Incredibly Wrong Predictions of the Future

[UnscathedFlyingObject]

Let's have some fun discussing predictions of the future because we all know that most media (TV, games, movies, books, documentaries, etc) get it horribly wrong; usually overestimating or underestimating the advance of technology. Like in the case of the Cobra anime, which depicts a Blade Runner-ish future with fantastical technology like sentient robots, space colonies, and... 1970's computer printers? I can say for sure that in the year 5000 we won't still be using those!

Please state the source of the predictions you post.

[Acid King]

Like in the case of the Cobra anime, which depicts a Blade Runner-ish future with fantastical technology like sentient robots, space colonies, and... 1970's computer printers? I can say for sure that in the year 5000 we won't still be using those!

I have a feeling that the hotel I work at will still be using one of those printers several millenia from now.

[1up]

flying cars in 5 years, believe

oh and hoverboards...

[Jockel]

Megaman is all i have to say.
By now we all should be bowing to our robot masters.

[ROBOTRON]

I predict in the year 2084 man perfects the Robotrons, a robot species so advanced that man is inferior to his own creation.

[Observer]

I have checked some 1910 reproductions of artists on how the life would be in 2010 and some of them, while quite wrong, were damn interesting. Seeing the lack of computers back then, they pictured a massive retro-tech future with huge skyscrapers but all in a Metropolis-like fashion, mostly overloaded in barroque details ala Gotham instead of plain glass crap. One of the pictures had a nice park with roads extending all over... and space for well-dressed gentlemen, heh. Bring your hats, people!

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=443831

Scroll down a bit past the 1910 centenary pictures. I'm also surprised at how freaking overloaded some of the buildings were, I love those tall ceilings that let a bunch of light in. The current buildings with their low ceilings are claustrophobic...

Others imagined incredible flying machines more akin to DaVinci's helicopter, although all that changed to gigantic metal birds past WWII. But some were the sort of thing you would expect from a steampunk shooter.

Some stuff really strikes as naïve, but I end up liking some of them. Others are plain funny.

http://expositions.bnf.fr/utopie/feuill/index.htm

I recently bought an old 1920 steel factory report book (with a bunch of pictures in almost perfect state) from an antique store, it was a US-based company from New York that reported the progress on steel and the pictures showed all sort of weird machinery and huge-sized metal sheets. Again, some stuff reminds me of schmukmup material for the background scenery.

[Ruldra]

[D]

mankind lost it´s ingenuity in the year 2000
That or we have reached the limits of our imagination
Look at every decade between 1900 and 2000 and see what we mankind came up with
Look at 2000-2010.
nothing happened. OK, 2010 only halfway through, let´s wait 6 months.
Then again, what really do we need. And lots have been invented, but big business is influential and wants to keep selling their bad old stuff. so, nothing seemingly happens.
well apparantly we can now make screenshots of ps3 games and share them on twitter!

[szycag]

Nothing really happened in the 00s because broadband internet made productivity plummet. Just wait until we invent the holodeck!

[Matsunaga]

Street Fighter 2010: the Final Fight.. Im still waiting for my cyborg body, apparently it's coming soon.

[BulletMagnet]

For me, Crystalis still holds the "WTFuture" award...then again, Glenn Beck's new book may well have dethroned it.

[neorichieb1971]

Fossil fuels have held us back technologically. As long as there is oil, expect almost zero progress.

Communications have come a long way. wireless, portables, internet, computers, TV.. Thats the area where the fastest devs are coming.

War is going backwards (which is a good thing for most of us)

I think in the 50-70's there was this vision of the future being filled with robots and flying cars. The vision of the future I want to see is quiet space. I want the pleasure to get old in a habitat where I can feel alone when I want to be alone, and be around company when I want to be around company. Nothing forced.

The other thing I need to see, is action taken to take people off the roads altogether. Factories/HQ's and that sort of thing should have housing estates within 1-3 miles where a worker can take residence if necessary. All this trekking miles back and forth to work is just the most wasteful act of the 20-21st century.

[Vexorg]

This.

[Specineff]

I recall some Popular Mechanics-like magazines stating that by 2005, brick and mortar would have been "substituted by steel, carbon fiber and advanced polymers". Granted, no one builds a house entirely of clay bricks nowadays, but they sure haven't been displaced here in the southwest.

[UnscathedFlyingObject]

Street Fighter 2010: the Final Fight.. Im still waiting for my cyborg body, apparently it's coming soon.

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/angry ... tack/60452

[linko9]

Some stuff really strikes as naïve, but I end up liking some of them. Others are plain funny.

http://expositions.bnf.fr/utopie/feuill/index.htm

This is awesome. This one's my favorite

[GaijinPunch]

All this trekking miles back and forth to work is just the most wasteful act of the 20-21st century.

Yeah, it's fucking crazy. The Japanese are the WORST at this by far. I'm pretty sure the average commute in Tokyo is 60 minutes door to door.

Image of commuters simply from neighboring prefectures. Looks like roughly 3 million... then you gotta count the other 8 billion or so within Tokyo. Craziness. On the up side, the carbon footprint is low since 99% of them are on the train, with the personal space shoved all the way up their asses and their hands in the skirts of unsuspecting school girls.

[BrianC]

I like how the 60s Jetsons has antique computers and punch cards.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Strikers/Garegga people should see this awesome Cyberwaffe from Persona 2: Innocent Sin.

Look at 2000-2010.
nothing happened.

Except the enormous cultural impact has occured thanks to the internet. World of Warcraft, China, this sort of stuff. Not as flashy as flying cars, but I imagine we would have hard time trying to explain what's this all about to our ancestors.

[greg]

Hey, did somebody mention FLYING CARS?

[UnscathedFlyingObject]

Hey, did somebody mention FLYING CARS?

That's just a small airplane with retractable wings.

[BrianC]

Back on the future topic, I saw this hilarious episode of Harvey Birdman where George Jetson was from the future year of 2002 (in 2004) and brought in all this antiquated stuff like betamax tapes and punch cards that he thought were from the future.

[Ed Oscuro]

I recall some Popular Mechanics-like magazines stating that by 2005, brick and mortar would have been "substituted by steel, carbon fiber and advanced polymers". Granted, no one builds a house entirely of clay bricks nowadays, but they sure haven't been displaced here in the southwest.

Man, I didn't realize they used to make cars out of bricks.

This one's my favorite

[BOOKS IN THROUGH THE EARS!]

Just FYI that was a satirical picture even back then.

Michael

Haha, the first line of the article reads "Time can be a villain." Indeed it can. That Michael looks older than the one we ended up with...but more dignified for sure.

Here's my pick :
http://www.miamitodaynews.com/news/0602 ... oint.shtml

A lot of cities have dreams that turned into broken promises, but Miami's have been pretty spectacular, including a kilometer-tall "Tower of Freedom" designed by Yamasaki Minoru (! he did the WTC) and pavilions touting the progress of South American countries (ha ha).

Nearly 20 years after the Inter-American Cultural and Trade Center idea was proposed, President Reagan would say that it would be cheaper to buy everyone who rides Miami Metrorail their own limousine. At the time he was about correct, but thankfully such anti-project views don't always succeed: Though initially a tough sell with a ridership of only around 25,000 by 1989, it now has 391,000+ riders a day (Wikipedia).

Miami hasn't seen the end of projects which see the acquisition of land and even groundbreaking but delayed, if not eventually cancelled, groundbreaking: Here's the latest in Miami projects with a long history.

There also have been lots of failed plans for theme parks in Florida and I think a few for Miami in particular. Disney World has been the one happy exception for Florida.

My jumping-off point for this post was this excellent thread on Skyscraper City. Lots of interesting photos - Miami has changed just as much as Los Angeles, and recently, possibly more - check out the differences from that guy's window from 2001 to 2006 - in a five year span his view is nearly closed off (he likes it; I wouldn't).

I wonder how much of the recent Miami boom is due to Miami Vice - the crew went around cleaning up the South Beach so they could film there and I think by now the prophecy of it being a playground of rich folk is starting to come true.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Just FYI that was a satirical picture even back then.

I suppose nearly all those envisagements were chuckle material first and foremost. At least our ancestors had some visons of the future. Do we have any? Apart from ethno-political stuff like Muslims taking over Europe etc.
Post-apocalyptic fare along the lines of Fallout is too fin de siècle to set the trend in this day and age.

[Specineff]

Man, I didn't realize they used to make cars out of bricks.

Um, dude... the article was about homes of the future.

LOL@ brick cars, though.

[linko9]

Just FYI that was a satirical picture even back then.

Yup, and it's still funny today. And it's probably a truer image of the future than the artist ever could have imagined; distill books into the bare essence of the knowledge contained in them, there's no need to get into detail to make sure the kids pass the government-run tests. Kids today (in America at least) never read any books in school other than novels and textbooks. The former are interesting but form only a very small part of a good education, and the latter are just as informative as Wikipedia. I'm not saying your average kid's education was ever better in the past, but with all of our modern resources and ways of accessing them, it's a shame that kids leave high school never having read any of the great minds behind what they're learning (with a few exceptions).

[Ed Oscuro]

Man, I didn't realize they used to make cars out of bricks.

Um, dude... the article was about homes of the future.

LOL@ brick cars, though.

You've almost caught up with me. Almost.

And it's probably a truer image of the future than the artist ever could have imagined; distill books into the bare essence of the knowledge contained in them, there's no need to get into detail to make sure the kids pass the government-run tests.

I'd say it's a case of "the more things change..."

At the time that cartoon was drawn (back in the days of Punch, which I never can understand - I think that cartoon was French in origin) the experiments with rote learning and primers were less successful than those today (though obviously because they were building the future of education, in very basic ways). I'd say that today's frontier in schooling theory is less about distilling the material, more about finding enough time and funding (lots of experiments with charters) and in finding that balance between testing and again finding enough time to work through the material. There is also a (hopeful) return to ideas about civics and teaching social etiquette in the classroom, which has been favored in the past by all manner of regimes (Germany and Japan in their belligerent periods are a couple notorious examples).

On the concept of tests, I think that standardized tests are more useful than leaving pass / fail entirely up to a teacher's discretion, and then needing a finishing or preparatory school to get through the one high hurdle of an entrance exam (as they used to do in many places). There also seems to be some question about how to balance total course knowledge against the benefits of non-cumulative exams, and also the lowered stress, increased focus on current material, and other benefits of having a string of a few smaller exams versus that big cumulative final which was once thought to represent everything you needed to know at a given time (as if people don't have reference books or cheat sheets when doing hard problems!).

[Ed Oscuro]

Incredibly wrong prediction of the future here!:

Injuries, house fires expected this holiday weekend

[1up]

Hey, did somebody mention FLYING CARS?

That's just a small airplane with retractable wings.

behold, flying delorean

[Lordstar]

i know its been said a lot but hoverboards! Oh and the full comercial release of them bas ass nikes he was wearing. They are fucking awesome.