These 19th Century Postcards Predicted Our Future

kkleiner writes "Starting in 1899, a commercial artist named Jean-Marc Côté and other artists were hired to create a series of picture cards to depict how life in France would look in a century's time. Sadly, they were never actually distributed. However, the only known set of cards to exist was discovered by Isaac Asimov, who wrote a book in 1986 called 'Futuredays' in which he presented the illustrations with commentary. What's amazing about this collection is how close their predictions were in a lot of cases, and how others are close at hand."

Comments

Predictions

[girlintraining]

The problem with predictions is that if you make enough of them, whether vague or detailed, you'll find some of them came true. That is not surprising in and of itself, but some people take this as proof of something. But it's not proof, because they aren't looking at all the predictions that didn't come true, or weren't close. It's all about coincidence and the laws of probability -- things that are highly improbable by themselves can become highly probable with repetition or over time. So even if one of the greatest minds of the time predicted all these things for the future that came true, we cannot consider them in isolation -- we also have to consider all the things predicted that didn't come true.

Mr. Newton would have understood that as a scientist, and if he could be conjured up from the dead to utter a few words on this, he'd likely agree.

Re:Predictions

[girlintraining]

What amazes me is the things which weren't predicted.

The future can't be predicted with any certainty beyond only the smallest of timeframes -- the further you look out, the more likely something major that you couldn't anticipate will significantly impact the prediction being made. Nobody could have predicted in 2000 that we'd be looking at the longest period of economic downturn ever seen in this country's history (if not globally). But all it took was a few airplanes slamming into the side of some buildings to cause radical shifts in our way of life, our economy, etc. There's nothing particularly amazing about that.

Very few got the internet, or the pervalence of pocket computing and connectivity that we take for granted 20 years later.

Even in the late 90s, when the technology was already on the market, people still didn't see its importance. Babylon 5, considered at the time as one of the most progressive scifi shows of the era, showed people on space stations standing in line to get newspapers dispensed by computers. It was inconceivable even then that computers would replace printed media. And that was at a time when exactly that was starting to happen right under their noses.

The future can't be predicted. That's what makes living so worthwhile: What kind of life would it be if we knew what would happen tomorrow?

Re:Predictions

[obarthelemy]

"all it took was a few airplanes slamming into the side of some buildings to cause radical shifts in our way of life, our economy, etc."

I've got 2 issues with your statement:

1- I'm not sure there have been *major shifts* in your way of life and your economy. What are you thinking about ?

2- What changes there have been, I'm not sure where due to the planes crashing. The housing bubble was there for the pricking, it was bound to burst at some point; the banking system had been running amok on the path of max.rewards for its workers and owners regardless of risk or sense for a while (glass-steagall repeal ?); I remember back when I was in college (and that's 20 yrs back), my econ prof telling us the US Auto industry had insolvable pensions liabilities that would require a bankruptcy and/or bailouts.

And a more general issue: that comment is very US-centric.

There are other predictions that are easy to make:

- A major political party embracing bigotry and idiocy can only lead to strife. Usually the bigots/idiots have to start from scratch, which makes success harder. But if they succeeded, their lies and idiocies can't sustain them in power, and they need to resort to external and internal violence. We're seeing a bit of that already.

- Economic upheaval can lead to regime change. that's what caused the French revolution. At some point, the low and middle class will realize they are being fleeced by the corrupt and the mega-rich (and that both are often the same), and will react.

- Dependency on foreign oil and money can only make a state economically weaker and politically more quixotic.

They missed the 3 most important inventions

[Andy Prough]

They missed the 3 inventions that have done the most to promote health and prolong human life expectancy: toilets, refrigerators, and water treatment plants.