world today.
That article is hilariously bad. The "hits" aren't exactly brilliant prognostication, and the "misses" are generally the result of the sort of sadly misguided chemical optimism that has brought the real world of 2000 some beautiful Superfund sites. I'm surprised he didn't predict we'd be EATING plastic. And the architectural ideas in there don't correspond with common sense or basic physical laws, not to mention good taste. I'd like to see Christopher Alexander give this guy a well-deserved beating. All told, it's barely an improvement over a Criswell prediction.
It's a great example of the kind of thinking that caused such a train wreck in postwar America - and a chilling reminder of how much worse things could've turned out if these guys had had their way. All things considered, we got off pretty lucky.
Man... it just makes me wonder, though. I'm all in favor of genetically modified foods and biotech in general, but I'm crossing my fingers and assuming that the scientists and corporations of today have grown up a little.
Am I livin' in SCIENTIFIC COMFORT yet?
</zippy>
--
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for slashdot.sig (129323052 bytes).
Here. Course now that I've put this here, it won't get /.'ed
That would be a miracle? The price of gasoline in America is definitely too low, considering that people can buy SUVs without thinking twice about the gas prices _or_ the environment.
We need another gas shortage (not the wimpy price increase we had in 1999) so that the people who drive gas-guzzling cars would be as screwed as they deserve to be.
--
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
What else do you expect from Clarke's worst book? 3001 basically consisted of rehashed ideas from his much better earlier books, which were set in a more reasonable timeframe. It seems that Clarke just wasn't thinking about the radical changes that could occur in one _thousand_ years. Perhaps he was disillusioned by the fact that there was no sign of HAL or manned space travel to other planets coming about in 2001. Frankly, I think there will be more of a head-exploding change between the technology of 2000 and 3000 as between 1000 and 2000, because of the way technology grows exponentially.
--
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
Douglas Adams, of Hitchikers Guide fame? Oh, shit. He was one of my favorite authors, in a bizaare sort, towelish way. I'm not as moved as when Heinlein died, but still... My condolences to the many fans out there. May your towels always be full of gargleblaster and food!
Dive Gear
--- Think of it as evolution in action ---
See, that's the thing. When I first moved down to the States (from Canada), the microbrew revolution was just starting. Most beer was crap, but every now and then you could find something good. These days, you're guaranteed that the worst beer you'll have to drink is Sam Adams, and usually there are dozens of microbrews that make excellent beer. So progress marches on... :-)=
Of course, I'll only know whether to trust your judgement if you tell me which Canadian beer you're drinking. :-)=
[TMB]
Exactly. We are no longer in the repressive 1950s. He did not predict that reproductive rights would no longer be constrained.
[TMB]
Another hit: fluorescent lights
While that is not how energy is generated in the sun, it is how fluorescent lights work! I think that qualifies as a definite hit.
Random text added to pass the lameness filter.[TMB]
And reproductive freedom, though that's arguably part of the same thing. But that was the biggest thing I noticed about it... I had mental whiplash when he suddenly talked about how Jane Dobson cleans her house.
While he's clearly only thinking technologically, his biggest misses clearly are social, and are misses not in that he makes a false prediction but in that he doesn't predict major changes.
In addition to the women's equality / reproductive rights issue, he completely misses the civil rights movement. He doesn't predict that in 2000 there are no more racially-discriminant laws. He doesn't predict the two income family unit as the most common. He doesn't predict the de-formalization of the workplace. He doesn't predict the zillionaire entertainer (musician / movie star / sports player).
He doesn't set out to predict them, but the way he writes his account of life in 2000 shows that his social conceptions of 2000 are far off the mark.
Of course, the biggest thing he misses is the rise of the microbrew in the USA, making it finally possible to find good American beer! ;-)
[TMB]
Compared to Buckminster Fuller this guy is practically the Exxon Valdez. This article is just so deep into 50's thoughtless almost reckless consumerism that its really kind of scary. Ideas like pouring plastic down the sink and everyone owning a helicopter don't make much sense if you think about it for a minute or two.
His intro is kinda a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts. The only obstacles to accurate prophecy are the vested interests, which may retard progress for economic reasons, tradition, conservatism, labor-union policies and legislation. Nice.
Ironically, the lack of economic and social change is what makes his predictions true today as much as extrapolating on the science. The past 20 or so years have been a non-stop spending spree that makes the 50's look like kid's play.
Fuller's one piece bathrooms, lightweight portable homes, world power grids, and Geodesic homes are probably things that can only come in an age where we're forced (or really want) to conserve resources.
.. considering such prophecies are usually hopelessly inaccurate. Sure he gets a lot wrong, but he picks many things reasonably well ... and almost realises the impact of electronics communications ... but I guess that was too fantastic a leap. We have to also realise that technologies can sometimes follow chaotic dynamics (think there is a Scientific American article on this somewhere ... no link sorry) so even if history was rerun we may end up with some surprises. Hosable furniture though ... errk ... thats just plain bad taste :)
If we tried a similar preview today we'd be lucky to get as much right I think.
Peter
Bitter and proud of it.
"Tottenville" made me think of "Toten Hosen", which is German for "dead pants", so it would be "deadville".
As for Dobson, a Dobson Unit is the most basic measure used in ozone research. The unit is named after G.M.B. Dobson, one of the first scientists to investigate atmospheric ozone (~1920 - 1960). He designed the 'Dobson Spectrometer' - the standard instrument used to measure ozone from the ground. The Dobson spectrometer measures the intensity of solar UV radiation at four wavelengths, two of which are absorbed by ozone and two of which are not.
Well, the *was* talking about changing the weather, and he may have even presaged our ozone issues!
fred
He didn't predict "Recombinant DNA techniques to improve existing drugs",
Crick and Watson hadn't elucidated the mechanism of DNA at this point.
He predicited that viruses would be found to be proteins, which is what a lot of people predicted back then. But viruses are mostly protein, but with DNA or RNA being the important part. Maybe if viruses didn't have DNA, some more of his predictions (like a cure for the cold) would have come true. Oh well!
Yeah, if I remember correctly (It's been awhile since I've read 1984), military helicopters were one of the big "futuristic" elements of 1984.
It makes me wonder who Dobson and Totten were.
Nobody gets sick from 'em because everyone's vaccinated. That's a cure. Or do you expect us to waste our time developing anti-measles drugs instead of trying to cure the damn adeno/rhinoviridae? (That'd be the common cold. If the companies find a drug that kills it, they'll sell it --- it's too much good PR to pass up.)
A disease is cured when nobody has to suffer from it. Please explain how taking it out before the infection symptoms begin is not a cure.
Are you kidding? Those are all OTC products. They're cheap and not exclusive. They can't *begin* to compare to the profits from a prescription-only patented antiviral.
You have perhaps heard the recent complaints because Allegra, Claritin, and that lot may become OTC as well. It's the same thing --- Benadryl, Sudafed, and so on work, but the prescription drug works better, costs more, and thus is the real money-maker.
Considering the progress of the last 50 years, I would say that this article is _extremely_ accurate.
:)
I would say that the last 50 years were the most progressive within the human history. It took thousands of years between the invention of fire and the next invention (wheel). It took hundreds of years between the wheel and next invention (computer). It is 50 years later we are standing now, and look at where we are! It is also that the article covers a lot of areas. Try doing something like that for a single area for the next 20 years, and I will read and laugh (j/k).
Another thing is, the article does not like a huge scientific paper with years of research. It is a simple, few pages article meant for entertaining.
The author should be well informed about progress of different sciences, which appears to be an issue back there without Internet
I enjoyed the whole piece. "Frozen dinners" and microwave - hit. Air transport speed - hit. Power - hit. Light metal - hit. Machinery - hit. Television/Internet/video conferencing - hit (he just uses a different name for the same concept).
Diet - hit (a great one, assuming the lack of knowledge in 50s as mentioned in the article). Megapolice-kind of cities - hit (though, I guess it was a bit obvious). Cancer - hit (If I would be back in 50s, I would say that cancer will be cured in 2000).
He screwed up with house cleaning (male, scientist - what do you want?), prices (that's a difficult thing to predict anyway), some places about medical care and vacuum tubes/punch cards (but does anyone remember getting the 386 processor? that was a monster).
Anyway, bravo and aplauds go to the author.
Leonid Mamtchenkov
Joe and Jane Paycheck live in a relatively obscure hubspace in the The Microsoft Christian States Of America. Like other Americans, they work about 70 hours a week to pay for software leases and tithe taxes. Joe doesn't have to worry about shaving anymore, as the Levitican beard requirement was reintroduced in MS Bible v. 4.0 (Sunday Service Pack 4) and he's too broke from upgrading to afford a razor. Besides, since razors are now licensed and have to be renewed every day, he was halfway there already.
Jane has had 14 children by Joe, most since the 2038 repeal of abortion and contraceptive rights, but tithe taxes contribute to the development of their large family. Their children (all named after variants of "William") will each spend ten years in Approved Viewpoint Training, which is funded by Time/Warner/AOL/Disney/Duke Energy/Exxon (T.W.A.D.D.L.E.) which means that Joe and Jane pay nothing. "They are nice.." says Joe. "Nice. They teach kids good. Willy said first word yesterday: 'subscription'. Maybe he makes software someday."
-- Insert witty one-liner here. --
the woman is still the housewife
he knows that pollution is bad, but doesn't see disposable everything as an environmental problem
(melting plastic dishes?)
Informative
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
Gasoline for less than $1 (U.S.) per gallon.
"If IE is 'just a web browser' then emacs is 'just a text editor'."
Try http://popularmechanics.com/popmech/sci/1950STROM. html. That appears to be where the MIT copy is from, anyway (do a "view source" and look for "saved from url").
The MIT copy has URLs for the images that look like this: src="MIRACLES OF THE NEXT FIFTY YEARS_files/1950STROE.jpeg". Ick -- spaces aren't legal in URLs. Escaping them as %20 works if you want to look at them individually, but the browser won't be able to show them inline.
Esli epei etot cumprenan, shris soa Sfaha.
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
It is always amusing to observe the drastic vocabulary simplification that occured since that time. When have you last seen words like 'illuminated', 'concentric', 'radiate', 'galeproof', 'miscall'? The sentence structure also is notably changed. If compared with modern newspaper, the difference is similar to that between "By 2000, a vast amount of research has to be conducted to exploit principles that were embryonic in the first quarter of the 20th century." and "By year 2000, scientists will still be busy working on ideas from the 20th century. Public upset. Politicians complain about funding. Scientists work"
I saw this on TV last week. Channel ~94, around 4am. I had to call a blinking number to get it.
18. Loss of culinary skills due to all food being delivered "fresh frozen"
I guess the guy failed to predict the whole change in the society. People would get out of school, go to some war, get married, and work on some factory. There were no single 20-years-old people, and no working moms. My grandmother cooks better than them.
--
--
Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
He got it backwards, candy is now converted into underwear.
31. Physical signs of aging no longer apparent
Retinol A? Rogaine? Botox? Facelifts & other cosmetic surgery (now suprisingly common)?
Viagra?
-
Actually 60 Minutes (I believe) did a segment on superheated water causing injury. They showed a bowl of "soup" (water with a thin layer of oil on top) heated in a perfectly round glass bowl in a common microwave which was over the boiling point in temperature but not moving. When touched with a spoon, the water violently began boiling in a mini-explosion that sprayed it up quite a few inches (enough to hurt your face/arms). The properties of water require miniscule imperfections in your container to provide the "seed" for steam to escape.
Apparently the #1 use for microwaves is to heat water in the morning for coffeee, they reported, and so it was done as a warning piece. Very neat to see it. The term their scientist used was "superheated".
Anyway I think the actual physical properties preclude using it in the way presented, but the theory is not entirely unsound.
Great list but.... MISSES
1. Airports in the centre of town
Probably, but the old Hong Kong airport was.
2. Lack of pollution
3. Cheap electrical heating
In terms of middle class hourly wage it is
4. Factories burning gas Some in co-generation, but it's not common
5. Highways with different decks for different speeds
High density Rush hour lanes do exist.
6. Roads reserved exclusively for business traffic
7. Widespread use of nuclear generating stations in Canada and South America
8. Widespread use of solar power
Wide but not deep
9. Use of nuclear reactors in civilian passenger cruise ships
10. Use of lightweight metals in large building construction
Not in framework, but aluminum is heavily used on glazing frames
11. Use of plastics to construct houses
Not total, but many major components
12. One multipurpose unit to handle a home's hot water, heating and cooling
Common but not major
13. Houses that cost $36,000 (year 2000 dollars) and last only 25 years
Common and major - Trailer / manufactured housing
14. Chemical removal of facial hair
Nair
15. Use of plastic plates that decompes at temperatures above 250 F
16. Cleaning plastic waterproof furniture by turning a hose on it
Lawn furniture
17. Paper tablecloths that are burned after use
18. Loss of culinary skills due to all food being delivered "fresh frozen"
Common and major but not universal. Happily
19. Processes to turn wood pulp and sawdust into edible foods
More common than you might expect - High fiber processed foods are often high fiber from added wood fiber.
20. Discarded paper linen and rayon underwear turned into candy
21. Videophones in every home
Close - computer video telephony is here, but not common or major
22. Using computers to generate forecasts (people still make the calls)
23. Preventing hurricanes by buring oil on the ocean
24. Not making it to the mooon
25. $36,000 (year 2000 dollars) to fly from Chicago to Paris
26. Rocket powered planes
27. Cars burning denatured alchohol as their primary fuel
Mandated by law for 10% of the bulk in summer. Thanks ADM (NOT)
28. Family helicopters
29. Arial busses that hold 200 people for 100 mile commutes to work
30. Easy cures for bacterial diseases such as TB
You missed that?
31. Physical signs of aging no longer apparent
BIG shift though. More people look younger longer.
My 33 year old companion got carded at 4 out of 5 bars we cruised recently.
32. Widespread cures for viral diseases
Polio, Smallpox... Wonderful Vaccines and hostpital treatments make avoidance and / or survival the norm
33. Widespread treatments and cures of Parkinson's and Cerebral Palsy
We are very very close....
In Nearly All Paradigms, Shift Happens.
I'd have to agree that a lot of what he says has came to pass. But I think the washable house interior that I just spray down with a hose was a bit far off. And he was right with several ideas, but just a little off on the implementation. Such as I'm sure most of us don't use our tv to do shopping, but we can still shop from our home with our computer (and with our tv if we have webtv).
/. thinks the average house will be like in 2050. I'm guessing wireless networked appliances, quantum computers and fiberoptic connection to the internet, but that's probably just my dream, not what will become reality. So what do you think it will be like?
I wonder what
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
"Tottenville is as clean as a whistle and quiet. It is a crime to burn raw coal and pollute air with smoke and soot. In the homes electricity is used to warm walls and to cook."
Apparently he didn't expect _quite_ so much greedy industry involvement, and DEFINITELY not Bush jr. The rest of the world is going to have to stop selling him raw materials if he can't play nicely with the earth.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Interesting stuff!
Well, I was in Ireland--both sides--last summer, and you know what? Most of the population is more interested in rebuilding, living together (or apart), and ending the bombings, because it's financially more intelligent to do so. In other words, money-grubbing is gradually replacing religion (which in this particular case, is a good thing).
Iran? Singapore? Israel? The fact that religion is the driving factor in these countries is the biggest factor acting to marginalise them as world powers! Yeah, Iran is big--how big would they be if they were a straighforward trading partner with the non-religious world? (and I mean all of it) Bigger! That's how big.
The thing is this: We're heading more and more towards some form of global economy, and the economically powerful nations will hold sway--that doesn't leave a lot of room for religious philosophy as a country's centre of existence.
I'm not saying this is a good thing. I'm just saying that I believe it's coming.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Cool stuff! I don't agree with it all, but very cool.
For starters, single points of progress aren't exactly linear, simply because they're single points. The invention of the airplane was a single point. The invention of the radio was a single point. The invention of the transistor was a single point. The fallout from those single points was a huge 'ramp' on the technology ladder, but over the long term they smooth out. Technology _as a whole_ advances exponentially.
Now, here's a hypothesis for you. First of all, you mention the invention of the plane as dramatic, and then you suggest that the computer is an extension/replacement of the radio.
Maybe the computer is replacing air travel? For the most part that is--people will always travel places and visit people. However, you can learn more about other places and visit with remote friends better now than in the history of the world--I suspect that airflight is going to begin dropping off in the next few years as a result.
Computers have had a more enourmous effect on people than we can measure--we just don't realise quite yet what parts of society it's affecting the most.
Furthermore, something--that is, some _single_thing_--will come about in the near
future and will crank up the rate of technological development as it relates to society. Ten years might be too narrow of a time frame, but technology _does_ advance increasingly fast.
Oh, and the bit about students needing 3000 pages to understand a proof--the fact that advances are much harder than before--is right on the money. However, look at when academics are starting to get permanent jobs now. Can you imagine a bright, dedicated, persistence student not getting a tenure-track job until their mid-30's a century ago? Soon we'll be in school until age 30, just to get a technicians job.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Interesting concepts.
First of all, technological change will always be greater in the future than it was in the past, unless some large scale disaster sets us back horrendously. Change in philosophy? Well, we've seen the end of religious philosophy as the major force in the world. It seems that we're stuck with money-grubbing and power-mongering as the predominant forces now. What will tomorrow bring? Something better, I _hope_.
Real world peace will never happen. Not until we find someone else to fight. Humans (and in fact, earthlings in general) are just too violent and ambitious.
Fifty years from now, we won't have computers, so to speak. Hell, they're so prevalent now that they're starting to dissappear. I suspect that in a mere ten years you won't often buy a computer--you'll just have it as part of your house, apartment, or what have you.
New power sources? Not if that idiot who took power in the US has anything to say about it. The oil companies are _powerful_ worldwide, and the only way they'll let significant amounts of alternate energy be developed is if they really start to run out of oil.
Space will be badly neglected, except for 5 year "sprints" once in a while. Maybe two of them in the next 50 years.
Violence, chaos, paranoia, and polution will thrive. On the other hand, art should be magnificent.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
On the other hand, he also asserted that there are 50 variables in predicting the weather, which is also absurdly low.
--
10 acres of solar panels in Arizona get about 40 Mw/day, if I'm doing the math right; solar panel conversion of 60% = 24Mw over about 10 hours = 2.4Mw available on average. You'd still need a bunch of this to put a dent in the West Coast power shortfall, which is maybe 10,000 Mw capacity right now. The good news is that it is available when needed, during peak cooling needs; the bad news, as he pointed out, is that it takes a lot of space; also that it is not cost effective using historical wholesale electric rates. At the current spot rates, solar should be close to competitive right now. But who is going to build 5000 acres of solar power plant at ~$300/sq meter? That's like 6 billion dollars Wait a second -- that's about what California has had to overpay the producers for power for the last year.
-dB
"It if was easy to do, we'd find someone cheaper than you to do it."
Hmm, brings up an interesting point. Did women routinely shave their legs in 1950?
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
you sound really persecuted and yet you live in comparative paradise. too bad
.oO0Oo.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
you missed feminism
.oO0Oo.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Solar power remains marginal. The biggest installations are in the Mojave Desert, and produce 360MW at peak on a really good day. (They're not photovoltaic; they're mirrors focused on oil tubes driving heat engines.) Wind power, though, is doing much better than expected.
Any marked departure from what Joe Dobson and his fellow citizens wear and eat and how they amuse themselves will arouse comment. ... It is astonishing how easily the great majority of us fall into step with our neighbors.
:(
Dude, that's so accurate it's not funny. But I guess this was true of any time, so why would things change, huh?
Peace,
Amit
ICQ 77863057
[o]_O
But things like making a pie shell and filling from scratch are becoming less common. I can buy a pie shell and apple filling from a supermarket and sort of make my own pie :)
It's also interesting to note that calls to places like the Butterball Turkey Help Line are seeing a major increase in questions that used to be considered "common knowledge" in cooking.
Cooking is probably a dying art. But it's not dead yet, and is not likely to be for some time yet, unlike the implication given in the article.
I haven't lost my mind; it's backed up on a CD-R somewhere
Miss. $5,000 in 1950 was $36,000 in 2000. Most homes in 2000 were in the $80,000 to $120,000 range, often much higher. This was partly due to the use of "expensive" materials alluded to earlier in the article, and also because we still built houses that would last a century or more. Building codes were probably one reason. Another was that a cheaply built house would probably cost more to maintain over its lifetime than a more expensive one.
I haven't lost my mind; it's backed up on a CD-R somewhere
Hit and Miss. Computers made weather forecasting a lot more accurate, and in 2000 they handled a lot more than fifty variables! But the computers collected the information and provided sophisticated weather models; people still did the bulk of the analysis and prediction. We didn't get the hour-to-hour predictions, either, because the chaos theory that came out of research done in the 1980s proved it would be impossible to do so.
I haven't lost my mind; it's backed up on a CD-R somewhere
The results are here.
I haven't lost my mind; it's backed up on a CD-R somewhere
Hit and Miss. Antibiotics were wildly successful for the four decades following 1950. However, by the 1990s their overuse had resulted in a classic Darwinian selection process taking place within their intended target populations. One by one many bacteria actually became resistant to the antibiotics we were using on them. Ironically, tuberculosis was one of the diseases affected by this phenomenom.
I haven't lost my mind; it's backed up on a CD-R somewhere
This is actaully a year old. When it first came out, read through it carefully and came up with a list of hits and misses. Some of these were actually difficult to determine: for example, he mentioned milti-tiered highways, but said the tiers would be used for different classes of traffic. A hit? A miss? A hit and a miss? Tough to say.
:)
Anyways, here's my list. Feel free to update as you see fit
HITS
1. Electric ranges
2. Widespread distribution of natural gas
3. Broad highways
4. Multidecked highways
5. Mercury and argon based street lighting
6. Failure to accept nuclear generated power widely
7. Generation of electricity using nuclear power to heat water
8. Use of nuclear reactors in military vessels
9. Microwave ovens
10. Videoconferencing
11. Shop at home via TV (the Internet)
12. Computer and robotic assisted manufacturing
13. Using computers to analyze weather data
14. Widespread international travel
15. Faster than sound travel
16. Supercities
17. Drop-off in the use of trains for travelling
18. Widespread use of facsimile machines
19. Widespread use of antibiotics
20. Manufacture of drugs from synthetic compounds
21. Recombinant DNA techniques to improve existing drugs
22. Lifespan of 85 years (close: Canadian female life expectancy is 84)
23. Use of equipment to peer inside the body in real-time
24. A cure of cancer being "just around the corner"
25. Use of elecrical devices to gain relief from medical conditions
25. People in 2000 are just as conformist as in 1950
MISSES
1. Airports in the centre of town
2. Lack of pollution
3. Cheap electrical heating
4. Factories burning gas
5. Highways with different decks for different speeds
6. Roads reserved exclusively for business traffic
7. Widespread use of nuclear generating stations in Canada and South America
8. Widespread use of solar power
9. Use of nuclear reactors in civilian passenger cruise ships
10. Use of lightweight metals in large building construction
11. Use of plastics to construct houses
12. One multipurpose unit to handle a home's hot water, heating and cooling
13. Houses that cost $36,000 (year 2000 dollars) and last only 25 years
14. Chemical removal of facial hair
15. Use of plastic plates that decompes at temperatures above 250 F
16. Cleaning plastic waterproof furniture by turning a hose on it
17. Paper tablecloths that are burned after use
18. Loss of culinary skills due to all food being delivered "fresh frozen"
19. Processes to turn wood pulp and sawdust into edible foods
20. Discarded paper linen and rayon underwear turned into candy
21. Videophones in every home
22. Using computers to generate forecasts (people still make the calls)
23. Preventing hurricanes by buring oil on the ocean
24. Not making it to the mooon
25. $36,000 (year 2000 dollars) to fly from Chicago to Paris
26. Rocket powered planes
27. Cars burning denatured alchohol as their primary fuel
28. Family helicopters
29. Ariel busses that hold 200 people for 100 mile commutes to work
30. Easy cures for bacterial diseases such as TB
31. Physical signs of aging no longer apparent
32. Widespread cures for viral diseases
33. Widespread treatments and cures of Parkinson's and Cerebral Palsy
I haven't lost my mind; it's backed up on a CD-R somewhere
I especially liked abstract concept of "house wife" he kept referring to...
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
"Even in the 20th century hospitals were packed with instruments and machines. The hospitals of 2000 have even more"
You would think that something writen just 49 years after the start of the new century would know that the year 2000 is still part of the 20th century.
And like most predictions of this type no effort has been made to mention the social problems that will result from this tech utopia.
Ascii artist &
Mmmmm... underwear candy.....
Oh, we've had that for years, they're called Marshmallow Peeps. They are usually disguised as pink bunnies or cute little yellow chicks.
When Jane Dobson cleans house she simply turns the hose on everything. Why not? Furniture (upholstery included), rugs, draperies, unscratchable floors--all are made of synthetic fabric or waterproof plastic.
Obviously they thought the people of the future would have no desire for a warm environment they'd like to call home. The idea of living in an entirely plastic, safe-and-waterproof home sickens me.
At least they didn't mention silver jumpsuits in the article.
But this line is my favorite:
Discarded paper table "linen" and rayon underwear are bought by chemical factories to be converted into candy.
Mmmmm... underwear candy.....
NO CARRIER
wont the matrix thing make display tech. irrelevant? who would want a 3d wall sized tv when you can sit in your matrix vr workstation room/world surrounded by whatever displays you prefer (19" flat crts in my case). you could even have as many computers as you like in any configuration all emulated on a quantum computer (or THE quantum computer, we'd theoretically only need one.
I mean that the 3d environment would be used to simulate the 2d or 3d displays that the computer (or whatever) are actually using. this would include input devices such as keyboards and mice or whatever wierd ass thing, since anything is possible just by programming the 3d world properly
Beyond the vacuum tubes, helicopters, frozen dinners, disposable houses, and plastic furinture there's something else to note.
The utterly optimistic view of the future.
Everything's supposed to be better, cleaner, tastier, healthier, and more efficient. Nobody's sick, hungry, or homeless (presumably, due to cheap housing).
Nowadays, we look fifty years down the road with dread, anticipating polluted air, nighmarish crime, phenomenal urban and suburban congestion, overpopulation, famine, powerful and overbearing corporations, ubiquitous surveillance, and disastrous climatological changes.
After fifty years, maybe we're just let down. Sure, we can cook a TV dinner in sixty seconds, but is anybody's life really better because of it? We still spend a third of our lives at work, still struggle with mortgages and rents, still eat poorly despite fifty years of accumulated nutritional expertise, still wage war over land and resources, and still wring our hands over social injustice.
Further, it's remarkable how we've clinged to the "old ways" in the face of technological change. Most people probably prefer a cooked-from-scratch meal to a microwaved sawdust-derivative. Millions of Americans still commute to work in their personal autos instead of taking the train or bus. Growing your own vegetables, though often unnecessary, remains an engaging and rewarding pasttime. Often when buying a new home, many people (myself included) will actually look for older, built-to-last homes.
I think that fifty years ago, Americans needed less of this year-2000-fantasy tripe. They (or we or whomever) should have instead paid more attention to the Aldous Huxleys, Ray Bradburys, and George Orwells who cautioned that the future is not necessarily bright and shiny.
Simpson, that is.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
the porn will be much higher resolution; in fact by 2050 it had better be pretty much lifelike.
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
The period around 1950 was the most conformist in US history. Take a look around, and ask yourself which direction we're going.
When was the last time you got beat up for wearing a leather jacket; or were dragged before a congressional sub-commitee to answer for your political beliefs from a decade ago?
It's comments like yours that tell me the average slashdot user is totally out of touch with reality.
If you have a problem with my views, REPLY, don't moderate!
I think that he prediction there is pretty much right. Essentally, e-mail is today's telegraph. How often do people get mad at the mail server because an e-mail their friend sent them had a misspelled word?
--
Ewwww. Well, he got it partially right. Thank God we're not eating the used variety as he envisioned.
For example, even if you had "plastic dishes that melted under hot water", it's unlikely you'd be comfortable with having 250 degree water coming out of your faucets. Or that a "telegraph company" can exist that "never makes a mistake, only the sender".
Probaly more than a co-incedence that he uses the name Orwell Helicopter Corporation's in his otherwise littany of technological prognostications.
Although, the chemical to remove hair instead of shaving would be nice. Why hasn't anyone come up with a solution? When Gilette said they were doing "the next big thing" a few years back, I thought they meant a laser-guided (or laser-edged) razor. Instead, they bring a razor with 3 blades. The next innovation: 4!
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
It is astonishing how easily the great majority of us fall into step with our neighbors.
He predicted the general population would still be as docile and conformist as sheep. Looks like he was right. Damn
Stupid like a fox!
I disagree. I think the rate of change should be measured by the effect on the humans. IMHO the effect of change from, say, 1850-1900 or 1900-1950 is greater than that of today.
While it is true that there are ever more scientists and engineers and while it is true in a sense that the rate of innovations accelarates exponentially, the innovations you need for one product increase as well. All the simple things have been done, only the hard things remain. It is estimated that a math-student needs to read 3000 pages to completely understand one of the "big" modern proofs. I look upon technologic advancve like a expanding sphere. If you only want to keep the rate of advance in the radius constant, you need to increase the volume much more than linearly, since the "front" where you need advances grows all the time. Looking at the biggest advances in physics, like Netonian mechanics, quantum theory and theory of relativity, they all occured long before 1950.
About 1880 few believed in human flight and there were scientists that had good arguments that a wing of a plane can only carry 25% of the plane's weight and humans will never fly. 20 years later, the first planes fly and fullfill a dream of humanity. Less than 20 years later, it is already a important weapon. Do we have a weapon of that importance today that was though impossible 30 years ago? Another 20 years later (WWII), it was a matter of life and death for 10s of million of people and was maybe the largest of all industries.
Today, we can fly fast and cheap from, say europe to america. But people could fly that route in the 1930s. The only thing that changed in the last 50 years is how cheap and fast and reliable it is.
The two most expensive possessions of a typical inhabitant of a wealthy country are the house and the car. These have become more safe, cheap, a bit faster in the case of cars, but are fundamentally the same as in 1910, both in construction and effect. We don't have flying cars or nuclear powered ones. The big change was when "normal" people could leave their surroundings. When in 1900 a factory worker in Berlin could ride his bike to leave the city for the weekend or could ride a train to visit relatives in another city, that was much more of a revolution than any changes in transporting we have had in the last 50 years.
Well, we've seen the end of religious philosophy as the major force in the world. It seems that we're stuck with money-grubbing and power-mongering as the predominant forces now.
Again that is a very old trend, probably 200 or 300 years old. The trend is only continuing.
Real world peace will never happen. Not until we find someone else to fight. Humans (and in fact, earthlings in general) are just too violent and ambitious.
I would say egoistic instead of ambitious, but apart from that, you are right.
Fifty years from now, we won't have computers, so to speak. Hell, they're so prevalent now that they're starting to dissappear.
True. And that will be an advance. But, again it is a small advance compared to getting computers in the first place.
Of course, there have been big innovations in the last 50 years: The digital computer, the internet or the mobile phone. But many people use them to do things more easily that could have been done before; They use the computer as a better typewriter. The use the internet to download MP3s instead of listening to the radio. They use the mobile phone instead of looking for a phone booth. The introduction of the radio with the possibility to hear music whenever you want, to hear events life, to do propaganda etc has had an enormous effect on people.
Of course, he got a good deal of it wrong since he wasn't taking into account politics.
True.
However he's also got a few inconsistencies wholly within his train of thought.
IMHO wrong. Someone already said that the atom-bombarding sentence is about neon lights.
You go to length that on the hand hand he says people won't use nuclear power and on the other he says people will use nuclear power. I think you are misunderstandings his main point about nuclear power:
"It is as hopeless in 2000 as it was in 1950 to drive machinery directly by atomic energy."
You have to keep in mind that at that time, one of the most popular predictions was that cars and planes would be nuclear powered by the year 2000. Clearly we know today, they are not. AFAIK only three types of things are nuclear powered: stationary power plants, large ships and satellites. He did predict the first two, and did predict we would not have small machinery powered directly by atomic energy. The only thing he didn't predict is satellites. So, I think his hit-rate on this point (which you seem to see as his major downfall) is very high, even so he went against the opinion of his time.
"It was known as early as 1950 that an atomic power plant would have to be larger and much more expensive than a fuel-burning plant to be efficient."
While the fossil fuel power plants of his day may have been "smaller" and "cheaper" than the nuclear power plants, he failed to take into account all the extra stuff you'd need to put into that fossil fuel power plant to clean up the pollution, which he mentioned earlier in the paragraph.
If you take the pollution into account, that is the waste disposal and safe storage for unbelievable amounts of time, then there is no doubt that he is right that nuclear energy is much more expensive. Its just that the companies that build and operate them now don't care about the costs in, say 1000 or even 100 years.
Do the managers care about 10 years? If the company has a few percent more earnings the next ten years and then goes downhill and they know/speculate they won't be in that company in 10 years time what will they do?
"Because they sprawl over large surfaces, solar engines are profitable in 2000 only where land is cheap."
Why is having a larger power plant such a bad thing for nuclear energy, but not for solar?
After all, by his own words:
"Theoretically, 5000 horsepower in terms of solar heat fall on an acre of the earth's surface every day."
Aside from the fact that he's confusing power and energy, just how many of the coal-burning steam locomotives of his day would be required to match that power output? Do you really think they'd take up anywhere near an acre?
Like he writes, the size matters sometimes (for example, for a power station generating electricity for New York), and sometimes doesn't matter as much (for example, a power station in the desert to produce hydrogen). BTW, he doesn't confuse power and energy when you read the sentence like he wrote it and not substitute "per day" instead of "every day"
"Before (the hurricane) has a chance to gather much strength and speed as it travels westward toward Florida, oil is spread over the sea and ignited . There is an updraft. Air from the surrounding region, which includes the developing hurricane, rushes in to fill the void. The rising air condenses so that some of the water in the whirling mass falls as rain."
Aside from the pollution issues, if you have oil that burns that hot, who needs nuclear power?
Huh??? Thermals are created by a few Celsius differences. The *temperature* of burning oil certainly is absolutely sufficient to generate huge updrafts. Think about how hurricanes are created themselves. You don't need 1000 degrees to generate one.
Besides, he seems to have forgotten that the gulf stream that pulls the hurricane towards North America would also pull the flaming oil slick as well.
Yes. And? What he wants to do is change the course of the hurricane. Say it moves west and you do a huge fire just south of it. I don't know what would happen, but I wouldn't be surprised if it changed course to the south.
In order to get it to work, you'd pretty much have to put the oil down while the hurricane is raging overhead. Playing with extremely flammable oil in the middle of a tropical depression at best. Any volunteers?
There have been quite a lot of volunteers that flew into thunderstorms and hurricanes to do measurements. But you could also fly over it and drop things, use a manned submarine, use a unmanned submarine, release the oil before the storm comes, fire rockets, lob grenades, etc etc etc. I am sure this problem can be overcome. Of course we don't want to do it because of environmental reasons. Not predicting environmental issues is IMHO the largest downfall of his. But I certainly see no reason why his hurricane-diverting scheme should not be possible.
Sure, if the oil burns hot enough, the air directly over the oil will expand to help fill up the low-pressure system,
That isn't how air works (cold, not warm air fills up low pressure areas over the ground). And it isn't how he intends it. He wants air from the hurricane to move to the burning spot, not vice versa.
but to get it to expand enough to stop that hurricane, you'll still need oil that violates a thermodynamic law or two.
If you think expanding air can fill the low pressure and thereby *reduce* the updraft, you have got the sign of the effect wrong, not the magnitude.
"Nobody has yet circumnavigated the moon in a rocket space ship, but the idea is not laughed down."
I dunno, maybe it's the whole "hindsight is 20/20" thing, but how could anybody that's seen what a V-2 could do in WWII not believe that it would be possible to get to the moon by the end of the century?
Actually, many if not most people didn't believe it possible. For the human mind it is easy to "understand" that with huge rockets you can "throw" more stuff higher than a human being can. But its something different to "understand" of believe the possibility of something not falling back to earth, like a sputnik or even like a rocket to the moon.
"And after all, is the standardization of life to be deplored if we can have a house like Joe Dobson's, a standardized helicopter, luxurious standardized household appointments,"
Now I'm wondering if this guy ever had to testify before the House UnAmerican Activities Comittee. "Everybody has exactly the same things" sounds an awful lot like the ol' "worker's paradise."
I think you (want to?) misunderstand again. He speaks of "can". Isn't that the american dream, that everyone can became a billionaire and have everything? Mass production is what makes things cheap. Therefore, there is a big standardization. There are only so many manufacturers of cars, dish washers, planes, computer graphics cards, operating systems etc. Sure it would be nice, if everyone had a car build for himself. I, for example would like a space int the boot that exactly fits a desktop. A farmer wants one (and gas stations) that uses plant oil. An ecologist wants a solar powered one. Someone wants one with the same flower texture as her favorite dress. Someone would prefer to steer with joystick. All these would be nice, but 90% of the people have cars straight of some assembly line and Kaempffert says we should prefer this because only this way can we produce them in such a way that most people can have a car. Again, I agree. Maybe its different in another 50 years: Maybe you can get Photoshop 2050, draw the "texture" for your car and the factory will spray it on. Maybe you can design your own car (in certain limits, of course) and it will be automatically built for you, with no extra charge because no more work and materials than for a standard car are neede. But he predicts 2000, not 2050, so again he is on. I am not saying his predictions are all hits, but I was surprised how many came true.
"and food that was out of the reach of any Roman emperor?"
Ancient Rome didn't have sawdust?
They did, but did they have the modern means to process it?
True, Kaempffert's vision of today was very accurate, but don't forget how many INaccurate depictions of the future (today) there were. This does show us that it is quite possible to make good predictions about the future, but how do we know which predictions about our future are correct?
..That we are not living like the jetsons. "I was promised flying cars!!!! Where are the flying cars?!?!?!" - Commercial
Men and women 70 years old, look as if they were 40?
Compare a well-to-do American (the only demographic he is concerned with) 70 year old today with 40- and 70- year olds of 1950. In 1950, someone 70 years old was probably on his deathbed. Today, with improved cancer and heart therapies, the advent of sunscreens, plastic surgery, laser vision and skin therapy, artificial joints, the exercise/health booms of the latter century, vastly improved dietary science... In 1990, my grandfather was 70, and was WATERSKIING after three replacement hips and a cancer surgery. No way that could have happened in 1950; he'd have already died. And now we have another 10 years of technology. This prediction certainly hasn't come true for every single person, but many first-world 70's folks do look and act like the 40's, or at least 50's, folks of the 1950.
"Cooking as an art is only a memory in the minds of old people"
Again, not universally, but what fraction of people graduating college today both know how to cook a real meal and do it almost every night? About 50% of american meals are not eaten at home now. And what percent of the remaining ones are accounted for by TV Dinner/rehydrated pasta/di giorno pizza/some other prepared food? Nearly all of it. I consider myself an accomplished cook for my age (27), but even I only make a *real* meal about twice a week. The rest of the time it's a quick batch of spaghetti, papa johns pizza, or just snacks. Very few people really cook much today. EVERYONE cooked ALL THE TIME in 1950, or rather, the housewives did.
I personally think the most interesting failed "prediction" he made was simply an assumption - he assumed the typical family would still have a working husband and a housewife.
And oh, I still shave the normal way
Really? In 1950 a lot of people still used and sharpened their straight razors. Disposables wouldn't hit the markets for another decade, and the few existing electrics sucked. I've shaved with an electric since the very first day I shaved, only using a razor on the few occasions it wasn't available. I may not actually be using a chemical, but it doesn't really take me any longer to shave than what he describes. About a minute, most days.
Wood, brick and stone is too expensive, so we build in something else (poured plastic)?
Actually, stone *is* too expensive for most houses, and brick use is down as well. When we do use stone or even brick anymore, it's frequently decorative over a steel frame rather than truly structural. Wood has managed to stay competitive, largely because it's light and strong, and advanced power tools have made working with wood now even easier than pouring concrete into a form.
But have you noticed how many new houses have tyvek wrappers, advanced polymer insulations that are blown into the walls by fans, polymer carpets, spray-on stucco outer coatings, composite-material fireproof roofing tiles, etc.? Not precisely what he said, but maybe only because we found new materials even better.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
I just saw an infomercial for some depilatory spray that seemed to work pretty good, but if you hate shaving that bad, why don't your consider getting some electrolysis done?
Numbers 31:17,18 Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man,but save for yourselves every virg
I live just 2 blocks from the trade center. I had no idea. I wonder if anyone is using those disposable plastic plates that melt in the sink without my knowledge as well.
http://saveie6.com/
There is an actual hotel in Houston that uses this water based technology as an air-conditioner. The author mentioned that it will be only available in southern area's and he is right. Because of this, it makes more sense to use electric powered air-conditioners, even in southern cities.
The cost for something like a water based one is huge and its not worth the savings in electric bills. I mean who knows how to fix it when something goes wrong. Americancs are very conservative and he mentioned conservatism might be one of the obsticules of these inventions. He is also correct about solar power cars being best only for area's like pheonix or Los Angeles where there is alot of sunshine. However he didn't consider the cost of developing a solar powered car that can be used only in a few selected area's. The 1950's was an amazing time in America. Everyone was just so optimistic about everything. I guess the author assumed economic factors would not make a difference because America would continue to grow and everyone would be happy and wealthy as most people thought back then. I suppose we could easily accomplished all the things the author here mentioned but we do not want to or doesn't make economic sense.
Anyway if anyone is interested, the hotel is the four seasons hotel in Houston that has the water based unit. Basically its a pond with a huge evaporating coils on the side of it. The air-condition is quite effecient. Even when the temp gets up to 95 degree's outside.
http://saveie6.com/
As I read through the article, it was indeed interesting to see the picture of what life was "supposed" to be by now. In many cases, his predictions were correct in spirit (like the fax machine), but it was interesting to see where we exceeded and missed expectations. A perfect example was the prediction regarding us having high-speed transcontinental travel, but not having made it to the moon yet! Of course I realize there are those who would argue that point, but I digress.
Perhaps the most insightful prediction he made was this comment:
This, more than anything else predicted about the 21st century, is true. From what we wear, to the music we listen to, and even the software we access the Internet, it seems that society (at least the organizations that influence it most) ostracizes you if you step outside of the "approved channel"In the end though, each generation needs its rebels to ensure there is a future, since what is progress but a desire to break the staus-quo.
"To travel the paths of human imagination you have to be willing to unlearn all you know"
Actually, X-rays are absorbed by all tissues, but the ratio of transmission to absorption varies with the density of the medium.
Bone shows up on an X-ray negative as white; so does tumor tissue, usually, because it's also very dense. Soft tissues like organs are rendered in all shades of gray. Fluids show up too; X-rays are really useful for finding abnormal fluid collections, like a collection of blood around the heart (called a cardiac tampenade). A trained radiologist can identify subtle structures from a plain, ordinary chest radiograph; you just have to know what to look for.
What the author wrote, that "doctors place heart patients in front of a fluoroscopic screen, turn on the X-rays and then, with the aid of a photoelectric cell, examine every section of the heart," is a pretty accurate description of a cardiac angiogram. Radiologists have been doing film angiograms for years-- basically using a motion picture camera instead of a static camera when shooting X-rays of contrast material flowing through blood vessels. In some hospitals. CCD-based X-ray cameras are replacing film cameras, so the author's prediction is actually dead-on correct.
Credit where it's due.
[Article] Atoms are bombarded by electrons and other minute projectiles, electrically excited in this way and made to glow.
Isn't that a reasonable if simplified description of how fluorescent and neon lights work?
[Article] Jane Dobson throws soiled "linen" in the incinerator
Incinerators can be quite clean if the temperature is high enough and sufficient pollution-control technology is in place. Here's one (not particularly great) example.
[Guppy06] How could anybody that's seen what a V-2 could do in WWII not believe that it would be possible to get to the moon by the end of the century?
It's one thing to launch a missile ballistically, another thing to get into orbit or beyond. Remember that Sputnik wasn't until about 1957 (?), and I'm pretty sure I remember having read that in the 1950s there was still significant skepticism in the scientific community that it would ever be possible to reach the moon.
[Article] Instead of taking electrocardiographs, doctors place heart patients in front of a fluoroscopic screen, turn on the X-rays and then, with the aid of a photoelectric cell, examine every section of the heart
Slightly wrong in detail, but right in principle. I had something like this done a few years back, but with my lungs rather than my heart. I don't remember the name of the procedure, but I had to breathe some mixture infused with a radioactive tracer while laying inside this scanning device that detected the radiation and displayed the results on a CRT in real time. I have to say it was pretty cool to be able to actually see my lungs expand and contract as I breathed. Not X-rays, but otherwise very similar, and I'm pretty sure the same technique can be used with radioactive tracers in the blood (angiography or something like that?). Echocardiograms (and prenatal ultrasound) are also in the same, uh, vein, though again the details are a bit different.
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
And many types of pollution are a crime. Witness the automobile emissions laws in California, a state that has even discussed outlawing barbecues because of their emissions. (I'm not sure whether that ever actually came to pass or not.) The air is certainly vastly cleaner there than it was 20 or 30 years ago (though I'm not sure about 50).
Electric heating and cooking is obviously pretty common too, at least in some places. Here in Seattle, where power is comparatively cheap, I have both electric heating and an electric stove.
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
Yeah, I remember just fine that pressure affects boiling point -- but I sort of took for granted that water coming out of a faucet would be entering a sink where the ambient pressure is (more or less) at 1 atmosphere. Wouldn't the superheated water, even if under pressure before being delivered from the faucet, flash into steam immediately when the pressure was relieved? Or does that boiling process take a lot longer than I'm imagining? I'll admit it's been many years since I studied this sort of stuff, so I wouldn't be surprised if the cruft has developed.
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
I'm having a slightly hard time picturing water coming out of a faucet at 250 degrees, given that the boiling point of H20 is 212F. Wouldn't that "superheated water" be what most of us refer to as "steam"?
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
Ever hear of a double-wide?
Need a Linux consultant in New Orleans?
I'm still hoping that fashions in the future will be like those in the original Star Trek series (especially for the women), Logan's Run, and other 60's-early 70's TV shows and movies...
Your computer comes with your house? This will NEVER happen. How will Microsoft make money on mandatory OS upgrades if your computer hardware never changes? Oh yeah, your OS software rental bill be another of your basic utility bills, like the power bill, the water bill, etc.
"Bed sheets are of more substantial stuff, but Jane Dobson has only to hang them up and wash them down with a hose..."
What the h*ll are those Dobson folk from the future doing in their bedroom that they need rugedized bedsheets that can stand a "hosing down?" Wish my life was that wild.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~ the real world is much simpler ~~
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
In the Orwell Helicopter Corporation's plant only a few trouble shooters are visible, and these respond to lights that flare up on a board whenever a vacuum tube burns out or there is a short circuit. By holes punched in a roll of paper, every operation necessary to produce a helicopter is indicated.
It's interesting that, despite all the other technological advances predicted, computers are still supposed to be using vaccum tubes and punch cards. Considering the impact computers have had on the progress of other technologies, I don't think most of what he predicted would have been possible if computers hadn't gone past this point.
I had a good laugh at some of the stuff in the article! I wouldn't say there is a lot of accuracy though... I mean clean the living room with a hose? Wood, brick and stone is too expensive, so we build in something else (poured plastic)? Óh well he does mention concrete... Hmmm. And oh, I still shave the normal way. Men and women 70 years old, look as if they were 40? "Cooking as an art is only a memory in the minds of old people" - my dinners take long... And judging by my results (compared to my wifes) it is _still_ an art ;) :)
Well, it's still a good and very amusing article! Read it!
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
If you are interested in such predictions, read Peter F. Hamiltons "Nights Dawn" trilogy, The Reality Dysfunction, The Neutronium Alchemmist, and The Naked God. It's a good 3600 pages all in all, but it's some of the most amazing and believable sci-fi I've read in a LONG time! If you disregard the story, the tech they have is really cool, and fairly realistic!
He even made a book about the known universe, based on what we wrote in the trilogy. I haven't read it, but I am going to! The book is The Confederation Handbook.
I hightly it!
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
I disagree on the implanted chip for tracking purposes. By 2050, obiquitous cameras, AI, highly integrated networks, and advanced biometric recogition software will make it effortless for any large organization or government to track any given individual everywhere they go. As if that isn't enough, we already are trackable with the use of bugs we carry and use such as cell phones, credit cards, pagers, etc... In summary, there are so many easy ways to steal your privacy and track you that the only possible use for a chip would be for biometric information to gauge your thoughts and feelings. Oh, oops, I guess that one could be snuck in as a sort of biometric monitor to "protect" and promote our general well being, or as a weapon in the war against drugs. On further thought, you make a good point, if somewhat incomplete.
Actually, I'll disagree with you on the educational front as well. Dictatorial leaders will not be glorified in America because education in general will be far too dumbed down to include such lessons. Most schooling for the serf class of non wealth, non land owning, non capital holding, unwashed, lower classes etc.. will be involved with teaching just enough to make them into perfect worker drone consumers. Now, the rich and priviledged will receive a highly conformist, laize-faire capitalist, social Darwinist education that will let their collective concience rest easy as they suck the less "worthy" dry of opportunity and life to feed their greedy, bloated, and hedonistic lifestyles.
I used to be one of those hard working stupid people who actually felt the need to go out and make things or do something productive. But cost of living inflation along with wage deflation have changed my mind. I'd much rather be one of the capital owning people who produce nothing and suck off the poor than to be one of the poor. In an ideal world everyone could be rich, live well, and be free. Too bad this isn't an ideal world. Not that it couldn't be, but human nature in the form of greed, scarcity mentality, and complacency will ensure that such a utopia will never come to pass. So, I will sell real estate, eventually own real estate, suck my tenents dry like a feudal lord etc... If the order of things is going to suck, it's better for them to suck worse for someone else. Though I suppose owning land and living off rental income isn't as evil as buying diamonds and supporting the rebels/mafia in Seira Leone who cut off young men and womens limbs with machetes to further their ends. How can a person spend and make money without furthering someone else's misery or misfortune and still live a modern and comfortable lifestyle in America. Christ! I can't even buy a decent pair of sneakers that isn't the product of child slave labor. END RANT
"So either join the crowd or get beat down." -- Unknown
I've set up a mirror at the following location.
They are right-- it is only economic and political interests that keep these things from happening.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
"Discarded paper table "linen" and rayon underwear are bought by chemical factories to be converted into candy." "Trick or treat"
http://www.codewolf.com - Just good stuff to waste time
The trends he is making fun of are the corporatization of culture and the rise of state-sponsored religious conformity within it. Microsoft is the ultimate icon of large powerful corporations. He wasn't really referring to Microsoft per se, but for what it stands for. The fact that the head of Microsoft personally doesn't like to spend his valuable time in church is an unfortunate but irrelevant detail.
I doubt he could have predicted those at all - especially the transistor; that one was so impressive it got the inventors a Nobel Prize.
--Jo Hunter
--Jo Hunter
Smile! It makes them wonder what you're up to.
This sorta reminded me of the last space odyssey book, takes place in the year 3000. One of the things that struck me was how Clarke talked about the massive technological changes between the years 1000 and 2000 and the years 2000 and 3000. He said the difference was greater between the first two- someone from 1000 AD would be lost in our society, while someone from 2000 AD in 3000 would be awestruck, but not overwhelmed. He didn't forsee any new changes in the nature of technology that would cause one's head to explode (figuratively speaking of course), while a person from 1000 to 2000 would be struck dumb by the advent of electricity.
I digress.
My question was, do you think that the last 50 years have brought greater change then the next 50 will? My guess is no. I think that the next 5 decades will bring revolutions to our world... First, non-technologically speaking, true world peace will break out. Not the worrying about what small country with an insane military leader has nuclear weapons, but no fighting at all (and no Cold Wars, and no "incidents" like with China). Second, new power sources will be utilized. I don't mean that nuclear power will be widely utilized, but that completely new power sources will discovered- or theoretical sources will be opened. Third, we will have "space elevators" constructed out of the bucky tubes -I think that's the name- which are super strong albeit at the moment incredibly tiny tubes. Fourth, computers will undergo a development equal to the evolution from ENIAC to the current PC.
Anyone else have ideas? Comments?
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No sig for you.
Even beyond remarking that it's a shame that such sweeping changes to the ways in which we live haven't come about, it's interesting to note that even more manageable, less utopian changes also haven't come to pass. Isn't it a shame that we don't have cleaner cars? Isn't it a shame that we can't build houses rapidly and cheaply in order to house the homeless? Couldn't we have more specialised, efficient highways for different types of transport? Couldn't we make better use of public transport?
I don't mean to be making a particularly political point; it's just a shame that when we look back to more idealistic visions of the 21st Century, so many opportunities to make real change for the better have failed to come about. There _have_ of course been many improvements in the ways in which we all live; but at the same time, there are so many ways in which we could all be doing more to change the world...
I think it was Arthur C Clarke himself who said something that when making predictions on the near future we are too optimistic, and when making predictions on the far future we're more pessimistic.
Even though I do believe we have to look at both the past and the present to predict the future, I think we also have to make sure we think about how the society will change. Also, we might want to look at past predictions and see how they were right and how they were wrong. Maybe we can learn from our past predictions so that we can make more accurate ones in the future.
Finally, I would think the best way to predict the future, is to actually take part in the building of the same.
Of hits and misses, I'd say the punch cards is pretty big. While he was right about computing power increasing (though understimated), I would have thought an easier interface would seem only logical.
Check out http://www.metv.com - it's what you want to watch!
Rob
NEOS
Whether they happen in the next fifty years is debatable, though I have no particular doubts, but there are two things that will make the world of the 'future' so absolutely and totally different from ours that a man of 2000 will be as lost in 3000 as a man of 1000 would be lost today.
1) The nano-assembler
A device capable of reproducing itself and manipulating matter at the atomic or even sub-atomic level. Manufacture of goods will dissappear, the construction of buildings will be done in CAD programs, not with steel girders.
2) Machines capable of mimicking our brain
I don't mean true AI, having intelligent computers would be weird, but not really anything fundamentally world-rocking. I mean a method for re-producing our own brains with an artificial device. We have, or nearly have, the technology to replace or rebuild every part of our bodies except our brain. When we are capable of rebuilding or replacing the brain, we will be immortal. And if immortality isn't the big 'holy crap, what happened to the world' changer of society, I don't know what is.
Space elevators, world peace, cheap/efficient power... They'd be nice and they'll come eventually, but they won't change the world. Stopping war forever only effects the people who were fighting. Obviously there are always counter-effects and side-effects when you change something, and world peace would change a lot of things, but it wouldn't rebuild civilzation overnight. Humans would still be humans.
But to be able to construct anything, from a perfect diamond the size of your car to a cheese danish using no more than a single device so tiny you can't see it without a fairly large microscope, that would change the world. I can't imagine what will happen when it's possible, nobody can because nothing like it has ever happened. Nobody could have predicted the changes that computers brought us, or the changes brought on by the industrial revolution, or by fire... Nano-assembly is as big as any of them. And as for the ability to transfer your consciousness from the rotting medium of meat and blood that's floating in your skull to something more efficient and more permanent... The ability to exist for as long as there is energy enough to power your mind, that would change more than society. That would change humanity at its most fundamental levels. No more fear of death, no more disease (why cure it when you can just make a copy of your body with an assembler?), no hunger (replace your gastro-intenstinal system with a fuel cell), no pain (shut down the nerves and replace the lost parts). All the things that drive man to war and religion, the two most long-lasting parts of our society, would be gone. When those things come, the world will change, and neither you nor I nor any magazine article will predict how.
See Sig append. Append Sig, append. Good Sig.
The only obstacles to accurate prophecy are the vested interests, which may retard progress for economic reasons, tradition, conservatism, labor-union policies and legislation.
It is a crime to burn raw coal and pollute air with smoke and soot.
That's right, Mr. Cheney.
I agree with everyone about the miss realy being social changes, but...I think it's time for some of these changes to take place. we need to change the way everything works, to stop the mad rush for money we have now and start HELPING socity, the envorment, the world and ourselves.
think about this articl for a second. why, for example dont we want to live in a small plastic house? why dont we want to drive small cars? because a big, fancy house is a sign of welth and higer social standing. the same thing goes for cars. if nothing changes, in 50 years, we'll be in the same place we are now. we'll have the same technology, it'll just be smaller and more expensive (and a little faster) companys will be more powerful, and more controling
if we dont change alot, soon. we are screwed. how can we change? beats me, but one thing we can all do, is sop thinking of ourselves for a second, and do what we can to better the world (open source is leaning in this direction) or, you can recycle, or whatever, "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" is all i can say on this.
The opinions in this post are ficticious. Any similarity to actual opinions, real or imagined, is purely coincidental.
He probably could never imagine his article would be available on a worldwide network of computers, and i'm damn sure he couldn't predict the server it's posted on would be slashdotted.
The only statement that cannot be questioned, is that every statement can be questioned.
...without exception. Especially loved the TWADDLE acronym.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
OK, we were discussing this at work Friday but it's a major miss. Imagine what the 50's droids would have thought of an actual working aphrodisiac that is covered by medical insurance.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
Images in this article show up as broken when you view it in Netscape 4.x, due to the author's use of invalid URLs with spaces in them. See my article about stuff that doesn't work in Netscape.
--Dan
--Dan
Web Tips
Now...
you shouldn't base your opinion on one breakaway part of the faith which doesnt show any real aspects of Christainity anyway
But..
w/his prediction, you know, its called reeducation, Stalin did it.
Slashdot Hypocrisy at work?
People in underdeveloped countries living just as they do now, if not worse
People in developed countries accumulating much more wealth, especially as AI (and pre-AI) improves productivity.
Medicine cures obesity, some forms of cancer, but not all of them. People live longer, but still die.
Terrorism becomes a much bigger threat then it is now. Small organizations can destroy cities.
Of course, when AI fully kicks in, all bets are off.
Wroot
s/moon/mars/g
You are writing for slashdot, not NY Times ;)
Wroot
12. artificial intelligence has exceeded human intelligence (note: im not taking into account the effects of singularity here either.)
This is a very important point. We can only predict things that will happen up to the point when AI exceeds HI (Human Intelligence), such as vastly improved productivity of companies and individuals that get their hands on AI first and usurp the world.
Wroot
In the Orwell Helicopter Corporation's plant only a few trouble shooters are visible, and these respond to lights that flare up on a board whenever a vacuum tube burns out or there is a short circuit.
Let's not forget that nobody uses vaccum tubes in computers anymore. Unless, of course, you're using a Mac. I've looked into one of their more transparent models and seen vaccum tubes!
Too busy staying alive... ~ R.A.
Then Jeremy showed us the latest and greatest vauxhall corsa. I burst out laughing.
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
Cancer is not yet curable in 2000. But physicians optimistically predict that the time is not far off when it will be cured.
Nah, that could never happen now.
--------------------------------
Sounds like he predicted the DMCA, RIAA vs Napster, MPAA vs DeCSS, etc
Ryan T. Sammartino
Ryan T. Sammartino
"Ancora imparo"
Vacuum tubes? Punch tape? Heheh. This made my day.
I think this is minus. I thought they knew over-exposure to X-Rays was dangerous back then. If you want to be charitable, you could say he was predicting CAT scans and NMR, but I think it's a stretch. And my Dad had an ECG last week.
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www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
It was good, but essentially their society is the same as ours is today. Yet if you compare modern, western society to mediaeval western society you will see significant differences. My personal opinion: Eon and Eternity, a two book series by Greg Bear (IIRC) are the best sci-fi I have ever read. The scope and sweep is so incredible it's breathtaking. And, more importantly in terms of realism, it depicts a human society totally alien to what we have today. We, as a society, probably won't look like the humans of Eon and Eternity, but I would bet a lot of money that we won't look (as a society) as we do today. JM2C.
There's no $$$ in 'team'...
www..--..net - for incisive, w
"we have had a permenant base on mars for 30 years"
2050 - 30 = 2020. Somehow, I doubt it. If we're lucky (i.e. no ridiculous budget cuts etc) we may see a small handful of people set foot on the moon by then. But certainly not a permanent base.
Generally your predictions sound fairly accurate to me though, based on what I would also guess - only I would stretch them over the next 100 rather than 50 years.
In general, its relatively easy to extrapolate development trends in specific technologies and make rough predictions from that (e.g. "genetic technology will be ...", "computers will be ...". The hard part is trying to guess how these technologies will be used together, i.e. the resulting developments when certain technologies are combined in some way. Also its difficult to predict what exactly people will do with new technologies (e.g. what will governments and corporations do when it becomes possible and cheap to produce microscopic cameras which can be embedded into any product? Also, combine advanced AI with video/audio surveillance systems for behaviour analysis and recording.)
set foot on the moon
Did I say moon? I meant mars. Doh.
Doesn't heat *fuel* hurricanes?
Phil
The people in the fifties never did have any asthetic sense about the future. Living in a plastic dungeon has never been one of my dreams.. although many of the other ideas are quite interesting. (I want a house with a lake on the top!)
"The first successful atomically driven liners began to run in 1970 after the U. S. Navy had carried on many expensive, large-scale secret experiments. Outwardly the liners are not much different from the Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth, but they have much more cargo and passenger space because it is no longer necessary to carry about 12,000 tons of fuel"
how could that be written in the 50s ?
Many of the comparisons, or feelings in this article are more applicable to societies outside of America. Latin America, the Mediterranean, Asia.
I am currently in India (business, vacation, et al), and have been here for about 3 months now.
The culture, the feel.. of India (Hyderabad), I compare to the US in the 1950's.
It's conservativeness, family-oriented structure. Hyderabad is in the transition stage between large families (monetary support, good company, security) and true independent wealth.
We get electricity here, probably about 20 hours of the day on average. We get running water (not drinkable, but showers, toilet [no toilet paper. *paper is too expensive*] etc.) probably 16 hours of the day on a good day.
There are no wooden buildings. It's all concrete -- why do you think New Delhi had such problems during that earthquake? Concrete can do nothing but crumble. Some plastics, but it's rare. Furniture is kept very simple.
IT is rampant -- there are training courses everywhere; 1,000+ technology companies in this city. Petrol is nearly $5/gallon -- motorcycles and scooters are insanely popular. If you have a car, it's probably a diesel.
The biggest change that I feel from the last 50 years, exists not in technology, but within our mindsets; we have become inherently competitive by nature. Everything is about increasing productivity. Our daily lives have been accelerated to cope. To find a more apt comparison to the 'future' of this article, we should be looking for the society that has the technological 'capability' of his forecast, BUT with the mindset of the 1950's. India comes close.
On a lighter note, I am enthralled that he predicted the invention of edible underwear:
Discarded paper table "linen" and rayon underwear are bought by chemical factories to be converted into candy.
Jason Fisher
My grandmother is always talking about how they promised her a picnic on the moon ...
In it, you can read read why the indebtedness of rural farmers in India is linked to the promotion of monoculture-based American agritech and how they actually have a traditional way to farm that *works* which doesn't involve getting mortgaged up to the eyeballs to "get better lives".
But I do agree with you in that social change and green tech will probably come from the third world but it will not involve "lower taxes" and similar simple capitalist agendas. Tax is mainly a corporate problem, not a private one..
Please go to the Fund's homepage, read and understand it, then read Shiva's lecture and tell me what you think.
Maybe the Professor is going to use it to finally patch that hole in the SS Minnow...
Perhaps, but neon lighting was far from new, even in the 1950's.
At any rate, he just explained how ALL light sources work. Energy of some form or another excites the electrons in an atom, and then the electrons give off photons.
"But the process of generating the light is more like that which occurs in the sun. Atoms are bombarded by electrons and other minute projectiles, electrically excited in this way and made to glow."
This could be taken in two ways. Either he's saying the nuclear power that he later goes on to say won't pan out is generating the light, OR he just described the electric light bulb.
"Engineers can do no more than utilize the heat generated by converting uranium into plutonium."
First off, that's not the nuclear process. Secondly, most of the feasable large-scale solar power plant ideas I've seen are also steam plants.
"It was known as early as 1950 that an atomic power plant would have to be larger and much more expensive than a fuel-burning plant to be efficient."
While the fossil fuel power plants of his day may have been "smaller" and "cheaper" than the nuclear power plants, he failed to take into account all the extra stuff you'd need to put into that fossil fuel power plant to clean up the pollution, which he mentioned earlier in the paragraph.
"Because they sprawl over large surfaces, solar engines are profitable in 2000 only where land is cheap."
Why is having a larger power plant such a bad thing for nuclear energy, but not for solar?
After all, by his own words:
"Theoretically, 5000 horsepower in terms of solar heat fall on an acre of the earth's surface every day."
Aside from the fact that he's confusing power and energy, just how many of the coal-burning steam locomotives of his day would be required to match that power output? Do you really think they'd take up anywhere near an acre?
"Many farmhouses in the United States, are heated by solar rays"
And when did farm land become cheap? When it's competing for space with your corn and soy crops, it ain't cheap.
But the really confusing part, though, after dogging on nuclear power, stating that it is both inefficient and expensive...
"The first successful atomically driven liners began to run in 1970 after the U. S. Navy had carried on many expensive, large-scale secret experiments."
Sounds like a total about-face to me. I'm not gonna rag on him for not realizing that it's not all that easy to hide the fact that a ship is nuclear powered (nearly no stacks, no fuel stops, new shore-based infrastructure), but after going on and on about how solar and fossil fuel power is better, why go nuclear for shipping?
Besides, why worry about passenger liners when the suburb of the future is built around an airport?
"The Dobson house has light-metal walls only four inches thick."
I have two words for this: Thermal expansion. Sure, you could air-condition the heck out of the interior of that tin box, but you're not going to stop the house from digging divots in the lawn as it expands in the summer heat.
"Though it is galeproof and weatherproof, it is built to last only about 25 years. Nobody in 2000 sees any sense in building a house that will last a century."
If it will only last 25 years, how can you say it's weather-proof? Houses that last centuries do so because they are weatherproof.
"Jane Dobson throws soiled "linen" in the incinerator."
That will really help the air pollution problem...
"In eight seconds a half-grilled frozen steak is thawed;"
I thought we were talking about miracles of technology here, not physics. :)
"In the middle of the 20th century statisticians were predicting that the world would starve to death because the population was increasing more rapidly than the food supply."
I'm curious about these numbers, because as it stands now, we have more than enough food to feed everybody. The trick is getting it from point A to point B.
"Thus sawdust and wood pulp are converted into sugary foods."
Ready for the $50,000 question? If everything is made out of paper, and homes are made out of metal and plastic... where's all this sawdust coming from? Wood pulp in this futuristic vision would be too valuable to the paper industry (for cloths and computer punch-cards) that sawdust probably wouldn't be quite so available for other things.
"Before (the hurricane) has a chance to gather much strength and speed as it travels westward toward Florida, oil is spread over the sea and ignited. There is an updraft. Air from the surrounding region, which includes the developing hurricane, rushes in to fill the void. The rising air condenses so that some of the water in the whirling mass falls as rain."
Aside from the pollution issues, if you have oil that burns that hot, who needs nuclear power? Or is this the same "unobtanium" that's used to thaw those steaks earlier?
Besides, he seems to have forgotten that the gulf stream that pulls the hurricane towards North America would also pull the flaming oil slick as well. In order to get it to work, you'd pretty much have to put the oil down while the hurricane is raging overhead. Playing with extremely flammable oil in the middle of a tropical depression at best. Any volunteers?
And another hole in his idea, what would an up-draft do to stop a hurricane? It's already a gigantic vacuum cleaner (where do you think storm swells come from?). Sure, if the oil burns hot enough, the air directly over the oil will expand to help fill up the low-pressure system, but to get it to expand enough to stop that hurricane, you'll still need oil that violates a thermodynamic law or two.
"Nobody has yet circumnavigated the moon in a rocket space ship, but the idea is not laughed down."
I dunno, maybe it's the whole "hindsight is 20/20" thing, but how could anybody that's seen what a V-2 could do in WWII not believe that it would be possible to get to the moon by the end of the century?
"Instead of taking electrocardiographs, doctors place heart patients in front of a fluoroscopic screen, turn on the X-rays and then, with the aid of a photoelectric cell, examine every section of the heart"
Aside from the fact that their patients would glow in the dark in no time flat, why does he think that X-rays would go through some soft tissue (skin), but not others (heart)? X-rays are only reflected by bone, just like we've known about for over a century.
"Any marked departure from what Joe Dobson and his fellow citizens wear and eat and how they amuse themselves will arouse comment."
"If old Mrs. Underwood, who lives around the corner from the Dobsons and who was born in 1920 insists on sleeping under an old-fashioned comforter instead of an aerogel blanket of glass puffed with air so that it is as light as thistledown she must expect people to talk about her "queerness.""
I guess they didn't know just how itchy fiberglass was back then.
"And after all, is the standardization of life to be deplored if we can have a house like Joe Dobson's, a standardized helicopter, luxurious standardized household appointments,"
Now I'm wondering if this guy ever had to testify before the House UnAmerican Activities Comittee. "Everybody has exactly the same things" sounds an awful lot like the ol' "worker's paradise."
"and food that was out of the reach of any Roman emperor?"
Ancient Rome didn't have sawdust?
The profound and brilliant invention of edible underwear!
Discarded paper table "linen" and rayon underwear are bought by chemical factories to be converted into candy.
--
Consider, for example, science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein who was pumping out novel after novel during the same time period. A rather high percentage of the things he wrote about have come to fruition.
It is important to note, however, that Heinlein did not predict these things. They came to fruition because scientists were inspired by the possibilities dreamed up in the mind of the science fiction writers.
What is amazing here is that some ideas can be so far ahead of their time that it takes the motivation and imagination of several generations to bring them to reality. We live in a time where technological leaps seem to happen every 18 months and we tend to forget that some very worth while advances take decades or centuries from the time they are first dreamed up to the time they become common place.
It is a tribute to the human spirit that dreams can persist beyond the dreamer and become reality long after the dreamer has passed on.
To that end, I would like to thank Doulas Adams (who passed away yesterday) for instilling his dream into so many of us. I wonder which of his many wacky dreams will seem common place to my grandchildren?
Umm, what do you think fertilizer is made
of?
Haven't you ever been within proximity
of a farm during planting season?
(Hint: You'll know it by the smell.)
--- À òå êòî ñëàá
Hey, why stop there? Let's Optimize Society Further!
"The society of the year 2000 finds that it functions more efficiently, and with greater profit yield, if all dangerous thought is eliminated from its citizens. For this purpose, the branch of Joe Dobson's government known as the SS has constructed special camps with "bath houses", as well as incineration facilities, to which it transports, by MagLev train, individuals with non-preapproved thoughts. The compelling threat of execution notwithstanding, it is astonishing how easily the great majority of us fall into step with our neighbors. And after all, is the standardization of life to be deplored if we can have a house like Joe Dobson's?"