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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.
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."
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.
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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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.
> 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!
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
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. --
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
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
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.
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".
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."
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.
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.
"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.
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