What will life be like in the year 2000? (amusing look back at 1961)

Pixelmatic ^

[fo0hzy]

 

July 22, 1961, Weekend Magazine

What sort of life will you be living 39 years from now? Scientists have looked into the future and they can tell you. It looks as if everything will be so easy that people will probably die from sheer boredom. You will be whisked around in monorail vehicles at 200 miles an hour and you will think nothing of taking a fortnight's holiday in outer space. Your house will probably have air walls, and a floating roof, adjustable to the angle of the sun. oors will open automatically, and clothing will be put away by remote control. The heating and cooling systems will be built into the furniture and rugs. You'll have a home control room - an electronics centre, where messages will be recorded when you're away from home. This will play back when you return, and also give you up-to-the minute world news, and transcribe your latest mail. You'll have wall-to-wall global TV, an indoor swimming pool, TV-telephones and room-to-room TV. Press a button and you can change the décor of a room. The status symbol of the year 2000 will be the home computer help, which will help mother tend the children, cook the meals and issue reminders of appointments. Cooking will be in solar ovens with microwave controls. Garbage will be refrigerated, and pressed into fertiliser pellets. Food won't be very different from 1961, but there will be a few new dishes - instant bread, sugar made from sawdust, foodless foods (minus nutritional properties), juice powders and synthetic tea and cocoa. Energy will come in tablet form. At work, Dad will operate on a 24 hour week. The office will be air-conditioned with stimulating scents and extra oxygen - to give a physical and psychological lift. Mail and newspapers will be reproduced instantly anywhere in the world by facsimile. There will be machines doing the work of clerks, shorthand writers and translators. Machines will "talk" to each other. It will be the age of press-button transportation. Rocket belts will increase a man's stride to 30 feet, and bus-type helicopters will travel along crowded air skyways. There will be moving plastic-covered pavements, individual hoppicopters, and 200 m.p.h. monorail trains operating in all large cities. The family car will be soundless, vibrationless and self-propelled thermostatically. The engine will be smaller than a typewriter. Cars will travel overland on an 18 inch air cushion. Railways will have one central dispatcher, who will control a whole nation's traffic. Jet trains will be guided by electronic brains. n commercial transportation, there will be travel at 1000 m.p.h. at a penny a mile. Hypersonic passenger planes, using solid fuels, will reach any part of the world in an hour. By the year 2020, five per cent of the world's population will have emigrated into space. Many will have visited the moon and beyond. Our children will learn from TV, recorders and teaching machines. They will get pills to make them learn faster. We shall be healthier, too. There will be no common colds, cancer, tooth decay or mental illness. Medically induced growth of amputated limbs will be possible. Rejuvenation will be in the middle stages of research, and people will live, healthily, to 85 or 100. There's a lot more besides to make H.G. Wells and George Orwell sound like they're getting left behind. And this isn't science fiction. It's science fact - futuristic ideas, conceived by imaginative young men, whose crazy-sounding schemes have got the nod from the scientists. It's the way they think the world will live in the next century - if there's any world left!

 

[brianl703]

I see. I try to put everything that can go in the disposal.

In-Sink-Erator says that it is OK to grind up small bones but how small is small?

[uglybiker]

But for a while there, after hundreds and hundreds of 'em, I was starting to become insecure about things..ah...er.. I had never much thought about before.

Couldn't decide whether to add inches to your manhood or your breast size?

[auggy]

"I've managed to de-spam my mailboxes, or at least reduce it, so I don't get 'em anymore. But for a while there, after hundreds and hundreds of 'em, I was starting to become insecure about things..ah...er.. I had never much thought about before. :-)) I mean, I was thinking to myself, WHO knows me THAT well?!! Crap! What happened to that "right of privacy" thingy they keep yapping about?! "

I know what you mean. You start to get paranoid, like maybe someone has signed you up or something.

[Sensei Ern]

We could have done the space travel they showed in the movie had we been willing to spend the money. We have the technology to do everything they did.

Actually, we could have done that already if government control didn't stand in the way. As long as the government stays out of PCs, we will continue to have the great advances we have so far generated.

[MEGoody]

Some really wild stuff and then there's some stuff that's on the mark. I guess anyone can guess correctly once in awhile.

[Space Wrangler]

Right now you'll have to be satisfied with glamour undies and ManZan.

Hmmph! Figures. I was already clearing off a helo pad in the yard. Guess I'll just have to call it a 'patio' now.

[oldcomputerguy]

yes, the 24 hour work week.

ah yes, the 24 hour per day work week.

The reason we don't have a lot of what was imagined in 1961 is that our living standards, in fact, have not improved to the extent that thought they would. That is the bottom line!

[oldcomputerguy]

Energy will come in tablet form.

Meth?

[oldcomputerguy]

(children)They will get pills to make them learn faster

Yeah, Ritalin...............

[JoeV1]

There will be no common colds, cancer, tooth decay or mental illness.

Geez, would you lookit that? The article even foresees the extinction of the Democrats.

[JoeV1]

I used to market that stuff under different names. My favorite was 'Titsaplenty'

[GodBlessRonaldReagan]

I just finished reading Von Braun's 1966 edition of History of Rocketry and Space Travel. The last few pages are dedicated to the future: moon bases built around the LEM in the '70's, manned Mars flyby in the '80's, huge space stations by the '90's. I want the future that never was, dang it!

[Redcloak]

...and no haemorrhoids.

[rbg81]

Yes, I noticed those too. I guess the more things change, the more they stay the same.

[ariamne]

Me too. And I'm a woman.

[Nita Nupress]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1314060/posts?page=98#98

[A knight without armor]

I was immediately struck by

<<<<...At work, Dad will operate on a 24 hour week....>>>>

They mention DAD like everybody would have one or at least know what that is. No Your Single Mother or Your Two Gay Caregivers or Your Mother's Dyke Partner. That is something that has changed. Nowadays it would be very insensitive to write that article assuming Dad was in the picture.

[Radioactive]

And that everyone would be constantly bombarded by ads for pen#s enlargement.

Yeah. I'd rather be bombarded by ads for Glamour Undies.

Hey wait...the Glamour Undies worked.....Pen#s enlargement...instantaneuosly.