Tales of the Future Past

atlacatl writes "One of the coolest sites I've been to: Tales of the Future Past - It tells the story (In pictures) of the predictions of the new millenium, early in the 20th century. I had forgotten the web was actually fun and interesting - use at your own risk."

Comments

analyzing past predictions

[pedantic bore]

It's always interesting to analyze predictions of the future (made in the past) and see how reality differs. There's usually some assumption that seemed to make sense at the time, but turned out to be wrong over time. Then look at our current predictions about the future and ask whether we're still making those assumptions, or whether we're making different, newer assumptions that will turn out to be equally wrong. Excellent reality check.

Re:analyzing past predictions

[DunbarTheInept]

But there's a lot of people who think that a lack of existence is something that requires evidence, which is equally stupid, given that a lack of existence should be *expected* to leave behind to a lack of evidence. While it's true that a lack of evidence does not prove a lack of existence, it's also true that if you're looking for proof that nonexistant things are in fact nonexistant, then you're going about it all wrong in the first place.

The *ONLY* way you can ever say that a thing is nonexistant, is as a default starting hypothesis. Proof cannot sway you to that point if it's right, but it could sway you away from it if it's wrong.

Therefore it's a falsifiable hypothesis to state that a thing is assumed nonexistant by default until shown otherwise, and that's why it's a perfectly honest starting point to take nonexistence as the default hypothesis. In fact, it's the ONLY honest starting point.

To say otherwise is to believe in leprechauns and santa claus - which are also impossible to find evidence to prove are nonexistant.

I feel for the little guys, I do.

[MetalliQaZ]

This is a perfect example of the biggest problem with slashdot. The posting of this story seems to border on malicious intent towards the owner of that website. My advice is this: Do what I do, and read the "old news" section instead of the front page.

Let's make fun of all visionaries !!!

[PHPhD2B]

The author seems to find great pleasure in mocking everything about past predictions of the future. Rather than taking the time to write a coherent comparison and analysis the author instead put up a bunch of magazine scans and straw men and pushed them all over.

This could have been a great website, featuring what people thought the future would look like, comparing it to what it ended up looking like, and featuring some analysis as to why the discrepancies occured, or at the very least some surmises.

It's not easy telling the future, and I doubt very many of the magazine scans and "future" products were meant to be authoritarian "this is what it WILL look like" presentations. Rather, they were "hey, wouldn't it be neat if we could have this in the future?" With that view this could actually have been an inspiration to help develop what we already don't have. Instead it was turned into a poorly written "ha ha, what stupid ideas"-fest.

What's the use of even putting up this website when all it is doing is slam those who try to have some sort of vision?

William Gibson's "The Gernsback Continuum"

[meehawl]

I think Gibson caught the essence of the 19340s corporatist, gigantist, fascist dreams of futurity in his short story The Gernsback Continuum . When I was a kid visiting my Grandfather, I got to read through his collection of *huge* Amazing Astounding science fiction mags from the 1920s and 1930s. They had some wild covers indeed. For the longest time I believed there were *already* flying cars.

Mercifully, the whole thing is starting to fade, to become an episode. When I do still catch the odd glimpse, it's peripheral; mere fragments of mad-doctor chrome, confining themselves to the corner of the eye. There was that flying-wing liner over San Francisco last week, but it was almost translucent. And the shark-fin roadsters have gotten scarcer, and freeways discreetly avoid unfolding themselves into the gleaming eighty lane monsters I was forced to drive last month in my rented Toyota. And I know that none of it will follow me to New York; my vision is narrowing to a single wavelength of probability. I've worked hard for that. Television helped a lot.

Re:On the "Flying Wing" magazine cover...

[k4_pacific]

Yes, except he probably thought his company would bring it to you.

Re:I predict

[PsiPsiStar]

You mean as opposed to back when people belived in manifest destiny, women and blacks couldn't vote, genocide was being practiced against Native Americans, etc.

When Ghingis Khan rushed across Asia, are those known as the dark years of the Mongols?

History has some strange criteria as far as what's good and what's bad.

Perhaps it will just be remembered as the time during which the US spent all its money on millitary equipment, weakening the American economy. This eventually causes the gov. to raise taxes, at which time American Industry seeks a new home outside the industrial haven that was the United States.

And the new "World Power" will remember this era as the time of their rising and will downplay Bush's actions in the same way that the success of American Industry after WWII is exalted, while people gloss over the fact that part of that boom was due to the fact that the other industrial nations had bombed their factories into rubble and the US had no real competition.

The common thread

[rewt66]

Almost all of these predictions were based on bigger - more power, more steel, etc. The big (no pun intended) thing that the predictions missed was smaller and smarter - the transistor, the (micro) computer, embedded systems.

But we may be making the same mistake. More power was the biggest deal until about 1970. Then smaller became the big deal. But this doesn't mean that smaller is going to rule forever. In particular, our predictions of nanotech and biotech may be just as naive as the predictions the site laughs at.

So what will the future really be? I don't know. Maybe "more connected" is going to be the next big area.

Re:The real problem: Physics has stalled.

[spaceyhackerlady]

Lately basic physics has branched out into such technologically unproductive pursuits as String theory. They are interesting to mathematicians but the technological fruits aren't there yet.

You forget the operative word. Basic, fundamental investigation is where all the neato cool interesting stuff comes from. We have no idea what that stuff will be, but it will come, if we are prepared to let people continue their research.

Just think what the world would be like if the Powers That Were had told Messrs. Shockley, Brattain and Bardeen to quit messing with those ridiculous bits of germanium, that crazy chemistry and that silly quantum theory (none of which has any application anyway, you know) and work with something real, like better tubes.

...laura

Re:The real problem: Physics has stalled.

[angryelephant]

My great-grandmother was recently interviewed for her hundredth birthday. In the course of the interview she was asked this question. Her answer was: "Indoor plumbing". I'm not saying the answer of one woman invalidates your claim, but it does make you think; What is more important to you having non-gas lighting, a PC, microwave oven, mobile phone, etc.

or not having to walk outside when you need to take a sh!t?

Re:Site is Fake

[Poingggg]

Not neccessarily. I remember being subscribed to a magazine that numbered it's pages throughout the year. This meant page 1 was the first page of the first magazine that year and page (big number) was the last page of the december one. So you could easily have a pagenumber 250 somewhere in the middle of the year. My guess is that this magazine used the same system.