Visit to the World's Fair of 2014 (1964) | Hacker News Reader

Visit to the World's Fair of 2014 (1964)

archive.nytimes.com

56 pointsadora17 comments

That was an interesting read. Many things wrong, but many things right, and perhaps nothing so sobering as the closing thoughts:

> Even so, mankind will suffer badly from the disease of boredom, a disease spreading more widely each year and growing in intensity. This will have serious mental, emotional and sociological consequences, and I dare say that psychiatry will be far and away the most important medical specialty in 2014. The lucky few who can be involved in creative work of any sort will be the true elite of mankind, for they alone will do more than serve a machine.

> Indeed, the most somber speculation I can make about A.D. 2014 is that in a society of enforced leisure, the most glorious single word in the vocabulary will have become work!

A goddamn Nostradamus

1 - Glowing ceilings and walls - not really, most people still use separate light fixtures

2 - Windows mostly obsolete - no

3 - Polarized glass in windows - kind of - mostly no, though some exist

4 - Opacity of glass changing based on light intensity - yes, but rare

5 - Underground housing - yes, but rare

6 - "Light-forced vegetable gardens" - yes, but rare

7 - Surface of the Earth used only for large-scale agriculture, grazing and parklands - no

8 - Kitchen gadgets - yes

9 - Robots with computers minituarized to serve as their "brains" - yes

10 - Trash picking and gardening robots - yes

11 - 3D movies - yes

12 - Waiting in line for movies - yes

13 - All appliances lack electrical cords - no

14 - Appliances "powered by long-lived batteries running on radioisotopes" - no

15 - Fission power supplies "well over half of the power needs of humanity" - no

16 - Experimental fusion power plant - no? (experiments with fusion power yes, but no power plants, afaik)

17 - Large solar-power stations - yes

18 - Power stations in space - no

19 - Road building factories - no

20 - "crowded highways along which long buses move on special central lanes" - no

21 - "ground travel will increasingly take to the air a foot or two off the ground" - no

22 - Aquafoil - kind of - these exist but are of very limited use

23 - Jets of compressed air lifting land vehicles off the highways - no

24 - Self-driving cars - yes

25 - Moving sidewalks downtown - no

26 - "Compressed air tubes will carry goods and materials" - no

27 - Video calls - yes

28 - Screens for studying documents and photographs and reading passages from books - yes

29 - Global satelite communication - yes

30 - Moon colonies - no

31 - GM creating "large soft tires intended to negotaiate the uneven terrain that may exist [on the moon]" - no

32 - Communication between Earth and moon via laser beams - no

33 - Plans for a manned expedition to Mars - yes

34 - Models of an elaborate Martian colony - kind of

35 - "Wall screens will have replaced the ordinary [TV set]" - no

36 - Transparent cubes for 3D viewing - no (though VR might qualify as being similar enough)

37 - World and US population predictions - yes

38 - Underwater housing - no

39 - Underwater cities - no

40 - Micro-organism factories for efficient food production - no

41 - Food made of yeast and algae - kind of (algae yes, though not popular... yeast, not so much)

42 - "algae bar", "mock-turkey", "pseudosteak" - yes

43 - Mechanical replacements for hearts and kidneys - yes

44 - Life expectancy in some parts of the world at 85 - yes

45 - Worldwide propaganda drive in favor of birth control - yes

46 - Rate of population growth has been reduced compared to 1964 - yes

47 - World Population Control Center - no

48 - Mankind has become "largely a race of machine tenders" - no

49 - Schools with closed-circuit TVs and programmed instructional tapes - yes

50 - All high-school students taught computer fundamentals - yes

51 - Mankind suffers badly from "the disease of boredom" - kind of, for some

52 - Psychiatry is "far and away the most important medical specialty" - no

53 - We live in a society of "enforced leisure" - no

---

Totals:

Yes - 22

No - 26

Kind of - 5

Thank you for doing this! Some of the linear predictions were true, the extrapolations of possible techs, mostly were wrong. Surprisingly no mention about internet, mobile phones.

Actually pretty good for a 50 year prediction!

Anyone want to make 50 predictions about 2069?

I don't know about 50, but I'll make one: the limiting factor on the widespread deployment of self-driving vehicles will turn out to be vast numbers of unemployed drivers protesting by blocking roads and staging violent attacks on self-driving vehicles. This will be resolved by introducing a tax on self-driving vehicles, the proceeds of which will be used to employ former drivers to work as security guards to protect self-driving vehicles against attacks. In the end, the economics will self-stabilize so that there are just enough people attacking self-driving vehicles to justify the continued employment of the remainder as security guards. The net effect, if you do the math (which no one will) will be that driving will end up being 50% more expensive than it was before on an inflation-adjusted basis.

I suspect we'll find that there are a surprisingly large number of things transportation workers due to today that we aren't able to automate via self driving tech that limit job losses too. Even Uber drivers spend a fair amount of time cleaning the car and dealing with various minor issues.

"Glowing ceilings" are relatively popular in office spaces, e.g. in the form of large LED-based panels covering much of the ceiling.

Huh, I would count #35 as a yes, fwiw. They may not be built into the wall, but from the perspective of someone from 1964, today’s large flat panel TVs are basically wall screens.

And #50 as a no. High school students learn to operate computers, but the vast majority do not learn binary or programming.

I would argue learning how to operate a computer does constitute computer _fundamentals_. Programming is more advanced.

A matter of how one interprets the original, I guess?

> All the high-school students will be taught the fundamentals of computer technology will become proficient in binary arithmetic and will be trained to perfection in the use of the computer languages that will have developed out of those like the contemporary "Fortran".

> 15 - Fission power supplies "well over half of the power needs of humanity" - no

I soo wish this were true. Don't how the support was for Nuclear power back in the day. But wish it were mainstream today. Nuclear engineering would've been one of the most sought after disciplines and more innovation and research could've gotten us much closer to sustained fission.

It's worth noting that the author differentiates between things that they thought would be commonplace (#1, for instance) and things they thought would be are mostly curiosities shown off at tech expos (#10, for instance).

>> men will continue to withdraw from nature in order to create an environment that will suit them better.

Context of the 1964 prediction: Very limited use of AC, and of insulated windows. Hot-water radiators. Window films don't exist; limited window tinting. Daylight-equivalent electric lighting is in limited commercial use.

Confounds: Residential tech diverged from commercial/industrial. Residential still emphasizes natural light, and blends outdoors, in part due to expensive energy.

So, "yes".

>> electroluminescent panels will be in common use. Ceilings and walls will glow softly, and in a variety of colors that will change at the touch of a push button.

Context: Hanging incandescent fixtures. Introduction of hanging ceilings with embedded lighting.

Confounds: Electroluminescent tech never came together, remaining dim, short-lived, and power hungry. Gas-discharge fluorescent tube dominated. Residential remained incandescent, eventually switching to CFD and LEDs. Window film invented a couple of years later. Window film, window insulation, and AC, enabled glass walls.

Ceilings - yes (inset fixtures and diffusers). Walls - yes (glass) and no (other). Variety of colors - no/kinda (aside from 1960's transients and customized dorm rooms, only limited blackbody colors). Change - no.

So, "kinda"? The prediction bet on the wrong horse, and lost properties specific to it. But it was partially saved by changing window tech and glass walls.

>> Windows need be no more than an archaic touch, and even when present will be polarized to block out the harsh sunlight. The degree of opacity of the glass may even be made to alter automatically in accordance with the intensity of the light falling upon it.

> 2 - Windows mostly obsolete - no

... A conversation in 2034: Omari: Windows are archaic? That's silly. Li Xiu Ying: Yeah (gestures to create a shared AR window).

Windows, as a 1964-like dominating primary tech for lighting and cooling, do seem archaic.

Confounds: Window tint and window insulation reduced the downsides of windows, so high ceilings and fans went away, but windows didn't. People like natural light. Reduced importance of shades/blinds/drapes has left them mostly manual, and less common. Adjustable-opacity window tech never came together.

Archaic - kinda. Polarized - yes. Opacity alters - no.

Story: Why does the newish MIT Media Lab's facade have a lattice of bars? The building code has a 1970's limit on window percentage, to save energy. That's now obsoleted by better films, but... code.

Story: It's summer in the 1950's, and your office near the top of the Empire State Building is sweltering. What do you do? Open some windows to get a cross-ventilating breeze going, of course, what else is there?

Takeaways: Bet on trends, not single horses. It seems common when judging past predictions, to neglect the past context, and thus to underestimate how much they got right.

There is no plan for a manned expedition to Mars, beyond "hey, let's go to Mars". Foundational breakthroughs in closed-loop life support need to happen to make such a trip possible (leaving aside the many other problems).

#32 is in the works: https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/llcdfactsheet.final...

Pretty close on the populations. The moon colonies, not so much.

“In 2014, there is every likelihood that the world population will be 6,500,000,000 and the population of the United States will be 350,000,000. Boston-to-Washington, the most crowded area of its size on the earth, will have become a single city with a population of over 40,000,000”.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com