..assembled by cordt1, who says: “I remember… taking my parents to the 1964 world’s fair when I was nine. In those days we had a future. The GM exhibit called “World of Tomorrow” made a big impression on consumers of all ages…”
[Link thanks to Charles at LGF]
November 19, 2008 at 2:54 pm
A cool video indeed…..Of course part of the reason that the present looks different than anticipated half a century ago is that their predictions weren’t very imaginative. Flying cars and houses on other planets, for example, would have been dangerous, pointless, and expensive, so it’s no surprise that they didn’t happen. No one seems to have predicted the cultural developments of the last few decades, like the fights over abortion and gay civil rights. People back then couldn’t possibly have anticipated the internet, of course, but they could have realized that things they couldn’t anticipate were bound to happen.
And it’s always striking to me that the people shown in videos like this alre almost all slim, healthy-looking, and active — as most people in the 50s and 60s were. No one seems to have anticipated that an abundance of cheap food and labor-saving devices would turn us into a nation of waddling, wheezing fatties.
As for the most important advance of all, just give it a little more time. The technology to enable us to live for centuries will be along in another couple of decades.
November 19, 2008 at 4:08 pm
No one seems to have anticipated that an abundance of cheap food and labor-saving devices would turn us into a nation of waddling, wheezing fatties.
Well, someone did. From the song “In the year 2525″:
In the year 5555
Your arms are hanging limp at your sides
Your legs got nothing to do
Some machine is doing that for you
We got to that point way before 5555, but I don’t know if that’s a good thing…
I’ve been reading about the advances in bionics (replacements for eyes, ears, arms) and I agree, the most important advances are coming soon. They have contact lenses with imprinted circuits and lights that might someday be the replacement for the blackberry.
The things that they’re doing with data/information combined with DNA sequenceing are very interesting. A little scary sometimes, but interesting.