Predictions From Forty Years Ago

40 years ago, the magazine "Mechanix Illustrated" made some thoughtful and detailed predictions about life and technology in 2008.

http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2008/03/24/what-will-life-be-like-in-the-year-2008/

Here is a general report-card of the guesses.

• National traffic computer
  • "B-" - GPS, and traffic monitoring software and services.

• Two-passenger air-cushioned cars on 120-mph roads.
  • "F" - Transportation has changed very little since 1968. Although, they get kudos for no mentioning flying cars, unlike just about every other predictor has.

• Wall-sized flat TV
  • "B+" - Projection TV and wall-mounted flat panel TV, but not quite wall-sized (although that may be over-doing it even if available). In Las Vegas they have an LCD "TV" that is roughly the size of a football field. However, that's hardly a consumer product, which is generally assumed about the article.

• Holographic/3D TV
  • "C" - Interesting research on laser-lighted dust and air ignition "plasma-ification", but far from practical so far. Another 3D lab-toy is projecting computer-controlled lasers onto a fast-rotating screen in a vacuum (think of a coin-flip). And, above-the-audience laser light shows are common at concerts. However, the type of images projected this way are limited and the article implied a house-hold use related to the large TV's.

• Morning paper with button-tap to change the page.
  • "B+" - ebook, tablet, or laptop with wireless. Morning paper still exists, but Web is cutting sharply into sales.

• Smooth plastic road, perhaps for slip-gliding cars
  • "D" - Still concrete but they do use better polymer materials.

• Cities covered by domes
  • "D" - Only stadiums and some large northern malls.

• Traffic computer ... feeds/receives signals to and from all cars and keeps vehicles at a proper distance from each.
  • "C-" - There are some very promising experiments that do just this. It allows more cars on the road and somewhat faster commutes by regulating speed and braking via computer links. Still in "lab" stage.

• Attache case...draw the diagram with...infrared flashlight on what looks like a TV screen
  • "A-" - tablet PC or laptop

• "The diagram is relayed to a similar screen in your associate's office, 200 mi. away...sketch rolls out of the device"
  • "A-" - Portable USB fax or printer. Exists but not really that common, perhaps because one can easily view it on the screen and thus don't want to carry around portable printers.

• Vehicle parks itself
  • "B" - Lexus has automated parallel parking, but still not common in other models. And, I think they meant after the driver gets out.

• Automated parking garage/valle
  • "C-" - I've read about such in Tokyo, but not otherwise common.

• Private cars are banned inside most city...Moving sidewalks and electrams carry the public
  • "D-" - Would be nice. Amusement parks do have trams.
    • "D-" would be a good classification if you summarily ignore everywhere outside the U.S. Add in a large number of European towns and cities with pedestrianized areas, and some major examples of city centre tolls (London, Amsterdam, Stockholm, etc.) and it's easily worth upgrading to a "C"

• U.S. population at 350 million
  • "C" - Only 270 million (unless maybe illegals counted)
    • I'd give it a C+/B-, Acording to the CIA Factbook (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/print/us.html) the US population is 303,824,646 (July 2008 est.)
      • Given the population was at 200m in 1968, this is well worth a "B"
• Giant transportation hubs...located from 15 to 50 mi. outside all major urban centers.
  • "C+" - Metro-rail (tram) parking centers in larger cities. Not really "large" but rather regional.

• Tube trains, pushed through bores by compressed air
  • "D" - Only electric subways, which existed aplenty in big cities in 68.
    • "F". Nobody's done anything like this since Brunel. Electric traction has dominated this field, where the NextBigThing seems to be magnetic levitation.

• Launching pad from which 200-passenger rockets
  • "D+" - space tourism is only for the super-rich. Most space predictions from this and others have been flops. We're still awaiting either an economic reason (like mining) or cost breakthrough.

• Hypersonic planes
  • "C+" - Concorde, but retired. Plans for new planes being kicked around.
    • "C-" is a bit unfair. While not as pervasive as predicted, the fact that Concorde has been and gone gets this at least a "B", though that includes extra credit for superjumbos beginning to cascade "smaller jumbos" (IYKWIM) onto shorter routes. Not quite short-haul yet, though.
    • But Concorde was a few planes. It was not pervasive. How about "C+"?
    • Is pervasiveness required? I think B is ok.
    • My opinion is that it certainly should be. The general "feel" of the article is the assumption that the items in the list are no longer "lab toys" or things for the wealthy, but everyday things. Thus, the more every-day it is, the higher the score. Our existing common planes are relatively slow compared to what they could be. How about a "C+".

• Common jet flights
  • "B+" - Have become noticeably less expensive for average Joe since 1968 (at least before oil prices went back up.)
    • No idea about the U.S. domestic market, but folk in Bristol find it cheaper to fly to Milan than get a train to London. "A-" at least.
    • But 9/11 made flights less convenient. You gotta knock points off for getting a butt-search just for having finger-nail clippers.
    • That sounds like an AmericanCulturalAssumption to me - Europe had butt-searches long before 9/11. Especially on flights from South America.
    • Yes, but Europeans *like* them {ducks head}.

• Electrostatic precipitators clean the air
  • "B+" - Ionic Breeze.

• Climatizers maintain the temperature and humidity at optimum levels.
  • ? - We have A/C and humidifiers, but these existed in 1968 also, but perhaps relatively cheaper now.

• Robots do housework and other simple chores
  • "C+" - RoombaVacuums and lawn mowers ("RoboMow?" at friendlyrobotics.com), but not nearly as widespread as implied. The general-purpose "AI maid" is still a pipe-dream.

• New materials for siding and interiors are self-cleaning and never peel, chip or crack.
  • "B-" - More material choices, acrylic-based based more widespread.

• Prefabricated modules for dwellings that attach speedily, such as when the family expands.
  • "B-" - There's some prefabrication for construction, giant "super-stores" with lots of ready-made household and yard re-modeling items, and even pre-made pools and ponds that can be dropped-in; but generally there are too many regulatory and esthetic barriers to plug-and-play dwelling add-ons such as rooms themselves.

• "Determines in advance her menus...prepackaged meals...automatic food utility"
  • "C+" - There are diet plans that deliver ready-made meals to one's house that can be popped into the microwave, but generally not common.

• Disposable plastic plates, knives, forks and spoons...so inexpensive they can be discarded
  • "A+" - Very common in fast-food and cafeterias, although it creates environmental problems.
    • "A+", surely?
    • Not for home.
    • Define "Not for home". The technology exists, and is in widespread use. People being too proud to give up their designer crockery does not change this.
    • My observation is that most people use metal utensils for home meals. The exception is for small or messy children.
    • "A+" that they are not used at home is not relevant.
    • See above with regard to "pervasiveness".
      • Go to any public park after a major summer holiday if you doubt their pervasiveness

• "The single most important item in 2008 households is the computer."
  • "B+" - TV still reigns, but the Web is rapidly moving in.
    • When more people are logging on to YouTube than turning out to vote, "A-". If anything, many people are turning to the TV to take a break from using the computer.
    • The older generation still values TV over the web. If a survey was done across the population, my best guess would be that TV would still rank tops.
      • Qualification: in the demographics that anyone cares about, people are turning to the TV to take a break from the computer. :-)

• Computers govern everything from meal preparation and waking up the household to assembling shopping lists and keeping track of the bank balance. Sensors in kitchen appliances, climatizing units, communicators, power supply and other household utilities warn the computer when the item is likely to fail. A repairman will show up even before any obvious breakdown occurs.
  • "C+" - Computers track and control more and more, including house-hold expenses, but they are not yet integrated with appliances in order to achieve this, perhaps because of security problems that plague our age.

• Computers also handle travel reservations, relay telephone messages, keep track of birthdays and anniversaries, compute taxes and even figure the monthly bills for electricity, water, telephone and other utilities.
  • "A-" - Such software/services readily exist, but are not quite a mainstream practice yet.

• Not every family has its own computer, but they can rent remote usage
  • "C" - Having a computer recent enough to be compatible with existing web-sites and services and with sufficient anti-virus software updates is the hard part; but computers themselves, especially used ones, are toaster-cheap. The author under-estimated the cheapness of computer hardware, which is a sharp contrast to transportation-related predictions.
    • This sentence seems to reflect my local area exactly. People unable to afford their own computer make use of facilities at a library or an Internet cafe - the latter charging by the hour. "B+/A-"
    • This is subject to interpretation. Microprocessors are in a good many every-day appliances and toys. My shaving razor-cleaning pod even has one. A web-compatible computer is indeed fairly expensive to keep up-to-date, but computers as hardware are very cheap. We don't have enough info to distinguish these. It could serve as a warning to current predictors: the future is probably more complicated than you can predict. Computer viruses were a foreign concept in 1968 (minus a few sci-fi writers). They probably didn't foresee the rapid pace of compatibility-based obsolescence either, and so lumped all computers together in their minds, especially being that 1968 was mainframe-driven. Thus, they probably assumed a central "house computer" rather than bunches of little ones.

• Money has all but disappeared. Employers deposit salary checks directly into their employees' accounts. Credit cards are used for paying all bills. Each time you buy something, the card's number is fed into the store's computer station. A master computer then deducts the charge from your bank balance.
  • "A-" - However, credit cards existed in fairly wide practice in 1968, so this is a somewhat low-hanging prediction. And we still use regular cash for small purchases.
  • "B-" - in Europe many smaller (<50 EUR) purchases are often done with money. And your next super market is often near, so dairy shopping occurs often daily.

• Computers not only keep track of money, they make spending it easier. TV-telephone shopping is common. To shop, you simply press the numbered code of a giant shopping center. You press another combination to zero in on the department and the merchandise in which you are interested. When you see what you want, you press a number that signifies "buy," and the household computer takes over, places the order, notifies the store of the home address and subtracts the purchase price from your bank balance. Much of the family shopping is done this way. Instead of being jostled by crowds, shoppers electronically browse through the merchandise of any number of stores.
  • "A" - Online shopping, and we can click-and-point instead of type numbers.
    • A scary number of people buy non-food items online at places like Amazon. If take-up were higher in grocery shopping, this would be an "A+".

• "People have more time for leisure activities in the year 2008. The average work day is about four hours. But the extra time isn't totally free."
  • "F" - Perhaps due to global competition, the work-week hasn't changed much since 1968. Majority of households actually have both husband and wife working to sustain the family. Many low-income families work multiple jobs still, per person.

• "The pace of technological advance is such that a certain amount of a jobholder's spare time [above] is used in keeping up with the new developments--on the average, about two hours of home study a day."
  • "B+" - It is true that current gadgets require more knowledge than earlier ones with more channels, Tivo, differing screen aspect-ratios, instant messaging options, etc.; but most use trial-and-error or a buddy to figure them out instead of formal study. But the total over the longer term may approach the number cited, especially if we consider office-related learning. If its not talking about just consumer items but technology in generally, then its true that formal and semi-formal education to "keep up" is indeed a bigger need these days. Software training courses are common in most medium and large companies for both general software and industry-specific software. The typical medium and large is now heavily tied to industry-specific software, such as SAP. And dealing with the likes of printer compatibility and email attachment formatting problems consumes much of a given worker's time. Although I disagree with the use of "spare time", the net figure is roughly accurate.

• "Most of this study is in the form of programmed TV courses, which can be rented or borrowed from tape [?] libraries. In fact most schooling--from first grade through college--consists of programmed TV courses or lectures via closed circuit. Students visit a campus once or twice a week for personal consultations or for lab work that has to be done on site. Progress of each student is followed by computer, which assigns end term marks on the basis of tests given throughout the term.
  • "B+" - There seems to be a general movement in this area, especially with regard to on-line training and the "e-courses" trend/fad. A co-worker wanted me to install Shockwave for them the other day so that they could run a subscription-based foreign-language on-line course. They needed it for their work.

• "Besides school lessons, other educational material is available for TV viewing. You simply press a combination of buttons and the pages flash on your home screen. The world's information is available to you almost instantaneously."
  • "A+" - WWW, wikipedia, etc.

• "In addition to programmed TV and the multiplicity of commercial fare, you can see top Broadway shows, hit movies and current nightclub acts for a nominal charge. Best-selling books are on TV tape and can be borrowed or rented from tape libraries."
  • "B+" - Although the distinction between TV and computer is not clear here, we are certainly moving in this direction with 100's of cable channels, pay-per-view, and the Web. More and more "traditional" books are now purchasable in electronic form on-line and some "expired" titles are available for free.

• "A typical vacation in 2008 is to spend a week at an undersea resort, where your hotel room window looks out on a tropical underwater reef, a sunken ship or an ancient, excavated city. Available to guests are two- and three-person submarines in which you can cruise well-marked underwater trails."
  • "C" - I've seen some brochures that show some of this kind of thing in the United Emirates, but its still for the rich, hence not "typical". Safety lawsuits and terrorism risk also probably keep the price high. Also, being stuck in a sub with stale, recycled air may not be very appealing to those who want to "get away" from the indoor office. Thus, the desirability/demand may be a bigger blocker of this idea than the technology. But "snorkel clubs" are fairly common these days.

• "While city life in 2008 has changed greatly, the farm has altered even more. Farmers are business executives running operations as automated as factories. TV scanners monitor tractors and other equipment computer programmed to plow, harrow and harvest. Wires imbedded in the ground send control signals to the machines. Computers also keep track of yields-, fertilization, soil composition and other factors influencing crops. At the beginning of each year, a print-out tells the farmer what to plant where, how much to fertilize and how much yield he can expect."
  • "A-" - Generally true. The farm has largely become heavily automated and "corporate".

• "Farming isn't confined to land. Mariculturists have turned areas of the sea into beds of protein-rich seaweed and algae. This raw material is processed into food that looks and tastes like steak and other meats. It also is cheap; families can have steak-like meals twice a day without feeling a budget pinch."
  • "C-" - I've seen some interesting research in these kinds of ideas, but it has yet to become practical and mainstream.

• "Areas in bays or close to shore have been turned into shrimp, lobster, clam and other shellfish ranches, like the cattle spreads of yesteryear."
  • "B+" - I saw a pilot project for this kind of thing on Discovery Channel, but not yet mainstream. Being that our oceans are over-fished, on-shore fish-farms are becoming common though. They got the concept right, but not the location.

• "Medical research has guaranteed that most babies born in the 21st century will live long and healthy lives. Heart disease has virtually been eliminated by drugs and diet."
  • "C-" - Although more drug options are available in general, heart desease still remains a problem unless you do the "bondage and discipline" stuff like exercise and diets. Thus, little change since 68. You still gotta move your butt; no pill.

• "If hearts or other major organs do give trouble, they can be replaced with artificial organs."
  • "B-" - Some exist, but still expensive and limiting.

• "Medical examinations are a matter of sitting in a diagnostic chair for a minute or two, then receiving a full health report. Ultrasensitive microphones and electronic sensors in the chair's headrest, back and armrests pick up heartbeat, pulse, breathing rate, galvanic skin response, blood pressure, nerve reflexes and other medical signs. A computer attached to the chair digests these responses, compares them to the normal standard and prints out a full medical report."
  • "B-" - CAT-scans and similar scanning technologies, plus automatic pulse-takers exist; but in general, computer-based medical systems are still mostly in the dark-ages despite promising research in statistical diagnosis. The medical community is proving stogy and resistant to statistical and computer-assisted methods.
    • This doesn't qualify for "B-" for me, also it is not the standard procedure. I'd rate it C.
    • If it was standard procedure, it would get an "A". Scanning (besides x-rays) is *almost* standard procedure. Almost anybody who has a serious illness receives one. Perhaps we should split this prediction into statistical prediction and "scanning". I lumped scanning devices into "ultrasensitive...electronic sensors". Ultra-sound, for example would almost certainly qualify as "ultrasensitive microphones", and every Tom and Marry wave their ultrasound images of their baby around the office. However, I realize that it is subject to a lot of different interpretations. It may also be the case that things like reflex responses don't give very useful medical data because it may depend on how much coffee you had, for example. I decided to go with the general gist of the prediction rather than specific medical metrics because the specific items listed come across more as examples rather than the full prediction itself. The devices use "ultrasensative" sensors to study our insides more than external metrics, and this may be because this is the better use of powerful sensors.

• "No need to worry about failing memory or intelligence either. The intelligence pill is another 21st century commodity. Slow learners or people struck with forgetful-ness are given pills which increase the production of enzymes controlling production of the chemicals known to control learning and memory. Everyone is able to use his full mental potential."
  • "B" - Medicines for ADHD, ADD, ODD, depression, etc. are fairly effective; and "smart pills" are threatening to cause the same kinds of problems for college exams that "juicing" has in sports. An area to watch in the near future.

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Tally:

  A: ********
  B: ****************
  C: *************
  D: *****
  F: **

The predictor did fairly well, roughly a B-. (I invite a recount. I didn't count very carefully)

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It seems most future predictions over-estimate anything related to transportation and AI, but underestimate electronics miniaturization. This is kind of a contradiction because fast and cheap computers should have helped AI further along it may initially appear. But true general AI has simply proved a difficult problem to tackle (except in controlled specialties, such as chess).

They also underestimate tech convergence especially with media. The video camera, radio, phone, tv, movie theater, newspaper, magazines, are all mostly collapsed into the computer. Which is itself collapsing to a hand-held unit. See DisappearingComputer.

Even our mechanical machines are turning mostly into computers with sensors and servos, and are far less "mechanical". I expect future office printers to be mostly robotic fingers to move the paper. There's less jamming if there are fewer single-purpose rollers and gears. The robot approach would allow it to adjust to bent paper, etc.

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From 1959:

[Rats, Dead link. They possibly did a page re-org and it's still in there somewhere.]

(The return-to-port Roomba costs about $100 extra.)

More details:

http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2008/12/18/your-world-of-tomorrow-roomba/

(1959)

"Mechanical Maid - cleans floor at push of a button, returns to niche, readies itself for next job." [Image of a rectangular-looking Roomba cousin, about the same size too.]

"A memory storage plate smaller and thinner than a postage stamp—a shoe-box full of them will store and produce any one of a million facts in seconds."

"To speed up the working of electronic computers which assist in such discoveries, the RCA lab recently devised a memory storage plate smaller and thinner than a four-cent postage stamp. It has 256 tiny holes in it and can keep a million facts on file and produce them in any combination or alone in milli-seconds." [I wonder what that was. Sounds like magnetic storage.]

And shown is a desk with a screen with knobs that could be interpreted as a PC, kind of looking like the Osborne 1 microcomputer from the early 80's.

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Isaac Asimov making predictions in 1964:

http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/23/lifetimes/asi-v-fair.html

He talks of semi-flying cars, which sounds like a cop-out to me, and Internet-like technologies. Some predictions are esoteric, like glowing walls, and kitchen appliances powered by nuclear waste products. He meanders off into the problems of population growth, which are generally forecast beyond the 2014 target prediction date that he originally set such that it's too early to check the match. (His target date seems like a "soft" target to give him room to jump around in time.) Population growth is a problem currently, but not a disaster so far. He talks about automation replacing routine jobs and the struggle to define "work", which indeed seems to be a current problem in that new industries and professions are NOT popping up to replace automated ones in sufficient quantities like they used to in the past. (Offshoring is part of this.)

My favorite quote: "Robots will neither be common nor very good in 2014, but they will be in existence."

Spot-on! (Roomba's are really not selling that well. The battery issue is annoying.)

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Generally the increased automation we see is not of the Rosey the Robot (Jetsons) style, but embedded and back-end automation and semi-AI that incrementally improves. Automation and AI are sneaking in the back door such that they are not so visible to the everybody person in the way most futurists predicted, even though they seem to be having some of the impacts they predicted, such as joblessness.

Many predicted more free time due to automation, but generally it's heavily bifurcated such that those with a job have to work their ass off to keep it, making them too busy or tired for leisure, while those without jobs don't have money to take advantage of leisure time, other than TV and video games. Thus, "leisure time" is poorly balanced.

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See also EmotionalEngineering? QuietChange

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CategoryFuture, CategoryHistory