Posted on 02/13/2013 12:39:44 PM PST by GVnana
Originally in the form of paper cards enclosed in cigarette/cigar boxes and, later, as postcards, the images depicted the world as it was imagined to be like in the year 2000. There are at least 87 cards known that were authored by various French artists, the first series being produced for the 1900 World Exhibition in Paris.
(Excerpt) Read more at publicdomainreview.org ...
Amazingly accurate, predicting road rage, the RV, and government school computers.
Actually, #3 could be Facebook.
Where’s my whale bus?
They did surprisingly well!...........
The 3 you posted aren’t wildly off the mark but I draw the line a seagull fishing.
number 3 is very much government school... spot on...
“At School” is pretty close if you replace the book machine with a bunch of Ipods
Arthur Clarke once observed about predictions that humans tend to be over-optimistic in the short run and under-optimistic in the long run. At the age of ten, I thought I’d be vacationing on Mars by now but I never imagined the Internet.
I didn’t see how many times the French were predicted to have surrendered to Germany...
#1 seems to have drive-by shootings in Detroit and Baltimore nailed.
The one I liked the most is the postal worker flying to deliver paper mail. It shows how people take whatever the new thing is of their time (flying, in this case) and expand it beyond reason or practicality, but fail to imagine other innovations, like the fact that paper mail is now fairly obsolete. I always love looking at these though because its a real insight into how people used to think.
“At the age of ten, I thought I’d be vacationing on Mars by now but I never imagined the Internet.”
I just want my flying car :)
During my high school years I used to have an on again, off again summer job working as a deck hand on shrimp boats. I actually did go fishing for sea gulls.
I actually caught a seagull on my line while fishing. I think he was diving for my bait. It was a real mess trying to get a hook out of a pissed off gull..........
We are still waiting on that flying car...
6 months ago I would have never believed FReepers would declare Americans to be war criminals over treatment of nazi Germany.
I’m still waiting for flying cars!
From what I see among the 2 dimensional drivers, the last thing I want to do is add a 3rd.
+100
I'D SAY THEY WERE PRETTY CLOSE!.......
Battle cars: that could be either a look ever further into the future and seeing Mad Max,, or the unscrubbed masses dragging Olvera Street in Los Angeles.
What intrigued me was the many cards depicting domestication of the animals, particularly sea life - whale buses, fish races, and seahorse riders.
2000 was a depiction of man’s dominion of the air and sea. The selection offered did not show any space exploration. Or perhaps mastery of the underseas was seen as more likely and would produce more benefit to man in food resources and travel.
The aviation police was eerily prescient of the drones today.
Many more can be seen at the original source
http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=france+in+the+year+2000&title=Special%3ASearch
They really missed how casual and for late-19th century people shocking clothes would dominate.
They got the school indoctrination (#3) right. Throwing out the books (history) to feed the propaganda. Spot on!
They got the school indoctrination (#3) right. Throwing out the books (history) to feed the propaganda. Spot on!
I'D SAY THEY WERE PRETTY CLOSE!.......
Yes, they were. Dr Gatling's marvelous invention lives on in this modern implementation:
Yep, everyone’s disappointed that there is no ubiquitous flying cars already.
Still don’t have those flying cars.
From the country of Jules Vern.
While vacationing in Cornwall last May with the wife, we were in a seaside town walking down the street behind a group of three or four people one of whom was eating an ice cream cone. The guy had the cone held outstretched in his right hand. Lickety split, a seagull dove in and snatched the cone right out of the guy's hand. Was he ever stunned. Then he started laughing. Maybe because we were all laughing.
I love seagulls.
We have the same problems here with herons and pellicans........
Video telephony as imagined in the year 2000, as imagined in 1910. From a French card.
SKYPE!..........
Boy they got that one way off, I mean the woman would pretty much be naked.
Victorian era morals prohibited such thoughts. Even an ankle showing was considered risque........
A Sea Rescue
Hearing the newspaper
They got these very close........
Presaging the La-Z-boy?
“I always love looking at these though because its a real insight into how people used to think.”
People still think the same ways. Anyone today who dreams of something interesting can count on being shouted down as a fool or etc. just the same as those souls 113 years ago were probably ridiculed by ‘proper society’ for their flights of fancy.
I remember my friends laughing at me for thinking that Facebook was cooler than MySpace.
“6 months ago I would have never believed FReepers would declare Americans to be war criminals over treatment of nazi Germany.”
I’m sure the Nazis never expected that Americans in 2013 would eventually support them.
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