Predictions

I was referred to this site, which is Predictions of the Year 2000 someone made back in 1900. To quote:

“These prophecies will seem strange, almost impossible. Yet, they have come from the most learned and conservative minds in America. To the wisest and most careful men in our greatest institutions of science and learning I have gone, asking each in his turn to forecast for me what, in his opinion, will have been wrought in his own field of investigation before the dawn of 2001 - a century from now. These opinions I have carefully transcribed.”

Somewhat interesting really, to see what folks thought the future held back in the day.

Prediction #1: There will probably be from 350,000,000 to 500,000,000 people in America and its possessions by the lapse of another century. Nicaragua will ask for admission to our Union after the completion of the great canal. Mexico will be next. Europe, seeking more territory to the south of us, will cause many of the South and Central American republics to be voted into the Union by their own people.”

Ask for admission? BWAH! Didn't see them all just fucking waltz across the border without asking, did he?

Prediction #2: The American will be taller by from one to two inches. His increase of stature will result from better health, due to vast reforms in medicine, sanitation, food and athletics. He will live fifty years instead of thirty-five as at present – for he will reside in the suburbs. The city house will practically be no more. Building in blocks will be illegal. The trip from suburban home to office will require a few minutes only. A penny will pay the fare.

Taller? No. But with the help of \/1@gra and C!al1s, my dick is one to two inches longer. I do live in the 'burbs though, and I've already lived longer than 35 years (Damn! The shit works!). But at over $3.00 a gallon for gas, that penny when applied toward the cost of my commute will get me about - oh, three feet maybe?

Prediction #3: Gymnastics will begin in the nursery, where toys and games will be designed to strengthen the muscles. Exercise will be compulsory in the schools. Every school, college and community will have a complete gymnasium. All cities will have public gymnasiums. A man or woman unable to walk ten miles at a stretch will be regarded as a weakling.

The only thing compulsory in schools nowdays is metal detectors at the entrances.
Gymnastics? BWAH! The only gymnastics done in schools is with the teachers behind closed doors.

Prediction #4: There Will Be No Street Cars in Our Large Cities. All hurry traffic will be below or high above ground when brought within city limits. In most cities it will be confined to broad subways or tunnels, well lighted and well ventilated, or to high trestles with “moving-sidewalk” stairways leading to the top. These underground or overhead streets will teem with capacious automobile passenger coaches and freight with cushioned wheels. Subways or trestles will be reserved for express trains. Cities, therefore, will be free from all noises.

Well, this city isn't as big as a lot of other cities, but there are no subways, nor will there ever be. Ever heard of caliche?
Too many of those $3.00+ per gallon cars and truck using - yes, cushioned wheels (tires). Shit. The way people drive, elevated roads would be nothing but a hailstorm of auto parts. Scary.

Prediction #5: Trains will run two miles a minute, normally; express trains one hundred and fifty miles an hour. To go from New York to San Francisco will take a day and a night by fast express. There will be cigar-shaped electric locomotives hauling long trains of cars. Cars will, like houses, be artificially cooled. Along the railroads there will be no smoke, no cinders, because coal will neither be carried nor burned. There will be no stops for water. Passengers will travel through hot or dusty country regions with windows down.

I guess no one thought of airplanes yet. And with Amtrak's reputation, it safer to skateboard down the freeway than take a train.

Prediction #6: Automobiles will be cheaper than horses are today. Farmers will own automobile hay-wagons, automobile truck-wagons, plows, harrows and hay-rakes. A one-pound motor in one of these vehicles will do the work of a pair of horses or more. Children will ride in automobile sleighs in winter. Automobiles will have been substituted for every horse vehicle now known. There will be, as already exist today, automobile hearses, automobile police patrols, automobile ambulances, automobile street sweepers. The horse in harness will be as scarce, if, indeed, not even scarcer, then as the yoked ox is today.

Hmmm. Let's see. I don't know what the going rate for a horse is, but I can guarantee that unless the thing has won the Kentucky Derby a time or two, I will pay less for it than the average car.

Prediction #7: There will be air-ships, but they will not successfully compete with surface cars and water vessels for passenger or freight traffic. They will be maintained as deadly war-vessels by all military nations. Some will transport men and goods. Others will be used by scientists making observations at great heights above the earth.

Woops. I guess they did think of airplanes. Yup, plenty of passenger and cargo flights nowdays.

Bored yet? Feel free to quit reading this shit any time.

Prediction #8: Aerial War-Ships and Forts on Wheels. Giant guns will shoot twenty-five miles or more, and will hurl anywhere within such a radius shells exploding and destroying whole cities. Such guns will be armed by aid of compasses when used on land or sea, and telescopes when directed from great heights. Fleets of air-ships, hiding themselves with dense, smoky mists, thrown off by themselves as they move, will float over cities, fortifications, camps or fleets. They will surprise foes below by hurling upon them deadly thunderbolts. These aerial war-ships will necessitate bomb-proof forts, protected by great steel plates over their tops as well as at their sides. Huge forts on wheels will dash across open spaces at the speed of express trains of to-day. They will make what are now known as cavalry charges. Great automobile plows will dig deep entrenchments as fast as soldiers can occupy them. Rifles will use silent cartridges. Submarine boats submerged for days will be capable of wiping a whole navy off the face of the deep. Balloons and flying machines will carry telescopes of one-hundred-mile vision with camera attachments, photographing an enemy within that radius. These photographs as distinct and large as if taken from across the street, will be lowered to the commanding officer in charge of troops below.

Whoa! 25 miles? How about 1300 or so?
Fleets of airships? I guess they didn't think of airplanes after all. Only zeppelins.
They did think of Cheyenne Mountain, tanks, backhoes, silencers and submarines.
We do have satellites instead of balloons, which can take most awesome pictures, but no need for a long string to lower the pictures. We just zap them down instead!

Prediction #9: Photographs will be telegraphed from any distance. If there be a battle in China a hundred years hence snapshots of its most striking events will be published in the newspapers an hour later. Even to-day photographs are being telegraphed over short distances. Photographs will reproduce all of Nature’s colors.

Yes, we can 'telegraph' pictures. Who'da thunk, taking a picture with a telephone and sending it around the world! Post nekkid pictures of yourself and post them right to your blog! Or maybe take a picture of a dictator being hanged and send it right to the television!

Prediction #10: Man will See Around the World. Persons and things of all kinds will be brought within focus of cameras connected electrically with screens at opposite ends of circuits, thousands of miles at a span. American audiences in their theatres will view upon huge curtains before them the coronations of kings in Europe or the progress of battles in the Orient. The instrument bringing these distant scenes to the very doors of people will be connected with a giant telephone apparatus transmitting each incidental sound in its appropriate place. Thus the guns of a distant battle will be heard to boom when seen to blaze, and thus the lips of a remote actor or singer will be heard to utter words or music when seen to move.

Why, yes! And we'll have 5 minute breaks every 10 minutes so we can listen to the inane bullshit of someone trying to sell us a mortgage, horseless automobile or taco! WOOHOO!!!

Prediction #11: No Mosquitoes nor Flies. Insect screens will be unnecessary. Mosquitoes, house-flies and roaches will have been practically exterminated. Boards of health will have destroyed all mosquito haunts and breeding-grounds, drained all stagnant pools, filled in all swamp-lands, and chemically treated all still-water streams. The extermination of the horse and its stable will reduce the house-fly.

Good gawd. That would be nice. Add cockroaches to that list and really impress me.

Prediction #12: Peas as Large as Beets. Peas and beans will be as large as beets are to-day. Sugar cane will produce twice as much sugar as the sugar beet now does. Cane will once more be the chief source of our sugar supply. The milkweed will have been developed into a rubber plant. Cheap native rubber will be harvested by machinery all over this country. Plants will be made proof against disease microbes just as readily as man is to-day against smallpox. The soil will be kept enriched by plants which take their nutrition from the air and give fertility to the earth.

Well, it hasn't happened yet - with the exception of produce from Alaska or the occasional mutant, but with Global Warming™ on its way, we'll surely be having longer growing seasons soon. That should help.
And making condoms out of milkweed? Interesting.

Wow! Still reading? You must be hard up for entertainment.

Prediction #13: Strawberries as Large as Apples will be eaten by our great-great-grandchildren for their Christmas dinners a hundred years hence. Raspberries and blackberries will be as large. One will suffice for the fruit course of each person. Strawberries and cranberries will be grown upon tall bushes. Cranberries, gooseberries and currants will be as large as oranges. One cantaloupe will supply an entire family. Melons, cherries, grapes, plums, apples, pears, peaches and all berries will be seedless. Figs will be cultivated over the entire United States.

Hmmm. This sounds remarkably similar to the prior prediction.

Prediction #14: Black, Blue and Green Roses. Roses will be as large as cabbage heads. Violets will grow to the size of orchids. A pansy will be as large in diameter as a sunflower. A century ago the pansy measured but half an inch across its face. There will be black, blue and green roses. It will be possible to grow any flower in any color and to transfer the perfume of a scented flower to another which is odorless. Then may the pansy be given the perfume of the violet.

Blah blah bah. Enough with the 'super-size' plants already. Who gives a fuck about green roses?

Prediction #15: No Foods will be Exposed. Storekeepers who expose food to air breathed out by patrons or to the atmosphere of the busy streets will be arrested with those who sell stale or adulterated produce. Liquid-air refrigerators will keep great quantities of food fresh for long intervals.

Sure. Cello-wrap the entire produce department. May as well. Everything else in the store pretty already is.

Prediction #16: 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. English will be a language of condensed words expressing condensed ideas, and will be more extensively spoken than any other. Russian will rank second.

C? I can understand X, unless you're illeterate and need to sign your name. Q? How would you say que en Espanol? See, Russian isn't going to be anywhere near as predominant or common as mexican.
However, in referring to the condensed language, I'll bet they never thought ROFL, BRB, LOL or SRSLY now did they?

Well, there a bunch more. Some close, some not so close. If you get bored, go read them. Here's the link again:

Predictions for 2000




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