"What May Happen in the Next Hundred Years", from c.1900 | Hacker News Reader

"What May Happen in the Next Hundred Years", from c.1900

howtobearetronaut.com

19 pointsColinWright19 comments

Remarkable how much of that has come true now ... and how unthinkable most of it was then.

Even those predictions which haven't happened are more by choice than by ability.

I find it interesting to understand where the blindspots are.

For example, mosquitos, flys, rats and mice were predicted to be exterminated. So did the scourge of these pests simply get mitigated to the point where further investment in their extermination was unwarranted?

Completely missed airplanes (to be expected, the Wright Brothers had yet to fly) but air-ships as flying fortresses? Not connecting their train imagery with their military history. (if you have high mobility slow moving 'forts' are not effective)

The population number was over and the life expectancy under (330M US pop in 2000, vs 350 - 500M predicted), life expectancy prediction of 50 yrs vs 72 years. That is an interesting combination to get wrong but the blind spot was that people would voluntarily have fewer children.

Amusing that everyone was supposed to vote themselves into the US. Can you imagine the chaos if Mexico elected to join the US and applied for statehood? Wow.

So its clearly harder to predict political change, easier to extrapolate technological curves, and somewhere between the two lies emergent technolgy/attitudes.

Pretty remarkable how accurate those predictions were --some were off, but the hit rate was pretty good. Man[kind] will see around the world... That English would establish its own grammar rather then try to foist Latin on it (such that one could not end a sentence with a preposition because it ran against Latin grammar but was natural in English). The rise of UPS and home delivery of goods...

Good stuff.

The most influetial 20th century improvement that they missed was the rise of the airplane, in particular the jet airplane. It obviated the need for "fast electric boats" from New York to London, as well as a transcontinental high-speed railroad. Without planes, we probably would have a 150mph train connecting New York to San Francisco.

Whenever I read these types of speculative predictions from the past, I always get the urge to chuckle at the things they inevitably missed, or the sillier predictions - but tempered by the ways we have failed to live up to their dreams.

(As an aside: 'strawberries as large as apples' - but how would they taste?)

The one plausible idea that has not been introduced, at least how they propose, would be pneumatic tubes for delivering packages. I have to think that such a system would be more efficient and cheap at some point than delivery by freight.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube#In_postal_servic...

That, and ‘peas as large as beets’. I’d like to see that.

Sort of related is this plan to use quadrotors for small item delivery in remote areas. It could work well in developed areas too, I think.

http://matternet.net/

Obviously the series of "tubes" he refers to is the internet.

"There will be No C, X or Q in our every-day alphabet. They will be abandoned because unnecessary. Spelling by sound will have been adopted, first by the newspapers." Seems this will never happen.

Interestingly enough, the only big thing they really missed was the rise of the personal computer and the Internet.

They missed air travel too, even dismissing it.

"Photographs will be telegraphed from any distance", "Man will see around the world", "Grand opera will be telephoned" and "Telephones around the world" are all quite close approximations, all based on universal access to communication technology.

The "University education will be free to all ... all will receive free eyeglasses and medical care" part was a depressing read - in the US we're probably further from that now than when the article was written.

Large parts of Europe have free university education and free medical care.

Interesting, but almost impossible to read because the scanner resolution is too low.

The full res image: http://www.howtobearetronaut.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/...

This ones a lot easier to read: http://www.yorktownhistory.org/homepages/1900_predictions.ht...

Pretty interesting how many he got right or close....

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