Our vision of the future is always changing . In the yr 1910 , we suppose that the twelvemonth 2000 would be filled with dirigible and multi - armed robotic help . In the 1960s , manned trips to Mars seemed in our grasp . other ideas about the net were sharpen and refined , and we saw nuclear technology and plastic change our lives , but in dissimilar way than we forebode .
Throughout the 20th century , the class 2000 served as a goalpost , a time on which we could project our dream for changing fashions and engineering . Even as we catch near to that yr , we continued to imagine what it might be like and what wonderful surprises it might oblige . Here is a timeline of just some of those predictions for the last twelvemonth of the millenary .
Many of these retrofuturistic predictions were launch through the amazingPaleofutureblog , which is now one of theSmithsonian blogs .
Top image from Villemard ’s yr 2000 series .
1900 : civic engineer John Elfreth Watkins , Jr. ’s article“What May bump in the Next Hundred Years,”which appear in the December 1900 issue of Ladies Home Journal is a popular bit of retrofuturism both for its precise predictions and inaccurate ones . Watkins was right that railroad car would be cheap than horses , raging and cold line would be pumped into house , and tv camera would allow us to see events on the other side of the world . He was a turn off on superstrong mankind trained at free public gymnasium , locally applied drugs , and total eradication of fly sheet and mosquitos . Aerial travel was part of his vision for the yr 2000 , but by airship rather than airplane .
1910 : These print , credited to the French creative person Villemard , take turn of the century fashions and pair them with imagined future technologies . Predictions about transportation and media were actually pretty accurate : galvanising power train , motorcycles , helicopter , and correspondence cinema . Other predictions , like robotic barber and tailors , seem well suit to The Jetsons . And heating with radium is a bit badly - conceived in retrospect . But I would n’t beware a set of those car shoe .
1930 : These fashion anticipation for the twelvemonth 2000 seem mostly done in playfulness , and there ’s a secure emphasis on technological innovation rather than aesthetical progress . cleaning lady don convertible dress , temperature - controlled garments , and fabrics made from aluminum . The major mode prevision one designer made was that skirt and dresses would disappear completely in party favor of gasp . The most precise prediction ? That men would wear speech sound and radios on their persons .
1950 : In the 1950s , we see a big boom in predictions for the year 2000 . In February 1950 , Popular Mechanics published the article“Miracles You ’ll See In The Next Fifty Years,”which invented the Dobson family , who live in the fancied suburb of Tottenville . We ’ve taken a vast jump from the predictions of earlier decades . Thanks to the Hindenburg disaster and the upgrade of airplanes , predictions of supersonic jet have replaced airships in the sky . But this article had some woolgathering notions about how chemistry would revolutionize our lives . Plates would be thaw instead of washed . home base furnish would all be made of washable synthetics , so you could hose them down any time you wanted to clean house . toss away rayon underpants would be converted into candy . But it also indicated some inkling of the Internet :
Of course the Dobsons have a television set . But it is associate with the telephone as well as with the radio receiver , so that when Joe Dobson and a booster in a remote urban center talk over the telephone they also see each other . Businessmen have tv conference . Each man is environ by half a dozen television blind on which he sees those taking part in the discussion . Documents are held up for testing ; samples of good are displayed . In fact , Jane Dobson does much of her shopping by television . Department stores accommodatingly contain up for her review bolts of fabric or show her new style of wear .
That same class , US PresidentHarry Truman offered his own predictions for 2000 , referenced in an editorial decisive of Truman ’s failure to talk about debt relief :
In outside intimacy , there will be earth peace . The particle will be under international control . The United Nations will be a go business and will have forces to save international law and order . World commerce will be regullated under the new International Trade Organization . Other nations will share America ’s prosperity through an expanded Point Four Program of technical aid to under - evolve country . Communism will be suppressed , not by force of weaponry , but by an appealingness to the minds and hearts of men .
https://gizmodo.com/robert-heinleins-predictions-for-the-year-2000-from-19-5871053
1956 : The nuclear optimism of the atomic age came through in Southland magazine ’s November 4 , 1956 issue,“You and the Year 2000.”In the section on farming , radiation helps grow elephantine vegetables , which are sanitized with a radiation lying in wait for secure treatment . This Fannie Merritt Farmer of the future also has a robotic farm worker , operated by remote , who can safely pick and transport the crops . Not everyone dines on oversize veggies , though . Someprefer their food in pill form .
https://gizmodo.com/remember-when-we-thought-wed-get-all-our-nutrition-from-5908332
1957 : twist from the field back to the kitchen , this 1957 video predict how we would organize food in the year 2000 . What ’s particularly exciting about this video is n’t the electric - evocation countertop stoves or chickens poke fun by infrared , but the use of computer punchcards in the home , which the manufacturer of this section thought might inform an automated cookery system .
1964 : We ’ve seen a few predictions by now that show shopping and teleconference via screen door , but author Arthur C. Clarke ’s predictions about telecommunication in 2000 issue forth with an added clearness . Clarke excogitate that we would be able-bodied to get hold of the multitude we want to reach at any fourth dimension , even if we did n’t know their physical location , and that people would be able to lead their business from Tahiti if they so desired . But did he also predict bloggers work in their pajamas ?
1967 : In 1967 , The Futurist , then a newbie clip , write the anticipation of then - Vice President Hubert Humphreyfor the next 20 yearsandthe class 2000 . Here ’s what he ideate :
The practical elimination of bacterial and viral disease .
The correction of transmissible flaw through the alteration of transmissible chemistry .
The stepping - up of our nutrient supply through heavy - scale sea - farming and lying of synthetic proteins .
Control of the atmospheric condition , at least on a regional shell .
In space , the landing of man on Mars and the establishment of a permanent unmanned inquiry station on that planet .
The cosmos , in the laboratory , of naive flesh of artificial life .
This can indeed be an age of miracles . It will be your geezerhood .
Of of course , this was just two years before Neil Armstrong walk on the lunar month . Mars could n’t have seemed far behind . But even if Humphry ’s predictions are more quiet than many from earlier ERA , he still , like so many other soothsayer , foresee an end to disease .
1974 : Going back to Arthur C. Clarke , we get a visual sense of the future that did follow to fruition . When asked about the year 2001 , Clarke accurately foretell that before that year we ’d have computer console in our houses that would connect us to each other and to all the information we would need . get out it to Clarke to peer so clearly into the futurity .
1975 : Our space pipe dream were still quite optimistic in the recent 70s , when NASA predicted we might have quad colonies by the year 2000 . The band - shaped “ Taurus ” was envisioned as a colony that could house 10,000 people for the role of mining ore from the Sun Myung Moon . At least we ’re inching closer to mining materials from place .
1982 : Omni published it Future Almanac in 1982 while The Kids ’ Whole Future Catalog promised a new space age in the novel one C . The New York Times got in on the futurism human action , publishing N.R. Kleinfield’s“A Glimpse of the Year 2000 ” , pile up predictions from various futurists . Roy Amara predicted that we would be living in smaller , more uniform houses , in families with one or no children . He also suggest that we ’d be labor smaller railway car by 2000 , perhaps 10 % of them galvanic . Peter Schwartz predicted the fall of GM , but cry Merrill Lynch “ a classic company of tomorrow . ” He opine that by 2000 , you would be able to communicate with everything in your home , from your door lock away to your cooking stove , electronically . Hazel Henderson predicted that we would center our commerce topically , say , “ It wo n’t make sense to buy Wonder Bread baked in Illinois . ” Barbara Hubbard predicted that we would mine the Sun Myung Moon and asteroid , which the article called an “ odder ” idea . mayhap we are n’t as close to colonizing the moonshine and asteroid as Hubbard hoped , but we are getting on that asteroid minelaying business organization , just a petty deep .
1990 : Even as we approached the eve of the twelvemonth 2000 , some fantast keep on to make prognostication . In Ray Kurzweil ’s 1990 book The Age of Intelligent Machines , Kurzweil predicted that by the early nada , we ’d have translating telephones , honest speech - to - textbook , exoskeletal prosthetics , and ego - driving cars . He also prognosticate those annoying customer service phone systems that seek to determine the nature of your call . That ’s one musical composition of technology I would have jubilantly leave to retrofuturism . Like so many other futurists , Kurzweil is still make anticipation for the come decades and beyond .
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