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July 22, 1961, Weekend Magazine |
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Posted on 01/05/2005 5:40:12 PM PST by fo0hzy
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July 22, 1961, Weekend Magazine |
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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.
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.
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!
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LOL I was too lazy to look for that pic.
Too late. He sold the plane to buy the homestead.
>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.
I will remember this as I sit in Atlanta traffic.
And weep.
Now that is very 60's typical.
In 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.
Adjusting for inflation, the prediction would mean coast-to-coast for about $210, which some of the low-fare carriers will do. And 600 mph is not so far off from 1000.
But, getting anywhere in the world in an hour is still way beyond current technology. I doubt if we will be able to do it before 2050-2075. Or maybe never -- if the price is so high that nobody really wants to pay it on a regular basis. Just like today, you CAN get a chopper to take you 20 miles to a ball game, for example, but virtually no one does.
You clean 2700 square feet three or more times a week. I want my Rosie Robot.
I misread one line - thought it said "The family CAT will be soundless, vibrationless and self propelled." Must clean off this monitor!
That one is funny.
Big deal here in Las Vegas about a monorail, been going on for years, funding, etc.
They finally built the thing. Great words from all the local politicos, heavy local news coverage, etc....
and they had to shut it down 'cuz pieces parts were falling off - literally falling off to the streets below.
Typical, for Las Vegas. Too bad "kick backs" don't have an automatic trace.....
LVM
They foresaw the Atkins diet.
Our children ... will get pills to make them learn faster.
Or at least sit down, shut up and stare blankly at the blackboard.
I'll trade you mine for a little more of that Man Zan stuff.
"Unfortunately my rocket belt is at the shop for repairs."
I think that was my favorite as well...
The computer looked just like 1960s computers: rooms and rooms full of it. But it became a person and fell in love.
And some of that ManZan stuff wouldn't hurt either. With a name like that, it's gotta be good!
I wonder if you eat, smoke, smear or stuff it?
Sugar made from sawdust?
It would be possible to program a HAL today and give it the same capability. It would be much smaller though.
Sugar made from sawdust?
>foodless foods (minus nutritional properties)
Now this is true. (as I munch on my Cheetos)
Those were the days...... You could even buy guns listed in the back of Field & Stream and Outdoor Life.
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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.
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.