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What Will Life Be Like In 2008?
tblake writes "Back in 1968, Modern Mechanix mused what life would be like in 40 years. Some things they came pretty close on: 'Money has all but disappeared. Employers deposit salary checks directly into their employees' accounts. Credit cards are used for paying all bills. Each time you buy something, the card's number is fed into the store's computer station. A master computer then deducts the charge from your bank balance.' Some things are way off: 'The car accelerates to 150 mph in the city's suburbs, then hits 250 mph in less built-up areas, gliding over the smooth plastic road. You whiz past a string of cities, many of them covered by the new domes that keep them evenly climatized year round.' And some things are sorta right: 'TV screens cover an entire wall in most homes and show most subjects other than straight text matter in color and three dimensions. In addition to programmed TV and the multiplicity of commercial fare, you can see top Broadway shows, hit movies and current nightclub acts for a nominal charge.'"
I am not going to try this even though it is avaliable now.
Since there are a lot of cars then airplanes, and we use wireless signals to communicate between the car & the traffic control HQ, the bandwidth used by each car must be very small. The more # of transmitters, the smaller the bandwidth for each signal, and more chance for noise-related errors. This is a property of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.
If this thing going 150 MPH and there is a hiccup on the network, or even let say some hacking/DDoS is going on, tons of crashes will surely happen.
"The New Age. The New Beginning."
Almost true...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bg27ckAgEiw&feature=related
Hear recorded Slashdot headlines on your phone! New service beta testing. Just call (248) 434-5508
Goddammit, I want my flying cars!
Even forty years ago, he wasn't naive enough to suggest Duke Nukem Forever being available.
I'm actually impressed with how dead on a lot of the predictions are. Most predictions from the 60s and 70s were outrageous. One thing I think we've gotten much better at is figuring out the technological limitations of the near future so as to not make such outrageous predictions ... sort of. Supposedly we're all going to be in flying and/or driverless cars by 2015.
The Computations of AdamR
http://www.adamreyher.com
More accurate than Nostradamus, but not as amusing as Criswell--almost though. This one made me laugh out loud: "People have more time for leisure activities in the year 2008. The average work day is about four hours." As if any society would ever let its plebes goof off that much!
Careful What You Wish For....
Some things are way off: 'The car accelerates to 150 mph in the city's suburbs, then hits 250 mph in less built-up areas
Speak for yourself...
Where are the flying cars? I was promised flying cars!
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
I wonder if plasticware was expensive in '68. Seems the author was keen on stuff that was merely disposable. Maybe in 2048, the concept of biodegradable will seem as dated.
But i don't know if its what you're looking for...
Ice Cream has no bones.
This is a little offtopic (feel free to moderate me appropriately), but I can think of no better /. and its grammar-nazis!
place to ask this than here at
From the summary:
"Money has all but disappeared."
What does this sentence mean, please?
Whenever I read it, I read it as: "Everything imaginable happenned to money, except disappear."
Or even: "Money has changed color, has lost its value, has been globally unified... but disappear? No way!"
But by the context of the summary, it seems I am getting exactly the opposite of it.
Although I consider myself quite good at English, it is not my main language.
Can someone clear this up for me?
Thank you.
If I clone myself, can I call it a thread?
If a girl winks to us, can I call it a race condition?
...in his prediction of intelligence pills.
Either that, or a lot of people I encountered today need to adjust their dosage.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
Once I peed out my car window are 50 MPH....I guess you could say I 'whizzed past a string of cities' that day! ZING!
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
Money has all but disappeared. Employers deposit salary checks directly into their employees' accounts. Credit cards are used for paying all bills. Each time you buy something, the card's number is fed into the store's computer station. A master computer then deducts the charge from your bank balance.
That's pretty much my experience. I haven't used the ATM in almost a month. I either pay by CC or if I have to split the bill for lunch with friends, use PayPal to send them the money.
Computers not only keep track of money, they make spending it easier. TV-telephone shopping is common. To shop, you simply press the numbered code of a giant shopping center. You press another combination to zero in on the department and the merchandise in which you are interested. When you see what you want, you press a number that signifies "buy," and the household computer takes over, places the order, notifies the store of the home address and subtracts the purchase price from your bank balance. Much of the family shopping is done this way. Instead of being jostled by crowds, shoppers electronically browse through the merchandise of any number of stores.
Hmm...that's pretty much my experience with Amazon Prime's One-Click shopping. Is this prior art?
Hmmm... just when I read that article on people trusting their car GPS systems even if they'd go down a cliff....
Seeing as this was all hypothesised in 1968, they were pretty good estimates. Though they may be wrong about fast, flying cars etc, remember how different the world was back then. Computers and other modern technology were only in the early stages of development, TV sets were only just new, and still in Black and White.
For someone of that era to have estimated Credit cards being more used than paper money, and most homes having large TV sets is pretty spot on.
And even though flying cars haven't been made quite yet, things like aeroplanes are now far more common, and private flying cars are likely to be coming around in the near future.
"When you see what you want, you press a number that signifies "buy," and the household computer takes over, places the order, notifies the store of the home address and subtracts the purchase price from your bank balance."
"One click", I have you now!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
2058 will be pretty much just as crappy (or good) as today. We still won't have flying cars. Roads will suck. Global warming will still be argued over by various special interests. The world will still have billions of people living in poverty. There will still be petty wars. Not much will be different than today. I guess more people will have flat screens. We may have sent a token mission to Moon. But it won't lead anywhere.
.. even if it offers only a little improvement.
Note: I am not against at least TRYING to improve quality of life
No seriously, I thought I just had it right here.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
People have more time for leisure activities in the year 2008. The average work day is about four hours. But the extra time isn't totally free. The pace of technological advance is such that a certain amount of a jobholder's spare time is used in keeping up with the new developments--on the average, about two hours of home study a day.
They got it almost spot on: 4 hours actual work; 2 hours slashdot; 2 hours talking; 2 hours walking around the office; 1 hour making coffee's; 3 hours replying to emails; 3 hours answering telephones; 1 hour break time; 2 hours travel time; 2 hours home study time; 2 hours sleep. Rinse-and-repeat.
In my house I have automatic lights in each of my rooms. I walk in, the lights go on, I walk out, the lights go off.
My heating and air is temperature controlled, and I do have robots/machines that do *some* of the cleaning.
I have flat screens and touch sensitive controls for each of the devices.
My yard has automatic lights.
My car auto starts at the push of a button, it also has automatic lights.
My carbon footprint is at about as small as I can make it without changing my jobs. When I change jobs, I won't need a daily vechicle.
You got your flying car way back in 1979.
And I think there was a certain black Trans-Am that flew at least once a couple years earlier than the General.
where I can make $20 an hour laminating stuff.
If you post it, they will read.
Reminds me of the skit by Harry Enfield about Life in 1990
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdYDREry3do
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
You must be another fucking liberal who discriminates against non-whites. I hope you get fucked right up to your ass with black/jew power rises!
It's interesting to note how this piece reflects the then-prevalent belief that technology would bring a Utopian age. No one stopped to think about the consequences of using thousands of ICBMs as transportation devices, or the industrial waste generated by wall-sized televisions and domed cities. Plastic was magical - we hadn't yet realized how toxic it could be, or how addicted we would become to it. Domed cities and millions of cars that travel 300 mph are the stuff of science fiction novels, but they'd be awful in practice - Just imagine how unbearably warn and clammy a dome would be under bright summer sun (or how quickly it would be discolored by dust storms and acid rain), or how poorly wildlife would coexist with a stream of automated bullet cars zipping along plastic roads. Somehow, we need to figure out how to do with less - much less - while figuring out how to tread less heavily on the earth. It might be an impossible task.
he would have predicted the top speeds in KM/H, like most of the worlds MEDC's use, except the USA of course.
Orbis terrarum est non altus satis
Back in the early 60's I subscribed to a magazine called Science Digest. I remember they had an article predicting the future that called for atomic cars. They were like large RVs, and had a drop down back door where you could drive out your small car for driving around locally. I guess they were predicting that people would spend all of their time driving around interstates and live in their cars or something. Some industrious person should look up that article and talk about it.
They had get rich quick schemes back then too! Make $12 an hour!
You never expect irony, do you?
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@iyfwrestling
By 2048 the concept of a national currency will have devolved back into a token based economy founded on barter. Those few that survive will focus on securing the necessities of life. Whole regions will be uninhabited as global warming turns them progressively to desert.
Personal transportation will be a thing of the past. What movement occurs will either be human powered or the preserve of the feudal lords. The only areas where an energy rich economy continues to exist will be those of the Middle East, at least those parts not a radioactive wasteland. Most oil will be vegetable oil, and with the collapse of intensive agriculture there won't be much of that.
Many of the major cities will be going underwater as sea levels rise following the accelerating collapse of the Greenland glaciers and the lack of funding to support management measures. Diseases come in waves across the globe, each wave wiping out more than are born. There is a general malaise, a depression of opportunities lost. Most do not want to bring children into this world.
In 2008, people will travel in levitating, hypersonic personal aircraft called mePods.
Over the last 40 years the actual physical environment hasn't changed much. Imagine the difference between 1900 and 1940: automobiles, airplanes - or 1920 and 1960: Commercial trans Atlantic jet travel, satellites, H bombs, national highways. I can remember 1968. Since then we've gotten the ATM, cable TV, cell phones, personal computers but, except for the corporate mall-ing of the American highway, which was well underway by 1968 and didn't change the environment so much as stamp out local flavor, and saner environmental regulation, some lakes used to glow in the dark, this is still interstate rust belt America.
In fact, someone waking up right now would find America in the middle of a colonial war, suburban sprawl graying the countryside. "A gallon of gas costs what?!? Hey, can I see your phone?" That is, unless they were in medicine or IT.
(disclaimer: above memories are related to North America)
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
He describes a world where the entire infrastructure has essentially been rebuilt in 40 years. I can't see how that would have seemed plausible even back then. That said, portions of it are impressively accurate.
> two-passenger air-cushion car /flat TV screen / Tapping a button changes the page. ... feeds/receives signals to and from all cars / keeps vehicles /apart. /from 15 to 50 mi. outside all major urban centers.
Didn't happen sadly
> national traffic computer
Read "GPS system"
> morning paper
Your basic ebook
> smooth plastic road
Still concrete, altho progress has been made in using polymers in road construction
> cities... covered by the new domes
This one didn't happen
> The traffic computer
GM has prototypes that do just this. It's creepy to see them on the road.
> attache case / draw the diagram with / infrared flashlight on what looks like a TV screen
You basic tablet
> The diagram is relayed to a similar screen in your associate's office, 200 mi. away.
Have this
> He jabs a button and a fixed copy of the sketch rolls out of the device.
The printer
> vehicle parks itself / municipal garage
Again, GM has made leaps and bounds for this
> Private cars are banned inside most city / Moving sidewalks and electrams carry the public
Your basic Arcology idea, but not yet in practice.
> With the U.S. population having soared to 350 million
Close, only 270 million
> transportation is among the most important factors keeping the economy running smoothly.
Quite true, and also where we are starting to break apart
> Giant transportation hubs / located
Some cities have done this, but not in the US to date
> Tube trains, pushed through bores by compressed air
This is ancient, but not in use
> launching pad from which 200-passenger rockets
Commercial rocketry is currently for the super-rich, and only a gimmick for now.
> SST and hypersonic planes
Concorde was retired a few years back
> jumbo jets.
The mainstay of transportation
>Electrostatic precipitators clean the air
Ionic Breeze anyone?
>climatizers maintain the temperature and humidity at optimum levels.
We have this in spades
> Robots are available to do housework and other simple chores.
Vacuuming is about all we have here with the Roomba
> New materials for siding and interiors are self-cleaning and never peel, chip or crack.
He got this one right
> Dwellings / prefabricated modules / attached speedily
Dead on here, most home construction now involves at least some prefabrication.
> job that doesn't take more than a day.
Didn't wind up this fast save for Extreme Home Makeover
> Such modular homes easily can be expanded to accommodate a growing family.
This sadly did not wind up the case.
> A typical wedding present / a fully equipped bedroom, kitchen or living room module.
Man, and all I got was 4 waffle irons....
> determines in advance her menus / prepackaged meals / automatic food utility
Didn't happen
> microwave oven and is cooked or thawed.
Did happen
> disposable plastic plates / knives, forks and spoons / so inexpensive they can be discarded
This very much happened.
> The single most important item in 2008 households is the computer.
100% bingo!
> These electronic brains govern everything from meal preparation and waking up the household to assembling shopping lists and keeping track of the bank balance. Sensors in kitchen appliances, climatizing units, communicators, power supply and other household utilities warn the computer when the item is likely to fail. A repairman will show up even before any obvious breakdown occurs.
We have not gotten to this point yet, however, it is appearing piecemail
> Computers also handle travel reservations, relay telephone messages, keep track of birthdays and anniversaries, compute taxes and even figure the monthly bills for electricity, water, telephone and other utilities.
This is now almost a decade old
> Not every family has its private computer.
Now he called it short.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
...the article maintains a phallocentric society, where men go to the office to work, and women stay home and coo-- I mean, oversee the cooking. While some of the technological advancements have certainly come to pass (and some pretty close if we look at them analogously), the social attitude of the article is firmly entrenched in the 1960s. Consider:
The housewife simply determines in advance her menus for the week, then slips prepackaged meals into the freezer and lets the automatic food utility do the rest.That a 1968 article can in some ways be more accurate about technology in 2008 than the internet in 2008 can be about technology in 1968.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
We won't be enjoying video like these:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwXI0z-wj1A&feature=related
Note: this is not a video game. This is in Sweden.
"The New Age. The New Beginning."
The second group that some people imagine may know the future are specialists of various kinds. They don't either. As a limiting case, I remind you there is a new kind of specialist occupation-I refuse to call it a discipline, or a field of study-called futurism. The notion here is that there is a way to study trends and know what the future holds. That would indeed be valuable, if it were possible. But it isn't possible. Futurists don't know any more about the future than you or I. Read their magazines from a couple of years ago and you'll see an endless parade of error.
From http://www.crichton-official.com/speech-whyspeculate.html
we could invest in public transportation and abrogate people's stupid, life-risking civil liberties by takin' way their cars.
SERIOUSLY. If we invested the amount of money people spend on Cars, Car Insurance and Gasoline into public transportation, we'd have some sort of awesome, pneumatic tube public transportation system a la Futurama. The reason there's so much congestion is because people have decided they each need to get to work INDIVIDUALLY WRAPPED in LARGE CHUNKS OF CARBON-BURNING METAL.
What I found most interesting about this article is how shopping in 2008 is actually BETTER than was imagined in 1968. The author thought items for sale would be displayed on a television, and people would order items through a different interface -- the telephone -- by pressing on a telephone keypad.
Instead, today we can interactively view an item for sale on the Internet, get competing prices, read reviews from real people around the world, and order the item through the same interface using buttons with descriptive labels. It seems so obvious now, and as a developer I still think we have a ways to go, but look how far we've come! This wasn't even fathomable 40 years ago.
my blog
They promised us jet packs!
One-click ordering described! Over 25 years before Amazon...
When you see what you want, you press a number that signifies "buy," and the household computer takes over, places the order, notifies the store of the home address and subtracts the purchase price from your bank balance. Much of the family shopping is done this way. Instead of being jostled by crowds, shoppers electronically browse through the merchandise of any number of stores.
I will be hiring a team of engineering graduates and have them work in cubicles fixing 40-year-old bugs that got checked in by stupid developers that don't test their own code.
*sings in high voice* In the year 2000...In the year 2000!
We'd probably have more of that cool stuff if people could learn to get along a little better. But as it stands, they failed to mention that people today still lock their doors, have automatic car alarms, and that nine tenths of the world's population not only don't have flying cars, but live in mud huts while working for some cruddy manufacturing company for pennies a day. --With unexploded cluster bomb ordinance scattered outdoors.
Neal Stephenson, were he born in the Forties, could have put a more realistic spin on this article. Too bad.
I predict that by 2015 or thereabouts, and probably a bit sooner, the earth will be a meteor pock-marked hell dealing with super-fast glacial rebound where there really is no more paper money, and the only domed cities will have George W. Bush and/or Vladimir Putin living inside them.
-FL
:q!
The pace of change is slowing down. Look at four 50 year periods in history.
Progress is flatlining.
You just have to become the CIO or sell the latest Internet craze off to be ruined by another corporation *cough* Google/Youtube *cough* and then be a billionaire at 24.
Yeah, my karma sucks....but so do the mods.
"The car accelerates to 150 mph in the city's suburbs"
I don't know why but I burst into uncontrollable laughter when I imagined that in my head. Sounds like a wild ride.
(Holding flashlight under chin) In the year 2008......IN THE YEAR 2008!!!!!!
Yeah, my karma sucks....but so do the mods.
The transportation system described in TFA would be possible today, if it weren't for collusion from the oil and auto industry.
It's easy to imagine centralized computer control of vehicles, if industry had been doing R&D on it for the last 40 years.
Thank you Dave Raggett
That we would become the new Soviet Union in many ways.
No one ever saw that one coming.
0. 1758: the cotton mill 6. 2008: computers for real and the internet
* Life expectancy measured from birth for US males is up 10 years. For some other nations the gain has been more dramatic (typically the ones who got to the development party late).
* You know those radios, TVs, electronics, and computers? Yeah, you don't have to be a middle-class white American to own them any more.
* There are plenty of quality of life drugs (one of the reasons for constantly increasing health care costs is that our standard of care is constantly increasing). Acne, allergies, and decline in virility as a function of age are now essentially optional. Give us another decade or three and we'll add senility to the list.
* No major new form of transportation, but passenger air travel has been greatly democratized. Most Slashdotters can get a roundtrip ticket to Japan for a week's wages. It used to cost more than a month's. Domestic air travel is now price competitive with *bus fares* in many instances. It now strictly dominates passenger rail service in the US.
* Improvements in efficiency in banking, of all things, means that many, many more Americans have access to credit. No need to know the loan officer, no need to pass the "Is this man a responsible Christian gentleman?" test, no direct restriction based on income, even. This would have been a fairly radical notion in 1958. This has increased home ownership (*mostly* a good thing even with the current debacle which, it bears noting, is affecting less than a 10th of homes), made life much easier for many entrepeneurs, and greatly increased access to higher education. There are some downsides (folks going into debt to get plasma TVs), but the economist in me says "Well, they have a plasma TV now, and its clear they wanted it".
* I talk 2 hours on the phone every week to my family, across the Pacific Ocean, and pay about $10 a month for the privilege. Adjusting for inflation, that would buy less than an hour of call time to the house next door. A person from 1958 would be shocked, shocked that many phone calls are free. (I predict that a person from 2018 will be shocked, shocked that many weren't back in the dark ages of 2008! Imagine, you still pay for something as prosaic as speaking to someone in Japan! Why, its just bits?!)
* I can send a letter to anyone in the world, instantaneously, for free. If I actually want that letter to involve paper, I can send it now (2 PM) and have it arrive at 8 AM *just about anywhere on earth, without fail, tomorrow morning* for about two hours wages.
* In 1958, cheap prepared food was not a reality for most people. It now is. (I almost can't remember the last time I cooked, which is a little weird at the moment but I don't think this will remain weird forever. My mother remembers people sewing.)
* Most consumer products are so cheap that replacement is cheaper than repair. (TV shorts? Pants rip? Telephone on the fritz? Buy a new one.)
* Your main health problems are caused by an overabundance of cheap food and a dearth of manual labor taxing you every day. These are, in terms of human history, "high class problems".
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
n/t
moi
In the form of grade seperations including bridges and underground tunnels. Unfortunately, our road systems are filled with grade crossing intersections, bottlenecks and badly timed traffic signals, and its stuff like that that makes driving the hassle it is, not to mention the vast amounts of fuel wasted by idling and constant starts and stops.
You might want to have yourself tested.
You can't take the sky from me...
Where did you get the title to my thesis?
Experience teaches only the teachable. -AH
If only we were all so awesome as you. Blah blah "I work MY hours, UNLIKE SOME PEOPLE!!!" You're a little bitch. Besides, Real Workers don't take breaks you wuss.
Architecture isn't much different from what was modern in 1968. Cars are more boring if anything. Traffic more intense. Social norms have changed, but not compared to what was considered "advanced" in 1968 (or 1928 for that matter).
Is the rate of change increasing or decreasing?
The article was written about what the world would be like Nov. 18, 2008 -- sheesh, people, last time I checked, that's still the future! It's still MONTHS away. Who knows what we can accomplish if we just put our minds to it. I think we get at least get the plastic road thing going before then...
i\hbar\dot{\psi}=\hat{H}\psi
It was a cartoon show, "The Jetsons." And the main character's job was to just push buttons all day long. Come to think about it, thats pretty much what I do all day long on a keyboard. But aside from auto-deposit, auto-billing, and web based commerce, pretty much everything else in the article won't be reality before Duke Nukem Forever is finally released.
QUOTE : There is a general malaise, a depression of opportunities lost. Most do not want to bring children into this world.
Change that to :
"Women place in society devolved to be a baby machine/kitchen/bed warmer, many dies in childbirth, or post-partum infection, and men now live longer than women. Since a lot of children dies before growing up, family do try to get a lot of children in the hope to have one survive".
Looking at some of the third world countries today, and remembering some of our history, it is more logical within your scenario, than people stopping getting children. On the contrary, if society goes down the drain, then so will too contraception methods, and most probably, unless this goes toward a matriarchal society (doubtful) then women place in society will also goes down the drain.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
It's just that they've fired 4 other people, so now you have to do their jobs as well.
___________________
Sig. Measure Twice.
The article reads "8 a.m. Tuesday, Nov. 18". That's months from now. We have plenty time to get the last few details working. Who wants to be on the plastic road team? Anyone?
> "Video game...? THIS... IS... SWEDEN!"
If you die in Sweden, you die in real life!
LOL. I was thinking the same thing as I read this.
I just finished driving a transit bus today that was, coincidentally, built in 1968 (35' GMC New Look, a "Rosa Parks" bus).
Sure, we have fancy bells and whistles on new equipment that didn't exist *anywhere* in '68, but this old bus still picks up passengers just fine. Our lives aren't that radically removed from those people 40 years ago: we just have more sophistication in our technology.
2008?
And here I was under the impression that it was still 1984.
grim. next question.
If you take the vehicle off of the regular roads and put it on a track out of the way of most of the complexity we have around us. The algorithms they're using at the moment are synchronous rather than asynchronous, it guarantees that you get a routing slot all the way to your destination without delays. You can get higher capacity using async algorithms but you run into queues and delays within the network then rather than having them outwith the system.
Deleted
Make that 304 million, up from 201 million in 1968.
http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1968.html
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
If you liked this article you might also like the Usborne book of the future
http://www.pointlessmuseum.com/museum/usbornebookofthefutureindex.php
I'll see your hokum and raise you a boondoggle.
The Internet. I don't think I've ever seen a prediction list that got that one. To the extent anyone predicted networked computing (which I only really saw after networks already existed) it is separated nets like the AOL/Compuserve days. I've never seen anyone that predicted a world wide network that anything could hook in to, that has all kinds of different devices, and that has become so central to communication.
Now I don't particularly blame them for this, the Internet is a very radical change in the way things are done. However it demonstrates a big problem with future predictions in that you just can't really foresee the major changes. Some times, something comes along that just really changes the way things are done. Probably can't predict that ahead of time because if you could, well then you'd probably invent it.
The other thing I find interesting is how many people predict how much houses are going to change, and they are always wrong. It seems humans pretty much know what they like in homes. While details change, the over all idea is pretty constant. Go look at a house built today and then go look at one built in 1900. Are they different? Sure, but it isn't this huge difference that so many predict. The 2008 house is still recognizable as a house in a 1900 context. I find it interesting comparing my grandparent's house, which was built in the 1940s, to my house, which was built in the 1970s, to my parent's house, which was built after 2000. The differences are primarily stylistic.
I believe Workers Compensation is required in almost every state except one for almost every employer. In other businesses to get licensed or operate minimum liability insurance is required.
Most of the "outlandish" predictions from years ago only failed because they didn't take energy and resource constraints into account. Most of the technology boom has been in things that are cheap in terms of energy and resources (like communications and computing). The things we haven't seen are flying cars, bridges over oceans, settlements on the moon, and frequent trips into space. This is mostly because computers get cheaper as technology improves, but bridges and flying cars haven't seen a similar fall in price.
We *could* build domes over our cities with current technologies, but the cost is prohibitive. We have other things to use all that steel and energy on (like SUVs apparently).
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Wow, I can't wait until 2008 when "families can have steak-like meals twice a day without feeling a budget pinch." Do we get to have heart-attack-like deaths too?!? (Er, guess not, the steak is made of algae, bleh). Was this guy really looking forward to "steak-like meals"?? I guess he knew he would be really old and looked forward to gumming his "steak".
What's really funny is that food is insanely cheap today, even if it is not highly processed. I guess that some would argue that steak itself has become "steak-like" based on how cows are now raised, though.
Clovis
^ Clovis, look! It's that guy you are!
>> With the U.S. population having soared to 350 million
>Close, only 270 million
Actually it is closer to 300 million now and he made his prediction before Roe v Wade. There have been roughly 50 million abortions since then.
NSFW ads on page, oh, and why the hell is /. so broken for IE7? Some of us have to use this browser while at work you know.
Your sig(k) has been stolen. There is a puff of smoke!
This story clearly contains prior art for many things that are patented today. Most notably the Amazon 1-Click patent on page 4 of 7.
Orwell did he was just off a few years.
so every household has a PC and every PC has linux installed on it
Prediction is easy; you just follow trends to their logical conclusions. Nothing in these predictions goes out on a limb; things like Dinners Club already had credit cards and computers that did the subtracting from an account. It's no leap to say all money will end up this way. Of Course like any good psychic, it's important to remind people of your successes. Arthur C. Clark (RIP) never spent that much time explaining some of his predictions about how we would have mass whale farms in the Atlantic by the year 2000. Everyone knows the sort of stuff that will happen in the next half century based on what happening now.... Quantum Computers, Computer beats Turing Test, Bio Feedback, Merging of Technology and Organic Matter, Middle Management Begins to be replace by machines (as was manual labour in the last 50 years) and so on. But the real trick is to correctly gauge how it will change human society. That was so funny about those futurama type exhibits that transposed 50's sensibilities on people of the year 2000. That is perhaps why someone like Philip K. Dick was a genius, in that he actually gauged a changing, decentring, human sensibility.
Regard the standard young person. Said person likely has a collection of four-letter meta-words he considers sufficient for a practical plethora of purposes. It never occurs to him that there is any reason to delve into the depths of language to find a more descriptive word. The fault, then, is not in the language; the fault is in the pathetic application of said language.
What gets me is that it's mostly the transportation predictions that are off. What gets me more is that in a sane world they wouldn't have been. But there's far too many interests that want to keep the status quo for these changes to happen. These predictions aren't off because the technology isn't possible; they're off because society hasn't progressed beyond oil and the car.
"But Main Street's still all cracked and broken"
"Sorry Mom, the Mob has spoken"
"Monorail! Monorail! Monorail!"
"Mono...D'oh!"
Just last week the University of Calgary announced they would no longer accept tuition payments by credit card.
http://gauntlet.ucalgary.ca/story/12288
Apparently $1,000,000 in credit card processing fees is too much for the top school in a province awash with oil and gas money.
Perhaps the forward-thinking university administrators read the 2008 forecast and decided to revolt against "the future."
Hasan
I think we need to make slashdot predictions for the next 100 hundred years.
I'd hate to say it, but "one" commercial fusion reactor making a profit.
Global climate change still an issue though the bulk of humanity is still around despite it being 2100.
Starting to play with large scale nano-tech.
Intel is selling chips that run 1000x faster than today for 1/1000th of the power usage for less than a $1 (adjusted for inflation) and making a huge profit.
Google Government evolved enough to handle the routine governmental tasks of your average town of less than 50K without any problems.
Democracy is the norm and people don't care. We still vote in the Hitler/Stalin types into office once every other generation.
The Hitler/Stalin types have discovered that internet list of "what I'd do if I were an evil overlord list" and try to stick to it. So the evil Tyrant gives out free internet/music/video/games to all as long as you aren't actively trying to remove the Tyrant. You can bad mouth him all you want on the internet, but if you start the physical process of removing the Tyrant, the Tyrant calls out the Strom Troopers on you.
Most people are happy, healthy, have cheap food to eat, and are very supportive of their evil overlord.
People pay vast sums for the latest toys only to throw them away or into storage after about a week/month of playing with them.
Soylent Green is People!
I'd have to dig out some anthropology textbooks or do some research ( which, given that this is Slashdot and reading TFA is considered overachieving, seems unlikely ) but if you look back at other massive leaps forward in human history, they're kinda lumpy. Fire, language, first domestication of animals and improved stone tools all happened (ahem, relatively) close together; and then 10k to 12k years ago, you get agriculture, cities, new and more complex political structure; followed by 4k to 6k years ago with writing, codes of law, etc. Maybe our perspective on the recent rapid rate of change is skewed by being towards the tail end of industrialization and informationization (yeah, Firefox spellcheck says that's not a word).
:)
As an alternative to the Singularity theory, what if we're just going to be in a developmental lull for the next few decades while society and individuals and businesses adapt to the massive changes we've gone through? Heck, most individuals in big modern metro areas are still adapting to not having extended families nearby, commuting to work, etc. which are relatively recent introductions. If your grandparents weren't doing it, odds are you're still trying to figure out how to do it right.
I'd love to have flying cars and self-sustaining off-world colonies and fiber to the home across the entire continental US, but those might need some new cheap energy source or an improved finance system or more humane living conditions for people before they come along.
"We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - Major Mike Shearer, UK
+1 depressing but unfortunately possible? :)
9/10 of the world's population in mud huts is a rather large overestimate, with 6.5 billion people on Earth that would mean everyone outside of the US and Western Europe, which obviously isn't the case. If you go by GDP purchasing-power-parity per capita (that's one long ugly acronym there, GDP-PPP-PC, maybe GD5PC?), it's more like 2 billion people on the planet who are really bad off, living on under $1 per day, with another 3.5 billion in actively developing economies like Brazil, China, India and Russia who are quite a bit better off, and a bit over 1 billion in the United States, the EU, Japan, Canada, South Korea and New Zealand who enjoy a standard of living that would be the envy of kings and emperors from any previous point in history.
Numbers aside, there's places on the planet like the Niger Delta which, from our perspective among the most prosperous billion people, look like a nightmarish science-fiction story. Shinra Electric Power Company, anyone?
"We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - Major Mike Shearer, UK
Who were these idiots that thought businesses would allow employees half the time at double the pay?? Give me a break. Even in the 60's it was pretty obvious that something like this wouldn't be possible.
Afterward they would only know by hearsay. After 2 generation there would not be any difference at all with the 3rd world or middle age.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Those things in which government has a virtual monopoly, such as roads, are stuck in technology from 40 years ago.
Those things which are highly regulated, but for which there is at least some competition - such as automobiles - have enjoyed technological improvements, and could certainly meet the specs laid out in the article if the market were to demand them.
Those things which are virtually unregulated, such as computing power and network technology, have expanded beyond the widest dreams of sci-fi authors 40 years ago.
Part of the Second American Revolution!
It's interesting that on page 5 is also the second half of an article on the 'new' Boeing 747 - little did the writers know that this plane would still be in use and be the height of common air travel luxury in 2008. I just want those 15 hostesses that were promised!
Some things today are better than described - the internet, online shopping and bill pay, mobile communications and intarweb - a lot better than drawing on my tv-phone with an infrared pen. The domed city thing was WAAAY off though!
parent is a troll...i'm the grandparent poster, fyi...I'd even venture to say parent is a plant from the oil or auto industry...just read the post carefully and any moderators, I think, will see the trolling
Most of the posters whose comments generally supported my point were modded higher, so that's good. OTOH, I somehow became redundant. I didn't see any other posts that made the same point when I posted (i view at 3+), but them's the breaks.
Thank you Dave Raggett
A lot of the things they predicted are available, but no one wants them:
...except in America, where we have the highest infant mortality rate in the 1st world (Sicko, Michael Moore).
...with the state of education, you'll still be smarted than the next generation for the foreseeable future.
TFA: Dwellings for the most part are assembled from prefabricated modules...
Despite the marketing efforts of modular home builders claiming that they're better quality, modular homes are still considered "low end" and buyers are afraid the home won't grow in value with the rest of the market.
TFA: prepackaged meals into the freezer and lets the automatic food utility do the rest. At preset times, each meal slides into the microwave oven and is cooked or thawed. The meal then is served on disposable plastic plates. These plates, as well as knives, forks and spoons of the same material, are so inexpensive they can be discarded after use.
Microwave meals and disposable housewares all both available and cheap. But the quality is so bad that they're rarely used. TFA also didn't consider where all that trash would go.
TFA (correct): The single most important item in 2008 households is the computer.
TFA (wrong): These electronic brains govern everything from meal preparation and waking up the household to assembling shopping lists and keeping track of the bank balance.
TFA (corrected): These electronic brains suck America's productivity dry by keeping us busy playing video games, looking at pr0n, and watching low-quality video of idiots who deserve Darwin awards on Youtube.
TFA: TV-telephone shopping is common. To shop, you simply press the numbered code of a giant shopping center.
Granted, the mouse hadn't been invented, but they couldn't imagine keyboards or touch-screens? Idiots.
TFA: Medical research has guaranteed that most babies born in the 21st century will live long and healthy lives.
TFA: No need to worry about failing memory or intelligence either.
funniest. oxymoron. ever.
Mod parent up. That's a significant, and seldom mentioned, point. When communism was taken seriously as a competitor to capitalism, capitalism had to deliver a better standard of living for the average worker. That's no longer the case.
Then again, look at China's growth rate.
My Springfield's funnier. Plus it's in 3D!
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
It is not november yet, just wait and you'll see!
Don't believe the lies. It's people. Soylent Green is made out of people. They're making our food out of people. Next thing they'll be breeding us like cattle for food. You've gotta tell them. You've gotta tell them!
My fellow Americans, let's restore the death penalty for child rapists. Let's do it . . . for the children.
Obviously, the 3rd dimension would only be used by those of us that DO know how to drive, so that'd eliminate a lot of congestion right there.
I'm only half-kidding, here. If you set up your flying car to do a direct flight from home to work, with the minimal fuel use, and all of your neighbors do the same, how close do you think your car is going to get to theirs, on average? If you had a reliable plot of what path every car in the neighborhood was on, how hard would it be to assure a minimum safe distance between yours and the others?
Most people imagine flying cars running in lanes just like the 2D road grids we have now - you see that all the time in Sci-Fi movies. But the road grid is an artifact of the need to pave roads for cars to travel on. To a flying car, any airspace is just as good as any other.
Yes, there's no way that arbitrary flightplans would work in the city. Then again, driving a car in the city doesn't make much sense, either.
You don't know what was important until much later. In 1908 the first airplane had flown, but who saw the potential for what we have today? It was a curiosity to most people. Same goes for computers in 1958. What, today, will we look back at and see the seeds of greatness? I'd vote for nanotechnology, robotics, and genetics at a minimum.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
The future looks bleak where they track everything you do, where you drive, what you buy, what you eat, how much you work and goof off.
I bet the brainwashed idiots think this is progress.
Hi UbuntuDupe. I am the guy who responded to your sig here (the first time, the second reply was somebody else).
We have told you what the "tribute" is. You got famous (or rather, developed a well-known slashdot name) by dumping on people who tried to help you. We tolerated you in our community for a long time (make no mistake, there is not a clear line between slashdot and other tech communities, such as the Ubuntu forums) because we are a rather altruistic bunch, but enough is enough.
Apologize in a public, sincere manner (I suggest a journal entry linked in your sig) for the way you treated us. When you have done that, we'll let you sit at the adult table again.
If you aren't willing to do this simple thing (which is almost as trivial as installing linux these days), then you might want to change your sig.
This one was written in 1900, and is surprisingly accurate:
http://www.paleofuture.com/2007/04/what-may-happen-in-next-hundred-years.html
Some highlights:
Submarine boats submerged for days will be capable of wiping a whole navy off the face of the deep. Balloons and flying machines will carry telescopes of one-hundred-mile vision with camera attachments, photographing an enemy within that radius. These photographs as distinct and large as if taken from across the street, will be lowered to the commanding officer in charge of troops below
Telephones Around the World. Wireless telephone and telegraph circuits will span the world. A husband in the middle of the Atlantic will be able to converse with his wife sitting in her boudoir in Chicago. We will be able to telephone to China quite as readily as we now talk from New York to Brooklyn. By an automatic signal they will connect with any circuit in their locality without the intervention of a "hello girl".
The living body will to all medical purposes be transparent. Not only will it be possible for a physician to actually see a living, throbbing heart inside the chest, but he will be able to magnify and photograph any part of it. This work will be done with rays of invisible light.
From this prediction, and most others, we can see the tendency:
most of computer-related predictions made in the past have become reality in the present.
But for other technology, it is not true.
Seems that pretty much everything else is stagnating.
Space exploration is mostly the same as in 70's - no trips to other planets, not to mention stars.
Transportation is the same.
Health care as ineffective as in the past - most doctors cannot reliably diagnose the problem in the body provided.
And of course political problems are getting much worse every day.