Earlier this week Neil deGrasse Tyson was on Bill Maher saying how the underfunding of NASA was a reflection of an America that has forgotten how to dream, “When someone says we don’t have enough money for this space probe, it’s not that you don’t have enough money. It’s that the distribution of the money that you’re spending is warped in some way that you are removing the only thing that gives people something to dream about tomorrow.”
Tyson goes on to talk about how common predicting the world of tomorrow was in the media of the 1950s and 60s. I’ve spent the day finding videos and articles of folks from the past predicting the future, and while there are a ton of predictions about jet packs and underwater cities, there are many, many accurate predictions. Particularly when it comes to communications. Check out some of the most startling, spot on guesses at what the world we live in would be like.
Image via the awesome retrofuture excavators at Paleofuture.
In 1964 Arthur C. Clarke, Author of “2001: A Space Odyssey”, Predicts the Communications Revolution Will Lead to Remote Surgery
In 2001 the first remote surgery was performed by Dr. Jacques Marescaux in New York on a woman Strasbourg, France in need of a gall bladder operation.
1967 Film “1999 A.D.” Predicts Online Shopping and Email
There are some critical leaps in logic that still need to be made in this video. They didn’t understand that we wouldn’t need a dedicated camera to browse items and that handwriting would become close to obsolete, but the kernel of the idea is there.
In 1962 “Century 21 Calling …” Predicts Long Distance Calling, Pagers and Electronic Brains
This video, set at the Seattle World’s Fair, pretty accurately maps out all the phone functions that are now standard. It’s amazing that people were once blown away by speed dialing, call waiting and touch tone dialing.
In 1993 the Amazingly Accurate AT&T Commercials Predict GPS, EZ Pass, Video Calling, Fandango and Netflix Instant.
I remember these commercials like I was watching “Darkwing Duck” in my pajamas yesterday morning. It is astonishing how dead on they were, but I suppose it is possible their popularity inspired people to make it happen the way “Star Trek” inspired new technology.
In 1911, Thomas Edison’s Predictions For the Future
These predictions come from way back, but if there ever was a man who could innovate it was the Wizard of Menlo Park, Thomas Edison. He makes some wildly off guesses, such as all furniture being made out of steel and the trasmutation of lead to gold, but there are two predictions he makes that are pretty accurate.
Air Travel
But the traveler of the future, says a writer in Answers, will largely scorn such earth crawling. He will fly through the air, swifter than any swallow, at a speed of two hundred miles an hour, in colossal machines, which will enable him to breakfast in London, transact business in Paris and eat his luncheon in Cheapside.
A Kindle Like Device
Books of the coming century will all be printed leaves of nickel, so light to hold that the reader can enjoy a small library in a single volume. A book two inches thick will contain forty thousand pages, the equivalent of a hundred volumes; six inches in aggregate thickness, it would suffice for all the contents of the Encyclopedia Britannica. And each volume would weigh less than a pound.
Already Mr. Edison can produce a pound weight of these nickel leaves, more flexible than paper and ten times as durable, at a cost of five shillings. In a hundred years’ time the cost will probably be reduced to a tenth.
What do you think? Are you impressed with their accuracy or do you think you could do better? Let us know in the comments.