Slashdot Mirror
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.
No, you don't.
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.
-----
"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%.
--
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.
hawk
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!
--
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
I think it entirely depends on location. WHere I live, you can barely purchase a single-wide mobile home for $36k... with no land.
--
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
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.
--
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
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...
--
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
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.
--
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.
--
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
> 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!
"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
---------------------------------------------
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!
"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.
--
--
"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.
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
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
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)
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
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.
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.
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.
Am I livin' in SCIENTIFIC COMFORT yet?
</zippy>
--
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for slashdot.sig (129323052 bytes).
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
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.
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. --
No, not wireless network appliances, not quantum computers and fiber optic connection to the internet, precisely because those are your dreams NOW. No, in the future, the computers should disappear into the fabric of our lives (cotton?). Computers will be so ubiquitous that you don't even think of them as computers - they'll be so taken for granted that they will cease to be something people focus much attention on. The internet will just be something that's always been there.
I see your point, but I truly hope that we wouldn't be as meek as to let that happen, when we become our own slaves in a world of mandated work and consume cycle, not having a choice to opt out of such a system...
"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
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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/
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."
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 -- Mr. Sketch
I give him 100% right on that one. From the vantage point of 1950, a home computer *is* a kind of TV. You know: it has a screen, it gives access to information transmitted remotely, it provides audio and video output. He also gets 100% on the integration of telephone/TV/etc. and teleconferencing (interesting that he expected a separate screen for each participant, though). The fax revival and the decline of the USPS are other good calls.
And I think that some of the other items are closer than they seem at first. For example, the whole thing about disposable and washable items in the house is basically true; and though we don't hose things down, we do have Scotchguard, and we don't have to clean as religiously as we used to. Same thing with cooking: frozen food, microwaves, etc. have pretty much destroyed the traditional home meal.
All in all, quite an interesting read.
-- We all have enough strength to endure the misfortunes of other people. La Rochefoucauld
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.
They are right-- it is only economic and political interests that keep these things from happening.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
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.
Naivety always makes me smile. Is "The Future" some event which has passed, has its outcome been thoroughly documented?
Only last weekend I slept under a geodesic dome in the woods of coastal Georgia (U.S., not EurAsia). I briefly contemplated Fuller and his myriad ideas while falling asleep. We don't have the Dymaxion car, the instant houses, the one-cup-of-water showers, let alone his economic visions. How come? Some of his ideas may be actually impossible to bring to fruition, but that is not reason enough. The answer is that society is not ready--not ready to let go of the notion of scarcity of wealth. Fuller's ideas, whether socio-political or mechanical in nature, transcend economics. In his mind, all people are equally valuable and all rightful heirs of the earth and of humanity. Any object he designed shared the same properties: cheap, useful, sustainable, and democratic. These are all anathema to our greed-oriented society, which is tripping over itself in its attempts to consolidate all wealth and power in the hands of a few wealth addicts.
This is from one of my favorite Robert Anton Wilson articles, "Ten Good Reasons to Get out of Bed in the Morning", published in Oui back in 1977 and reprinted in Illuminati Papers:
Though Fuller may have failed many a time--by the 'adult' definition of failure--his ideas still inspire and perplex. When the time comes when we have been torn asunder by Treaty-Capitalism, we can begin to save ourselves not only through Fullers inventions, but his shining example of optimism.Ewige Blumenkraft!
Ewige Blumenkraft!
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.
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:[.]
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.
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!)
My grandmother is always talking about how they promised her a picnic on the moon ...
"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.
--