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Predictions of the Future...From the 1960s
kkleiner writes "Jetpacks, flying cars, death rays — the future isn't quite what the past hoped it would be. Of course, when predictions do come true it can be really shocking. Check out some of the more entertaining and eye-opening videos that show classic predictions from the 1960s. The Jet Age couldn't imagine the Age of Social Media clearly, but they got a few things right. And many more hilariously wrong."
Usually say more about the hopes and fears than about what will be. The Background of the 60s was the cold war. In the same way the background of the 90s lead to overly optimistic images of the future.
Maybe off-topic since I only read the headline, not even the summary. Check out Paleofuture.
The House of the Future was funded by Monsanto who now is a scarily powerful biotech and genetically modified food conglomerate but who in the 1960s was all about plastics.
So nothing really changed.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Like many people videos are blocked at work, so I cannot view them. However the article still has some interesting text.
First published in 1962, it's predictions are amazingly accurate. It is a must for any geek bookshelf and I'm amazed so few have read it.
The (few!) things he did get wrong, he followed up in later editions of the book along with good explanations as to why that particular technology came about sooner / later than he predicted.
There is an excellent article about the book given in the Guardian Newspaper
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/mar/04/profiles-future-arthur-clarke-review
It is a fun book, much recommended.
I'd post a link to Amazon..... but I'd rather you buy a copy from your local independent bookshop :-)
Anyone quoted by a reporter knows how little they understand
Don't believe what you read is the truth.
What;s all the fuss about social networking? It's new and trendy now but wont it just become general noise in society like the phone et al did?
It's from 1973, not the sixties, but John Brunner's Shockwave Rider is an impressive depiction of the information age.
Worms, phishing, spoofing, identity theft, the power of information and its manipulation...
OK, he missed the personnal computer (it's mainframes all the way up) and multimedia.
The Internet data size is hilarious...
Brunner even added reality TV, communautarism and an few other staples of today's society.
I find something I missed each time I read it again.
I'd post a link to Amazon..... but I'd rather you buy a copy from your local independent bookshop :-)
I wouldn't, so here is a link to buy it on Amazon.
Over the past few years, Singularity Hub has seen the work of futurists of many different calibers. While some, like Arthur C. Clarke or Ray Kurzweil, have impressive track records,
Wait. These guys are seriously naming a crook like Kurzweil in the same breath as Arthur C. Clarke, AND they're ascribing an "impressive track record" to him?
Positive proof that even intelligent people can be complete idiots, I guess.
I keep going back to these: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MnQ8EkwXJ0
I'm surprised how many of them came true. But the thing that really strikes me? The few predictions that *didn't* come true weren't actual TECHNICAL failures. They're marketing and demand failures. The technology to do most of the "of the future!" videos (flying cars being the obvious exception) actually exists. It's just that people really weren't willing to pay for it.
How I laugh at their outlandish predictions of the future whilst viewing them on a phone the size of a chocolate bar with unlimited access to the sum of human knowledge.
1984. I red it 20 years ago and it surprised me for how well it described a possible future.
I'm reading it again now and it's shockingly close to the present time.
It shows the wife sitting at the console ordering her clothes, and then the husband paying for it at his console. Sounds about right.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
I ask because that is the one technology that nobody ever seemed to have predicted, and of course one of the biggest in terms of changing how things are done. While people certainly predicted wider networking of computers it was always in the context of systems you'd connect to. I have never seen an author that predicted a global network that everything could connect to, through which any and all information could flow.
Just wondering since you are right that he tended to be more on target with things than most people. He seemed to grasp that while technology changes, humans by and large don't.
I can't believe how much people predict that housing will change, even now, when it is real clear that humans like what they like and we build our houses accordingly. You see things set in the future and houses are radically different, and yet I've been in houses built in 1900 and built in 2011 and there is a hell of a lot more similar than different. Style changes a bit, but things are not radically redone.
Also they never seem to take in to account that houses last a long time. I live in a house built in 1974, and that is not at all unusual. Now while some of it has been modified since its construction, there are some fundamental things that remain, and yet don't seem "weird" or "old fashion" to people who see it because a 30+ year old house is not at all a strange sight.
That one has always cracked me up and continues to do so, that somehow in a couple decades we'll furnish houses in a style totally different from now.
The Jet Age couldn't imagine the Age of Social Media clearly, but they got a few things right. And many more hilariously wrong.
Perhaps we are the ones who got it wrong.
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
Don't forget Google as predicted in 1964 in a children's book.
Paid Q&A/Research
It is quite fun to see these old predictions to see where they were right or more often, where they were wrong.
We just have to remember that our own present day predictions about the world 50 years from now are likely to be as precise as these old 50's and 60's predictions.
FTFA:
Sounds close enough to me.
René Barjavel's Ravage (Ashes, ashes in English) is pretty spot on, if not about specific customs and technologies, then about modes of life in the future. It's set in the 2050s, but the world has already evolved remarkably toward Barjavel's vision. I recommend it for everyone.
Le français vous intéresse?
Peace. We're still a bunch of savages killing each other.
AT&T did a documentary on the (then) present and future of computers, narrated by William Shatner. It's similar to the videos in TFA. Youtube link goes here.
Peace. We're still a bunch of savages killing each other.
We're still a bunch of savages because we don't even have a good grasp of the past.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
A US Federal agency recently approved the use and production of flying cars on the roads. But I doubt if everybody will be able to afford it considering it's 250,000 USD. I also read that Ford is development a technology so that cars can 'network' themselves on freeways thus maximizing the use ot the space on the highway. I wonder if this will solve the road rage problem?
Ramyphotography a portrait and wedding photography
I'm 38 now but I read every book I could on this subject because I found predictions of the future amazing. We are way past the time of some of these prediction but one amused me quite a bit and that by now, we all would be moving around in our own personal pod and walking anywhere would be a thing of the past and that eventually, our bodies would mutate to where we'd have no legs. A lot of these far out predictions could be closer to the truth if the optimism wasn't overshadowed by what stifles real far technical change and that's the economy behind what already exists. Dirt Cheap power, plants that could sustain any condition and atmosphere, ect. You know, things that would kill the economy and put humans on a more even playing field as far as class. Rich people like to be rich and Powerful people want to remain powerful. Heck the technology we have today challenge and threaten this already.
Remember William Gibson's early short. the Gernsback Continuum? I'm always reminded of that one with posts like this, it's what sparked my interest in dead futures. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gernsback_Continuum)
It's the hundredth anniversary of Marshall McLuhan's birth. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan
The future clearly isn't what it used to be. Some would even say that it's already seen it's best days
Thanks - I like Amazon. It's useful for browsing sample pages and reading reviews before buying elsewhere.
I seem to remember that James Burke(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Burke_%28science_historian%29) did similar predictions in his tomorrow world books, but since I last read them when I was about 10 I can't remember much about them. I'm sure one was that pavements would be replaced by moving walkways by know.
If anyone has a copy or if Mr J.Burke is reading I would be fascinated to know how they turned out...
Choose your allies carefully, it is highly unlikely you will be held accountable for the actions of your enemies
thanka a lot's http://www.ashaq-aliraq.com/vb/t6565.html
For 40-50 years of age, those predictions are surprisingly accurate. If you watch carefully, you notice that while they got many details wrong, the basics are mostly correct. While our buildings look nothing like in the background image of the BBC part, for example, they do in fact incorporate many technological advances. The error is only in how visible those are.
Same with the computers in the first video. While ours today look nothing like those depicted, the functions were largely predicted correctly.
If anything, I'm quite surprised at how good the predictions are.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
/me punches you in nose /sarcasm
that's when we each effect at least one other, in a positive, life promoting & extending manner.
disarm. read the teepeeleaks etchings. the future will thank you.
Worse - some of the old buildings are actually better. I have lost count of how many buildings I've been in that didn't have a single right-angle in them, where most of the "walls" were made of plasterboard, where the exterior was breeze-block that you couldn't drill into without destroying it, where the ceilings was polystyrene, where the outside walls had no double-brick construction to combat damp in countries like the UK, where there aren't enough plug-sockets, where the poorly-planned double-glazed windows caused lots of damp inside (and half the time don't open or don't open fully), where the gardens were concreted over (or, worse, that horrible wooden decking), where everything has to have an "extension" built on to make the rooms big enough, where there's no parking, where there are shared boundaries, drains and gutters all over the place, where there's horrible piping running on the surface of the walls rather than hidden away, where radiators feature prominently in every room, where the central focus is the TV in every damn room (and usually some hulking great thing to show off), etc. etc. etc.
I could go on for hours. And then everyone says that what they *really* want to live in is a thatched cottage, while secretly planning to rip everything out and make it like the above (conversion of bungalows to add another floor is a pet hate, once I realised that it makes housing provision for disabled people more and more expensive and hard to find).
Surprisingly accurate in the general sense, but the specific inaccuracies show how much the digital computing stuff has changed how people interface with electronics. Without an operating system to manage tasks, processes and windows, there is a strict "one task = one screen" limit, so they have all these different screens on the desk - and they have to manipulate them with physical buttons, because the mouse hasn't been invented yet.
It's not the internet or its ubiquity that people failed to foresee when they didn't predict things like social networking - it was how insanely more convenient it would become to work with computers. Asimov predicted a globally accessibly encyclopedia - accessed by a teletype console.
...sadly, the smartest people on this planet have been lured by advertising companies into jobs aimed at attracting eyeballs.
All the PhDs are now producing software that's about as useful as paperclips and other office disposables.
And they even seem to be content in doing so.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
I'd post a link to Amazon..... but I'd rather you buy a copy from your local independent bookshop
Who will, in turn merely place an order with Amazon and charge you a premium for your laziness.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Most new housing here in the US is being built with sheet rock on the EXTERIOR walls. Why? Because it meets fire code.... and its cheap. Very few new houses have squared walls, its not uncommon to see walls visibly crooked. I can expect it in a house built 100 years ago, but with today's tools?
Try reading Aldous Huxleys Brave New World.
It's 80 years old, and is becoming a reality today.
you mean like a local independent bookshop where you can flip through the pages?
Well we only replaced the ground with moving walkways in a few places, but we do have the Segway, which is a more personalised version of the same concept.
Were they really so certain that keyboards would be done away with in order to go back to a pen based system? Computers with keyboards were out at the time, and while not consumer products, I can't imagine someone familiar with computers not understanding how useful they were/are. The computer I used in the military was designed in 1965, and while severely limited, is still recognizable as a computer. So, their glimpse into the future doesn't really seem to be that significant.
/* TODO: Spawn child process, interest child in technology, have child write a new sig */
My local independent bookshop doesn't carry Kindle books. Sorry.
In all seriousness, I don't think there is an independent bookshop within 25 miles of my home. My Borders is getting shut down and the closest B&N is 15 miles away in a crowded strip mall with no other store I care to visit.
I've gone digital with my music, my movies, my video games and now my books. I don't miss the bricks and mortar stores. I hate driving, I hate traffic and I hate other drivers.
Here is a prediction from 1936
A mechanism of world inter-communication will be devised, embracing the whole planet, freed from national hindrances and restrictions, and functioning with marvellous swiftness and perfect regularity.
(Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Baha'u'llah, p. 202)
You may find this funny but it isn't. How many little girls grew up with that sexist mentality and so didn't make discoveries?. How many of the interesting technologies in TFA weren't made because some little girl instead of becoming a scientist or an engineer became a housewife or a secretary because she was told just this sort of sexist bullshit? How many cures for diseases have been lost because of young ladies who grew up being told that they couldn't do math? And how many interesting business models won't happen because girls were told to expect boys to be the wage earners and girls to be the clothes buyers? Don't make stupid sexist jokes. Help remove the stereotypes. I'm a guy, and I want all my cool technologies we don't have yet. And joke like yours just reinforce exactly the social attitudes that make us not get the cool technology as quickly.
When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
Arthur C. Clarke, Clarke's first law
English physicist & science fiction author
Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.
Niels Bohr
Danish physicist (1885 - 1962)
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
Regarding building materials, the best house I ever lived in was about 300 years old and built from massive sandstone blocks. The thermal mass was incredible - cool in summer, easy to keep heated in winter. Don't need any plaster on the walls, as the pure stone looks awesome. It'll still be standing 300 years from now, I guess. Really loved that place.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
No, you idiot, jokes don't reinforce anything except laughter. Lighten the hell up.
Oh, don't get your panties in a bunch, Joshua. Why don't you have a nice laudanum, and lie down for a while? There, I broke the stereotype!
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
I had a very similar experience in academia. "Hard" science isn't nearly as hard as most people think. Most of the researchers I knew were unabashed grant-whores who said and did whatever it took to get the next grant, get the next paper published, and (ultimately) get tenure. They would exaggerate their findings, cook their numbers, treat their hypotheses like forgone conclusions, sensationalize and over-publicize their results, and follow whatever hot trends would get them grant money (just look at all the "green energy" and global warming grant applications popping up today if you want modern examples of that). I saw professors who forced their grad students to put their names on articles and papers that the students wrote entirely by themselves. I saw people engage in petty and unethical behavior in the interest of political goals. I saw a lot of stuff that makes me a helluva lot less accepting of the "But science SAYS SO!" mantra that's so popular here on slashdot. The numbers and experiments may not lie, but the people interpreting those numbers and conducting those experiments MOST DEFINITELY do.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
You take what you got, add the human element, add realities of the market and you arrive at what's most likely to happen, barring any catastrophes like global war or a sudden change in the politics.
Well, when it comes to technology, what do we know about humans and our economy? For one, both hate revolutions and like evolution. Read: We won't get flying cars, we will get more efficient "normal" ones. We won't get quantum computers, just faster "normal" ones. We won't get the house that cleans itself, instead materials will be used that are easier to clean. Don't expect any of the fancy way out things to be implemented. Nobody is going to do the basic research needed for it. Expect a few key elements to change when something gets invented, but the general system stays the same. Today, we have computer controlled carburetors in our cars, no longer mechanic ones. But it's still the same basic technology that relies on some kind of refined oil being exploded to create movement that it was a century ago. No revolution here. We might get to use different materials as oil gets more expensive due to digging for it becoming more expensive and other technologies becoming viable, but I am pretty sure the system stays the same. No hover cars, no personal planes, no jetpacks. Normal cars, maybe with a different engine and better efficiency. The same applies to all technologies: Do not expect something revolutionary to come around, expect that whatever we have today becomes easier to use, cheaper to produce and more versatile and efficient.
Entertainment will be a big element, most likely. With more and more people having more and more spare time at their hands, it's likely that someone will try to cash in on it. We'll probably get more TV channels, since pushing more channels into cable becomes easier (and cheaper), as well as getting the necessary equipment to start your own TV show. Probably something akin to YouTube will eventually be the staple of TV entertainment. Cheap content. The start is those "reality shows" where you can fill an hour of "entertainment" by paying some redneck hick 500 bucks so he and his family become the country's laughing stock. This will expand: Free content, taken from various media sites. Also already there, at least here we have a show about the "10 best $whatever from $mediapage". I'd expect something like a "YouTube Digest" channel that collects the "best" YouTube videos and rebroadcasts them within the decade.
Media companies will shift their product towards the online world and put more focus on selling their stories online. I don't really see blogs et al as a big competition to them, even though some blogs might gain a niche importance, to the point of becoming the authority on certain topics when the "real" media pick their stories up and broadcast them. The average Joe might not even know about them, but the media outlets will. They will finally completely turn into "news aggregators", that development can be seen already. Many news stations or newspapers don't research anything anymore but simply reprint whatever blog entry or agency message they come across. And since people who read them are satisfied with this and do apparently not want them to be more than just info collectors and compressors, they will just do that. It's cheaper than researching and it gets the news sold.
Computers will continue to shrink and become more powerful. Expect that in about 20 years our handhelds will be able to do what our current desktops can do, including graphics and whatnot. Thinking about it, most likely less than 20 years. Here is actually a possibility for a social revolution, depending on how the problem of the tiny display on handhelds is solved. If HMDs become cheap enough to be mass produced and considered as much a throwaway item as cellphones are today, we might witness a big shift in how people interact with each other, and how they perceive the world. Don't expect a machine-brain interface, but having information constantly in front of your eye, especially if this c
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What a great find, thank you! Short of calling it internet, he got it perfectly right.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Is that we didn't account for human greed. We always assumed that the only hurdle to innovation was lack of knowledge and that the benefits of technology will be distributed evenly among everyone.
Yeah, just like that - except you don't have to spend 10+ minutes in travel time just to skim the pages of a single book your interested in. And Amazon is open before 11am and after 5pm. But besides that, yeah, just like a local independent bookshop.
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
The book reviews in my local independent book store are all done by the people trying to sell the books. They are not exactly unbiased. (Or, more accurately, they are not reviewed by many people with a wide variety of biases some of which I may share.)
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
Just like me, because I kept hearing the jokes about men being lazy, I never bothered to get an education, and now all the technological progress that could have been made by men will be lost. ):
Is 1563649 a prime number?
Back up a second. Exterior walls, at a minimum, look like this: siding (or facing), sheathing, insulation inside framing, vapor barrier, sheet rock. Sheet rock couldn't possibly actually be on the outside, as it is made of PAPER. There is sheet rock made of hydrophobic material that is used in bathrooms now, but I still don't think that's what you meant.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
I don't doubt that it was pretty comfortable compared to your average framed house, but while stone has huge thermal mass it has a very low R value. It takes all day to warm up my house with its 2' thick walls, but eventually the heat makes it through and radiates to the inside. I have foil-faced foam board on the inside to impede this. Over this is sheetrock or plaster. I like to actually hang things on my walls. :-)
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
...that didn't quite work, click here
My web domain.
Like space colonies, Moon mining, eating asteroids and all the other religious tripe from the First Church of the Universe is a Wal Mart and Space Nuttery.
I agree. If I were to build a U.S.-style wood-framed house today, I'd probably frame with 2x6 lumber for walls, seasoned for a couple years and refinished to a smaller size (2x5 perhaps) to make each stud/beam/plate perfectly straight. Then every piece would be cut to length on a simple CNC-fed saw, according to a bill of materials that lists every piece of framing lumber needed. It's all a matter of engineering the process right, I'm sure it could be done fairly affordably and provide an excellent end product. I'm learning by doing lots of work on our current home, but the plan is to sell in 18-20 years and then build our own, from scratch.
I'm toying with setting up some finite beam element models to fix shape of each header/joist for neutral deformation when under target load. That way each horizontal beam will be flat when the house is finished and furnished. I need a CNC wood saw and a CNC joint planer, but hey, I've got about 10 years to prototype everything, then a couple years to get the plans and get all the wood for it to season out.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Hmm, that's not a bad idea. There's a quarry a couple miles away, I'll have to ask them how much it costs. I can always do exterior walls out of stone!
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
What a great find, thank you! Short of calling it internet, he got it perfectly right.
Almost right. If only he had added "and will be a marvellous mechanism for the transfer of salacious pictures of young ladies "
Choose your allies carefully, it is highly unlikely you will be held accountable for the actions of your enemies
I have owned/rented a number of homes ranging from new construction to homes built in the 1920s. That experience has taught me one thing, never buy a home built after the 1960s. Homes built since then lack the craftsmanship of older homes. Generally no built-in cabinets, no detailed woodwork or corner molding, no leaded glass windows, no hardwood floors, no solid core doors, etc. Sure these are in some new houses, hardwood floors for example have become popular again, but now it is cheep laminate, even then it is only in certain rooms, peel up the carpet in other rooms and all you have is plywood. Even things like heat were better in the old day. I had to replace a 10 yr old furnace in one home, but another home had a boiler that lasted 60 years before it finally gave out. Sure some of the technology in newer homes (furnaces, building materials, etc.) is more energy efficient but when you factor in the cost of having to constantly repair/replace the newer stuff, it gets more expensive (and probably has a larger carbon footprint). In the long run, I think you are almost always better off renovating and old property to meet modern needs than to buy a new property. The cost will be lower and you will have much better craftsmanship.
What a great find, thank you! Short of calling it internet, he got it perfectly right.
But how long until:
freed from national hindrances and restrictions
is no longer true for even "the Free"? Unfortunately, 1984 has remained the most prescient book written. Brother, let us hope that winning streak ends sometime.
Atlas Shrugged : Thematic Story
Its called "exterior grade" sheet rock, it has a waterproof black coating to it. They seem to like using it on new construction apartment and townhouses around here. Those same buildings seem to be constructed without true firewall breaks too.
I still think we are headed to a dystopian future similar to that described in Soylent Green. I don't mean the dietary content but rather the polarization of an overpopulated society into the insanely rich and the destitutely poor with virtually no middle class. Those in power are working hard today to corral all of the wealth with every senate bill. In 20 years or so I predict those of us outside of the privileged 10% will be fighting over scraps.
Unfortunately, 1984 has remained the most prescient book written. Brother, let us hope that winning streak ends sometime.
Be careful what you wish for as there are many other books I'd rather not hold the title of "most prescient" ;)
#1 was the machine future of the 1950s-60s TomorrowLand: rockets, robots, self-maintaining homes, etc. This was the staple of world fairs since Prince Alberts 1850s Exhibition.
#2 was the 1970s post Earth Day future in the Epcot Dome focusing on ecology and psychology.
#3 is the computer-age stuff you see Disney future lands now.
Ubiquitous computing is a computer in every appliance, no mater how trivial (my toaster has one). And a computer in every palm or pocket. Even the Star Trek universe missed this with a giant ship "mainframe" (communicators and tricorders not withstanding).
Who would think of spending megaflops on graphical human-machine interfaces back int 60s or 70s, except when gigaflops cost dimes now and we'll have personal petaflops in a matter of decades?
Isaac Asimov anticipated both sides. One story imagines the mainframe evolving into God (The Last Question). Another where people are so dependent on their personal computers than can do arithmetic in their heads anymore.
What went wrong with "the future" was that no new source of energy was developed. Fifty years ago, we had coal, oil, natural gas, hydropower, nuclear, wind, wind, biomass, and solar. Which is what we have now. Breeder reactors didn't work. Nuclear power didn't become "too cheap to meter". Fusion didn't work. Solar cells never became really cheap. Solar power satellites were a fantasy.
In each previous 50-year period back to 1800, there was some huge development that made energy cheaper. But in the last half-century, energy costs went up. This is the primary reason the exuberant energy-intensive future envisioned in the 1950s and 1960s didn't happen.
Looking ahead, there's nothing in sight that will lead to another era of cheap energy. Over the next fifty years, energy costs will go up and up.
In the 1966 prediction of home computer video the woman sitting at the console is Marj Dusay. I remember her from Star Trek - Spocks Brain and a few Hogan's Heroes episodes.
When I went house shopping recently, I ended up limiting my search to only homes built before 1940. My wife has the same basic opinion on housing that you do. Old houses also have better airflow, since they weren't designed to be shut up when it gets hot (since there was no AC).
It's good to get out of the house, and out of your computer chair.
You never know, you might find other books worth reading while you're there, too.
Bookstores are worth the trip.
But then Rand came here from Soviet Russia, so she'd seen the effects of totalitariansim and socialism. All she had to do was apply those memories to the US.
Mainly the very narrow staircases. And the retrofitting for modern appliances and indoor plumbing creates some interesting situations.
So instead of thinking how we may want our houses different, we need to think of what new technologies will come along and affect how we design our houses.
Think of what will happen when electronically dimmable glass gets cheap and strong enough, and insulating enough, to take the place of most walls. Then you can forget about placement of windows in order to provide light, you can forget shutters, drapes and window shades where you do have windows.
Think of the changes embedded LED lighting will make throughout the house.
A few years ago, I got a book that was the printed form of presentations from a conference in 1969. It was a bunch of presentations from fairly famous scientists and sci-fi writers about their predictions for what various areas of society/technology would be like in 2000.
Some were laughably off the mark (colonies on Mars and the Moon, manned voyages to the moons of Jupiter under way,) some were ridiculously close to reality (predicted Wikipedia and smart phones!) Surprisingly, nobody predicted flying cars. Simple airplanes yes, (including a prediction of the still-being-developed semi-autonomous light aircraft proposed by NASA and the FAA,) but not what most '60s stereotypes of "flying cars" are like.
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
To add to this, both of the local independent bookshops in my town were owned and operated by gigantic assholes. As a poor kid with not much money and not much to do, I would sometimes take a couple of dollars and ride my bike up to the local independent bookstore near me to see if I could find anything good. I was always treated rudely from the second I walked in the door and watched closely as if they were afraid I would steal something the instant their backs were turned. Once I had paid for small stack of used books I was basically ushered out the door. No looking, no browsing, no smiling storekeeper recommending her favorite books. Just scowls and rudeness.
Later in life I got a job working at a big name computer store at the opposite end of town near the other bookstore. I tried heading over there on my too-short 1/2 hour lunch break to browse around a bit and buy a book or two, but the rude woman there treated me the same way. I wasn't in the store for 3 minutes and she had already asked me if she could help me twice, and then followed me around the store while I looked at books. About 5 minutes into skimming a book I was thinking about buying, she told me that her store wasn't a library - I should buy it or leave. So I put it down and never went back.
Since then, I've bought dozens of books and hundreds of items on Amazon. I can browse the inventory at my leisure, at any hour, and have stuff shipped overnight to my door. Amazon has never complained that I take too long to make a decision or followed me around to make sure I don't steal anything. I don't have to pay sales tax either. Tell me again how local independent bookshops are better?
Houses built in the good-old-days weren't any better. The crappy houses just fell down since then and only the good ones remain. If you don't like crooked walls, stop living in cheap houses.
I'm happy to chuck in an extra couple of bucks so that some local kid keeps their job.
Bah, for good predictions of the future, it's the Ladies' Home Journal or nothing.
http://www.paleofuture.com/blog/2007/4/17/what-may-happen-in-the-next-hundred-years-ladies-home-journa.html
These days, what I see with 20-somethings and some 30-somethings is that the girl goes to work at some kind of mediocre-paying administrative job, maybe has two jobs, and gets a boyfriend with tattoos and piercings who doesn't have a real job (except for a job at a tattoo shop, though this doesn't result in any actual money), and spends most of his time sitting on her couch playing video games and watching movies.
See? I can do stereotypes too.
Besides, no one's telling girls they can't do math any more. These days, they're telling ALL kids, "why bother learning any hard subjects? you should just go into finance instead." Consequently, there aren't many Americans becoming scientists or engineers, but tons of them going into finance, and making lots of money doing no productive work whatsoever, except causing economic bubbles and failures.
You've obviously never been to Arizona. We don't have any of that "siding" you mention (well, there are some old 50s/60s houses with asbestos siding, but none of the newer ones). Instead, all the houses are made with stucco, which is basically styrofoam and chicken wire sprayed with a thin coat of concrete.
It's good to get out of the house, and out of your computer chair.
True, but I prefer the nearby parks for that.
You never know, you might find other books worth reading while you're there, too.
Surprisingly, you might find them on Amazon as well - it will even suggest you some based on your purchasing history.
Bookstores are worth the trip.
You didn't give any convincing arguments for that so far.
Giving people jobs? Providing work for all the people it takes to maintain a building? Giving some teenager his first job, running a cash register or stocking shelves?
Supporting local authors by supporting a place where they can congregate and sell their books?
Seeing as how your signature reads: "I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization."... The sales tax you pay goes to the local and state government. The money the store makes goes to pay employees who live in the surrounding area, which enables them to have lives, spend money, support the people YOU work for, that kind of stuff. It makes your town a better place to live by keeping money there. You know, building the civilization around you.
How about some good old fashioned human interaction?
And sure, Amazon shows you a screenful of things based on your purchasing history, but that's nothing compared to standing in front of a big tall bookshelf full of things on a subject you like. They have electronic catalogs in-store, and usually a web kiosk, if searchability and special ordering is what you need. Over time the Amazon suggestions tend to filter out the things you might accidentally walk past on your way to the section of books you're interested in, which actually reduces the scope of your reading if it's the only way you get recommendations.
The big chains have e-readers, which allow you to check out books for free while you're in the store. That's a pretty big benefit too.
Then there's comfortable seating, readily available snacks, toys and stuff for your relatives' kids' birthdays... magazines you'd never find at the grocery store like Music Tech and Computer Music...
Come on, have you ever set foot into one of these places? I thought that liking places with large collections of books was part of being a nerd, which is this site's target audience...
Giving people jobs? Providing work for all the people it takes to maintain a building? Giving some teenager his first job, running a cash register or stocking shelves?
I'm not proponent of the "broken window" model of economics. If people need jobs, I'd rather give them jobs that are actually productive. If there are none, then let them have welfare - that's partly why I pay my taxes, after all.
Supporting local authors by supporting a place where they can congregate and sell their books?
It's much easier for the authors to publish online. Much likely to be commercially successful that way, too, or even just reach the widest possible audience (if that is what they care about, rather than money).
Seeing as how your signature reads: "I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization."... The sales tax you pay goes to the local and state government. The money the store makes goes to pay employees who live in the surrounding area, which enables them to have lives, spend money, support the people YOU work for, that kind of stuff. It makes your town a better place to live by keeping money there. You know, building the civilization around you.
it so happens that I live in the city where Amazon is headquartered - so, as far as I'm concerned, they are a local business (which is also why I pay sales tax from any purchases I make from them).
In any case, while I do prefer to support local businesses, I do so at the expense of my wallet, not of my convenience. In my opinion, brick and mortar paper book stores are a dying business - we're simply moving on. There's nothing stopping all those people from setting up local electronic book stores, however. When they do, I'll gladly buy from them.
How about some good old fashioned human interaction?
I'm an introvert (as many here probably are), so I don't want too many of that. In any case, there are plenty other venues to socialize at, and I don't think that a bookstore would ever be my preferable one.
Come on, have you ever set foot into one of these places? I thought that liking places with large collections of books was part of being a nerd, which is this site's target audience...
I have been a bookworm ever since I had first learned to read (about the age of 3, IIRC). I used to have heaps and heaps of books - several bookcases filled, and then some - in fact, most of that is still in my parents' home back in Russia. Yes, I did set foot in bookstores in US and Canada as well.
Sorry, but e-books are just that much more convenient. If I end up somewhere in a queue or on the bus, I just whip out my phone, and presto, there's the book that I was reading, auto-synced to the exact point where I stopped on my full-size Kindle at home. When I go on vacation, I load it with a bunch of books enough to last me through all those evenings, and then some extra just in case. End result: I read more, not less - and that's how I like it.
The reason you see walls that aren't flat and plumb with corners that are exactly 90 degrees is that you can't get decent framing lumber anymore.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Cf7IL_eZ38
From TFA:
Less accurate is this 1960s vision of “Britain of the Future!” Though they manage to predict flat screen televisions hanging on walls around 6:56, the rest is pretty ludicrous.
Disagree. Not so funny. The only things they got absolutely wrong was the assumption of a world at peace, fundamental changes in the nature of cities (which are much desired but only emerging), and the number of UK citizens travelling abroad each year, which was only 5.8m in 2008 as opposed to the 30m predicted. They got all the following right:
Central importance of computers and software
Hothousing kids for mathematical ability
Integrated media centres for the home
Video cassettes (dvds even given the circular shape on the console)
Flat screen tvs
Wall to wall plastic. These guys were plastic fetishists.
During his assignment to photograph 1930s era futuristic architecture, Parker begins to realize a "continuum," an alternate reality containing the possible future of the world represented by the architecture he is photographing – a future that could have been, but was not, thereby contrasting modernism to postmodern reality.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gernsback_Continuum
It's only good for certain climates, I guess - with the slow change between seasons we have here, the house had a pretty constant interior climate itself. All technical considerations aside - it simply had style. Centuries old sandstone house, no posh lawn, but instead a fruit garden with apple trees twice as old as myself in the back, a stream for good trout fishing just behind the property line - bliss. That's how man is meant to live :)
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
How about some good old fashioned human interaction?
I'm an introvert (as many here probably are), so I don't want too many of that. In any case, there are plenty other venues to socialize at, and I don't think that a bookstore would ever be my preferable one.
That's all you really had to say. It makes sense that a brick-and-mortar store and gathering place would not be to your taste, given the introversion factor. There's nothing wrong with your preference. Just remember that there are plenty of us who do like these places and want to keep them around, when you're dismissing them as useless to you. Consider that it might be beneficial for some other people, that's all.
Of course. After all, I'm merely not spending my money there, not suggesting to bulldoze all book stores. ~ If there are enough people who find them useful, they will pay for the privilege of being there, and keep them alive.
But I think your argument is still weak on this one. I may be an introvert, but I know many people who aren't, and they certainly don't normally socialize in book stores. I doubt that the number of people who do is high enough to make it a viable target audience to sustain them. We'll see.