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Tales of the Future Past 221

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

Tales of the Future Past

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  • Troubled future... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Goalie_Ca ( 584234 ) on Friday May 28, 2004 @03:46PM (#9280154)
    I see a slashdot about to happen.

  • Millennium (Score:3, Informative)

    by Chess_the_cat ( 653159 ) on Friday May 28, 2004 @03:47PM (#9280156) Homepage
    Not millenium.

  • The future (Score:4, Funny)

    by thebra ( 707939 ) * on Friday May 28, 2004 @03:48PM (#9280171) Homepage Journal
    I predict that the website will in the near future not load but show an error. It will be known as the "slashdot effect". I also predict that some one will comment on the fact this is the second article about the future. [slashdot.org] I also see that in the near future I will be modded down...

  • One thing they didn't predict (Score:5, Funny)

    by nizo ( 81281 ) on Friday May 28, 2004 @03:48PM (#9280172) Homepage Journal
    Thousands of people depressing a button, causing a small box far far away to burst into flames.

  • *sigh* (Score:5, Funny)

    by macshune ( 628296 ) on Friday May 28, 2004 @03:49PM (#9280186) Journal
    STILL no flying cars...:(

    • Re:*sigh* (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 28, 2004 @03:54PM (#9280243)
      > STILL no flying cars

      I dunno. Those SUVs get some pretty decent air when the roll over.
      • > STILL no flying cars

        I dunno. Those SUVs get some pretty decent air when the roll over.

        I saw an econobox get pretty good air once when the driver locked up the brakes at 80. Had a cool time dilation effect as we whipped past his car spinning airborne on at least two axes. Amazingly, they kid was unhurt thanks to seatbelt, though the car had seen better days...

    • http://www.moller.com/skycar/

      well almost.

    • Re:*sigh* (Score:3, Funny)

      by kashani ( 2011 )
      Damn future. I want to be cruising for chicks in my flying car while chatting on my video phone in Esperanto. What the hell happened?

      kashani
      • Metric system. All the plans were in the old Imperial units, and when they changed over in the 70s to metric... well they had to pretty much scrap everything. So blame Jimmy Carter. ;)

  • Of course (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 28, 2004 @03:49PM (#9280187)
    I had forgotten the web was fun and interesting

    Hanging out at /. will do that to you.

    • Re:Of course (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Milo Fungus ( 232863 ) on Friday May 28, 2004 @04:24PM (#9280477)

      Slashdot has totally changed my browsing habits since I started reading it a few years ago. I find that I don't "get out" as much as I used to and just surf around. When in doubt, reload the Slashdot main page and see if there's a new story. Nothing? Hmmm... Maybe there's a new comment in a story I've already read. Or maybe I'll read the comment thread under that boring story that I don't care about after all...

      Lately I've been browsing around at Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] more. Just find an interesting page and open up a few internal links into new tabs as you go. It's easy to read half a dozen or more pages in one sitting, and you always learn something cool and interesting.

      Of course, I learned about Wikipedia from a Slashdot article...

  • Hmmm... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Reorax ( 629666 ) on Friday May 28, 2004 @03:50PM (#9280210)
    *checks website*

    "In the future, far too many people will make posts with jokes about the Slashdot Effect."

  • National Geographic (Score:5, Interesting)

    by stoolpigeon ( 454276 ) <bittercode@gmail> on Friday May 28, 2004 @03:52PM (#9280221) Homepage Journal
    This is one of the great things about digging through old stacks of National Geo. Especially issues from the '50s and earlier. My Grandmother had tons of them and I would sit for hours looking at the diagrams of the moon base that was going to have been built by the '80s.

  • Obligatory: Spinal Tap (Score:3, Funny)

    by bludstone ( 103539 ) on Friday May 28, 2004 @03:52PM (#9280224)
    We are the children who grew too fast
    We are the dust of a future past
    We raise our voices in the night
    Crying to heaven
    And will our voices be heard
    Or will they Break Like The Wind
    We are the footprints across the sands
    We are the thumb on a stranger's hand
    We made a promise in the night
    Swearing to heaven Is this a promise we keep
    Or one we Break Like The Wind
    Hey!
    We are the guests who have stayed too long
    We are the end of the endless song
    We send our hearts into the night
    Soaring to heaven
    And will out hearts still beat on
    Or will they Break Like The Wind
    Ooh, Break Like The Wind.

  • spell check you web site (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 28, 2004 @03:53PM (#9280234)

    So, settle on you jetpack, hitch up you blaster, and tune in the videotron as we tour Future Past!

    Dig that futuristic spelling!

  • analyzing past predictions (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pedantic bore ( 740196 ) on Friday May 28, 2004 @03:54PM (#9280245)
    It's always interesting to analyze predictions of the future (made in the past) and see how reality differs. There's usually some assumption that seemed to make sense at the time, but turned out to be wrong over time. Then look at our current predictions about the future and ask whether we're still making those assumptions, or whether we're making different, newer assumptions that will turn out to be equally wrong. Excellent reality check.

    • Re:analyzing past predictions (Score:5, Interesting)

      by nizo ( 81281 ) on Friday May 28, 2004 @04:04PM (#9280326) Homepage Journal
      Your post hit it right on the head. We have so many theories, beliefs, etc. that we cling to for dear life that people in the future will just laugh at. Phrenology, ether, and many others at which we scoff; makes me wonder which ideas we hold near and dear that will be considered just so much crap later.
    • For me, one assumption I think people will laugh at in the future is the assumption that a lack of evidence is indicitive of a lack of existance. This has been debunked a few times in the field of zoology (think Pandas, the coelecanth, and others) but has yet to hit in other fields of study.
      • Flipping the bird at 400 million years of evolution.
      • But there's a lot of people who think that a lack of existence is something that requires evidence, which is equally stupid, given that a lack of existence should be *expected* to leave behind to a lack of evidence. While it's true that a lack of evidence does not prove a lack of existence, it's also true that if you're looking for proof that nonexistant things are in fact nonexistant, then you're going about it all wrong in the first place.

        The *ONLY* way you can ever say that a thing is nonexistant, is a

      • Dark Info (Score:3, Funny)

        by Doc Ruby ( 173196 )
        We are only now stumbling across the phenomenon of "nemory": an event that never happened, that you don't remember. These nemories are our experiences of "dark info", apparently the vast majority of the info in the Universe. In the future, nemories will be exchanged so much that we won't even notice.
    • Good point.

      If you look back at history, you notice something about technologies. In most cases, there are five distinct stages:

      1) Conception - a person first comes up with the idea for a brand new category of technology. A wave of interest sweeps over it. (Weeks to years)
      2) Initial development - slow, tedious developent toward this field, with great sweeping prophecying of its capability (years to decades)
      3) Later development - slow, tedious development toward this field, with the many people disillusi

  • Corner newsstands (Score:3, Funny)

    by mr_mischief ( 456295 ) on Friday May 28, 2004 @03:55PM (#9280255) Journal
    In the future, as the number of /.ers grows, it will be faster to publish a site on CD and distribute it worldwide to small outlets than for all the interested parties to load the page across the net. :-/

  • I feel for the little guys, I do. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MetalliQaZ ( 539913 ) on Friday May 28, 2004 @03:55PM (#9280260)
    This is a perfect example of the biggest problem with slashdot. The posting of this story seems to border on malicious intent towards the owner of that website. My advice is this: Do what I do, and read the "old news" section instead of the front page.
  • I am still waiting for my own personal airship that I can tether to tall buildings.

  • Smithsonian Exhibit (Score:5, Informative)

    by ncg ( 772590 ) on Friday May 28, 2004 @03:57PM (#9280270)
    There is actually a travelling smithsonian exhibit going across the country to smaller communities on this ery subject. You read read about it here [yesterdaystomorrows.org], it is currently in Rexburg, Idaho.

  • Excerpts... (Score:5, Informative)

    by iota ( 527 ) * on Friday May 28, 2004 @03:57PM (#9280276) Homepage
    There's quite a lot posted there. Mostly referring to images, but here's a couple excerpts -- It was slashdotted while I was reading it...

    TALES OF FUTURE PAST
    It wasn't that long ago that we had a future. I mean, we have one now; the world isn't going to crash into the Sun or anything like that. What I mean is that we had a future that we could clearly imagine. The future wasn't tomorrow, next week, next year, or next century. It was a place with a form, a structure, a style. True, we didn't know exactly what the future would be like, but we knew that it had to be one of a few alternatives; some good, some very bad. The future was a world with a distinct architecture. It had its own way of speaking. It had its own technology. It was for all intents and purposes a different land where people dressed differently, talked differently, ate differently, and even thought differently. It was where scientists were wizards, where machines were magically effective and efficient, where tyrants were at least romantically evil rather than banal, and where the heavens were fairyland where dreams could literally come true.

    A few years ago, people talked about building a bridge to the 21st century. Now that we're there, the phrase seems as odd as building a causeway to five o'clock. As Midnight brought in the year 2000 (or 2001 if you prefer), something odd began to sink in. For people of my generation, who had lived through the tarnished promises of the Atomic Age, the Space Age, the Computer Age, and the This That and Another Age, the year 2001 was a gateway. We waited twenty, thirty, forty years and some longer to pass though that gate into a time when spaceships the size of ocean liners plied between colonised planets, where cities were colourful collections of brand new towers without a single old building or blade of grass, where people wore jumpsuits like they were the togas of a technocratic Rome, where robots were our powerful and obedient servants, and where jetpacks were as common as galoshes.

    Boy, were we off base. It isn't simply that the predictions were wrong. No one with half a brain really expected that sort of accuracy. And true, though some marvels did not come to pass, others that were and weren't predicted did. We certainly live very different lives from that of our fathers and grandfathers. That is not in dispute. But what did not happen is what many expected, though never talked about much. Assuming that we dodged the 1984, Brave New World bullet, our future was supposed to be a sort of technocratic, atomic-powered, computer-controlled, antiseptic, space-travelling Jerusalem that would at last free us from the curse of Eden and original sin. We expected some how, some way that we would be on the road to being freed from the human condition. We expected a sort of bloodless, benign French Revolution with Hugo Gernsback as our Voltaire and Carl Sagan as our Robespierre. And what did we get? The City of Man with Tivo. The fact is, science fiction and popular science had set the bar so high that only the Second Coming with ray guns would have satisfied.

    Still, there was a romantic innocence about the 20th century's view of the future. It was a sort of plastic Camelot; in both senses of the term. So, settle on you jetpack, hitch up you blaster, and tune in the videotron as we tour Future Past!

    FUTURE CITY
    This is Frank R. Paul's depiction of a city of the future and is pretty typical of such predictions. The city is a massive pile of steel, plastic and glass put together in a way that not only has no past, but actively rejects it. It is a place of heroic technology with skyscrapers the size of whole districts, Roof-top aerodromes, wide pedestrian boulevards, and metal roadways strangely devoid of traffic. There are even urban space launch pads where giant rockets are winched upright before blasting off to the heavens. Noise regulations, Smoise regulations.

    The iconic image of the future is the city

    • Re:Excerpts... (Score:3, Informative)

      by 680x0 ( 467210 )
      Oh! There's text in that big black rectangle. Who knew?

      Whatever this guy did, it doesn't show up in Mozilla. Oh, this explains it:

      name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 5.0"

  • Hmph! (Score:3, Informative)

    by whiteranger99x ( 235024 ) on Friday May 28, 2004 @03:58PM (#9280282) Journal
    Blah, I'm still waiting on the crater-front property on the Moon that I signed up for :(

  • I predict (Score:5, Funny)

    by Prince Vegeta SSJ4 ( 718736 ) on Friday May 28, 2004 @03:58PM (#9280285)
    • people will continue to post comments that say "First Post"
    • Tinfoil hats will be all the rage
    • The next version of Windows will claim to "load faster and be more stable than ever! and will allow you to shut down a program without rebooting"
    • Linux will be on the verge of overtaking windows
    • slashdot will be a mainstream word
    • IANAL will initially be a mainstream word, but after Howard Stern uses it in a derrogatory way, it is banned by the FCC.

  • On the "Flying Wing" magazine cover... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 28, 2004 @03:58PM (#9280287)
    ...David Sarnoff, RCA President, Predicts "Television will Carry the Mail".

    Actually he wasn't too far off, eh?

  • Still not fun and interesting (Score:4, Funny)

    by crawdaddy ( 344241 ) on Friday May 28, 2004 @03:58PM (#9280289)
    I had forgotten the web was actually fun and interesting
    And thanks to the Slashdot effect, I can't be reminded of that fact, you insensitive clods!

  • the futures here we just can afford it (Score:5, Interesting)

    by genner ( 694963 ) on Friday May 28, 2004 @04:00PM (#9280296)
    Lets see what don't we have. Flying cars? Yup got those just need some obscene amount of cash + piolts lisecense to get one. http://www.moller.com/skycar/ Hover boards? Got those too,although their more surf board than skate board sized, and with a large engine hanging on the back. Still not cheap. http://www.futurehorizons.net/hoverboard.htm Thos cool screens that take up the whole wall. Got those too, provided you can afford it. http://www.superscreen.com/ Video phones. Got those, not too expensive but most people just don't care about them. Won't bother posting a link every knows about these. OK so where still missing our space elevator, can't have everything I guess.
    • Lets see what don't we have. Flying cars? Yup got those just need some obscene amount of cash + piolts lisecense to get one. http://www.moller.com/skycar/ Hover boards? Got those too,although their more surf board than skate board sized, and with a large engine hanging on the back. Still not cheap. http://www.futurehorizons.net/hoverboard.htm Thos cool screens that take up the whole wall. Got those too, provided you can afford it. http://www.superscreen.com/ Video phones. Got those, not too expensive but mo

  • Currently ... (Score:3, Funny)

    by proudlyindian ( 781206 ) on Friday May 28, 2004 @04:02PM (#9280313) Homepage
    this site only seems to have a past
  • The 1936 movie of HG Wells' Shape of Things to Come [imdb.com] is good for this sort of thing. Captures that 30s "futuristic" look perfectly.

  • Site is Fake (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 28, 2004 @04:05PM (#9280330)
    The images are doctored/faked. Check out the ferris whell of death, the picture of the magazine cover it was printed on says more about it can be read on page 666. Too many other mistakes to mention, looks like someone was looking for some /. attention
    • Plus this one:


      http://leela.lasthome.net/www.davidszondy.com/futu re/city/suburbancopters.htm [lasthome.net]


      "Popular Mechanics Magazine: Written so you can understand it"...


      Then again, maybe they genuinely did print that... any old farts / magazine collectors know if this is fake?

    • Magazine covers are likely not faked... (Score:4, Informative)

      by cr0sh ( 43134 ) on Friday May 28, 2004 @06:44PM (#9281708) Homepage
      While I can't explain the page 666 reference on the "ferris wheel o' death" image, I can vouch that the images are likely accurate.

      I have many old Popular Mechanix and Popular Science (and a few old Popular Electronics, etc) from the 30's-60's - and the old issues most certainly had wacky imagery on the covers - I have one showing these huge planes (like, Spruce Goose size or larger!) getting a "boost" for launching by rolling down a very tall and big "ski jump"-type ramp, catupulting off it into the sky! I have another issue, which at least looks more real, but is scary in the image it portrays (Science and Mechanics, April 1963): "Wonderful Machine That Stops Parkinson's Disease" - shows this guy laying on the table with these probes in his head (no "halo" or anything like you would see in a real radiographic surgery today - don't twitch!) - the crazy thing is while this is an illustration, the inside article shows the real thing, and no halo there either! Supposedly developed at the "State University of Iowa Hospital", the equipment being developed by the "University of Illinois" - it supposedly worked via ultrasound. This is a real article, real pictures - enough information for you to follow it up if you so wished (makes you wonder if it worked?)...

      The image published of the "Ion Propelled Aircraft" (Popular Mechanics, Aug 1964) - that is a real issue, I am looking at it on my desk right now (cost me $5.00 to buy the issue, originally priced at 35 cents!). What is interesting about this article (if you read the actual article), you would see what was being demonstrated are actually what we /.'ers know as "Lifter" technology [jnaudin.free.fr] (I had to sneak in a JNL ref!) - do a google on "lifter", "jnl", and "Major de Seversky" for more info - all real stuff, he was demoing this long before the internet (but still no progress made toward a real craft) - the article is fun though - Seversky's crafts look no better or worse constructed than "modern" versions (likely he used nearly the same materials - balsa wood and tinfoil).

      Finally, yes, these magazines were dedicated to helping the common man learn about science and technology, and the impact they had on the normal joe's life. In most of them (the good ones), there were many "do-it-yourself" artciles on building all manner of devices and such, from simple barbeque grills, to more complex devices (answering machines, garage door openers, electric edgers, helicopters, small planes, small cars, both gas and electric, etc). At the time, people were more willing to build such devices (people also were less stupid - and less litigious - probably because TV wasn't as prevalent) - many items shown were either not available for the homeowner, or only at a great cost (many articles showed how to build things that could be bought for much more, out of stuff most people would throw away - for example, the electric sidewalk edger I mentioned used a discarded vacuum cleaner motor for power). All of this "do-it-yourself" stuff declined rapidly throughout the 70's-80's, and these magazines all dropped off, or changed radically from what they once were - leaving the husks of "Popular Science" and "Popular Mechanics" as they are today.

      Sad, really - and reflects an even sadder state for the people of today's society - who couldn't "DIY" to save their life, it seems...

    • Bzzztt... old serials were exactly that, installments. The typical SF rag of that era started with the first page of the year's first issue as page 1... and the last page of the year's final issue as 392389 or however many pages were published in that year.

  • Mirror (Score:5, Informative)

    by Moonwick ( 6444 ) on Friday May 28, 2004 @04:08PM (#9280351) Homepage
    http://leela.lasthome.net/www.davidszondy.com/futu re/ [lasthome.net]

  • A good comment on city architecture.... (Score:5, Informative)

    by tcopeland ( 32225 ) * <tom&thomasleecopeland,com> on Friday May 28, 2004 @04:08PM (#9280357) Homepage
    ...from the "future city" pages:
    Unless a city is built from scratch in the wilderness at some insane pace, you will always be surrounded by the evidence of earlier times, which is a good thing. Otherwise you end up with something antiseptic, like Brasilia.
    More on Brasilia's depressing architecture here [travelscribbles.com].
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Let's make fun of all visionaries !!! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by PHPhD2B ( 675590 ) on Friday May 28, 2004 @04:11PM (#9280374)
    The author seems to find great pleasure in mocking everything about past predictions of the future. Rather than taking the time to write a coherent comparison and analysis the author instead put up a bunch of magazine scans and straw men and pushed them all over.

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

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

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

  • Google Cache (Score:2, Informative)

    by Jane_Dozey ( 759010 )
    Here [google.com]. Although that link seems a bit slow aswell... *sigh*
  • Anyone else think this name is reminiscent of Days of Future Passed, the album on which Nights in White Satin appeared?

  • RIP (Score:5, Funny)

    by Dark Bard ( 627623 ) on Friday May 28, 2004 @04:29PM (#9280506)
    It was a good and decent website who brought joy to many. With it's passing it shall be missed. Let us all join hands and pray for it's resurrection with the adding of bandwith or mirrors. Amen.
  • Surely I'm not the only one that saw the opening Futurama sequence when I looked at those covers on that website.
    • So i havn't seen the images, but in the conception of futurama, i know they based a lot of the artwork and the technology within the show on predictions of the (our) near future from the '50s or so. Its really aparant, especially in the first season of futurama. The design of the planet express ship, the tubes everyone travels around in, all the traffic signals and streetlights hover, and all the other stuff like that.

  • Flying Car (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Burgundy Advocate ( 313960 ) on Friday May 28, 2004 @04:53PM (#9280756) Homepage
    This really begs the question...

    What would you do for a Flying Car? [viewaskew.com]

  • The real problem: Physics has stalled. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by TheNarrator ( 200498 ) on Friday May 28, 2004 @05:09PM (#9280893)
    Around the turn of the century there were fantastic advances in our understanding of physics, which led to us mastering electricity and atomic physics.

    Ask any person over the age of 90 what the greatest invention of their lifetime was and they will almost certainly say something that was made made possible by electricity, or our understanding ofatomic physics.

    In the late 19th century we developed the internal combustion engine. We developed airplanes at the beginning of the century. In the 1930s we developed chemical rockets. Since then what have we developed as far as propulsion or transportation technologies go?

    Not much. It's easy to imagine how much optimism there was after these initial advancements. Lately basic physics has branched out into such technologically unproductive pursuits as String theory. They are interesting to mathematicians but the technological fruits aren't there. In my opinion we have entered a technological slump that may last for quite a while.
    • But that could change soon.

      Go read Nick Cook's book The Hunt for Zero Point. And don't think Cook is a crackpot; he writes for the highly prestigious and influential Janes' Defence Weekly, perhaps the best-known periodical on military matters.

      If Cook's assertions are correct, we may be on the verge of a energy production revolution that could make fossil fuels and fission nuclear power obselete literally overnight. It appears that the Nazis during World War II may have been playing around with the idea of

    • Re:The real problem: Physics has stalled. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by spaceyhackerlady ( 462530 ) on Friday May 28, 2004 @06:07PM (#9281398)
      Lately basic physics has branched out into such technologically unproductive pursuits as String theory. They are interesting to mathematicians but the technological fruits aren't there yet.

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

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

      ...laura

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

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

    • Radio (Score:4, Interesting)

      by meehawl ( 73285 ) <meehawl...spam+slashdot@@@gmail...com> on Friday May 28, 2004 @08:58PM (#9282484) Homepage Journal
      Ask any person over the age of 90 what the greatest invention of their lifetime was and they will almost certainly say something that was made made possible by electricity, or our understanding ofatomic physics.

      I actually had the opportunity to do just this a couple of years ago when I was having a conversation with some in-laws (a brother and a sister) who were in their late 90s and still totally alert. They were old enough to tell me of their travails of having to "score" liquor from dealers in dodgy neighbourhoods in the US during prohibition.

      Anyway, being young and naive of course I asked the "what was the greatest invention or discovery or change" in the 20th century? I was expecting, of course, something different from their unanimous answer: Radio. I responded with "What about TV?" Their answer? One of them said, moe or less, "TV was nothing special, just radio with pictures. We'd already got used to broadcasting". Sadly, both of these great people are now dead.

      Radio was magic stuff - binding together huge communities cheaply and effectively and "magically" without visible wires. People would huddle together and listen to words and music, exercising their imagination to create pictures within their heads that corresponded to the active narrative coming out of the little magic box.

      Remember in the 1920s that the science fiction genre got started within the pages of radio electronics magazines!

      Radio was the zeitgeist of the times. Just look through any magazine of the time and you see endless classifieds for radio operator/engineer classes, certifications, and so on. Radio in the 1920s was like the Internet in the 1990s - everyone wanted a piece of it, it was the new frontier of communications. In fact, without radio it's doubtful that the Nazis would so effectively have seized control and indoctrinated so many millions of people in Germany.

      I note in passing that radio continues to be a huge agent of social change, for good or ill. The genocide in Rwanda [wikipedia.org] was orchestrated and performed using "talk radio" hosts to coordinate the decentralized death squads. In a country with little infrastructure or reputation for efficiency, the Tutsi butchers in Rwanda killed over a million people at a rate more than five times faster than the best extermination efforts of the stereotupically efficient Nazis during World War 2.

  • Future Perfect (Score:2, Informative)

    by olrik666 ( 574545 )

    A nice and cheap book about the future as imagined in the early 20th century :

    http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/3822815667/q id=1085778474/sr=1-3/ref=sr_1_1_3/701-0825104-1463 531

  • The common thread (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rewt66 ( 738525 ) on Friday May 28, 2004 @05:47PM (#9281214)
    Almost all of these predictions were based on bigger - more power, more steel, etc. The big (no pun intended) thing that the predictions missed was smaller and smarter - the transistor, the (micro) computer, embedded systems.

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

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

    • Networks, my boy, networks... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by cr0sh ( 43134 ) on Friday May 28, 2004 @06:11PM (#9281445) Homepage
      Maybe "more connected" is going to be the next big area.

      You have likely hit the nail on the head - we are likely to see more and better applications of network theory (along with attendent refinement of the theory). It is becoming clear that just about every robust and fault-tolerant (note I did not say "faultless") system involves or is a network (or a network of networks, such as the human body). These discoveries and others are likely to shape a lot of the coming century.

      If you (or anyone else) are interested in this trend, you cannot go wrong by reading "Linked" by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi (ISBN 0-452-28439-2).

      Of course, this, like every other prediction, could be wrong. We are seeing the application of network theory in a number of areas currently (social networking tools like orkut and friendster are the ones in the spotlight) - whether it is simply a fad or whether it will truely yield new insights, though, is anyone's guess...

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