I found this while stumbling today and had a good laugh. It's a list of predictions from the supposed "wisest and most careful men in our greatest institutions of science and learning" in 1900 about what America would look like 100 years later. Some of the predictions are, not surprisingly, flat out wrong and fail to predict some crucial technological trends, but a good deal of the foresights are amazingly accurate. Like: "Giant guns will shoot twenty-five miles or more, and will hurl anywhere within such a radius shells exploding and destroying whole cities. 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." "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." " 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." "Telephones Around the World. Wireless telephone and telegraph circuits will span the world. A husband in the middle of the Atlantic will be able to converse with his wife sitting in her boudoir in Chicago. We will be able to telephone to China quite as readily as we now talk from New York to Brooklyn. By an automatic signal they will connect with any circuit in their locality without the intervention of a “hello girl”." I can just imagine some housewife doing laundry by hand, cooking over coal, and shitting in a hole in the ground being all like "Now that's goddamn ridiculous." Focus: See if you can do better. Make a prediction for the year 2100. Or just talk about some of the crazier ideas from the article, like "Store purchases by pneumatic tubes".
Do not read until future: - In the middle east, the shit will STILL be hitting the palm fronds. - Dick Clark will start showing his age. - The Vatican will be turned into a solar and wind-powered roller disco. - The Simpsons will sign for two more seasons. - The South shall rise again, then fail. Again. - It will be proven that before Jesus Christ, there was Caveman Jesus. - The L.A. Clippers will still exist for some reason. - We will STILL not have flying fucking cars. FUCKCOCKGODDMANTITS Why...WHY did you put that in Back To The Future 2?!?!? You shattered our dreams with that coolness. Granted, the rest of the movie after the future pretty much sucked, but FUCK
We could do this. We just aren't trying hard enough. Son of a bitch. Focus: 100 years from now? Either my great-grandchildren will be balls of sentient energy, or feral. No gray area.
<a class="postlink" href="http://thezeitgeistmovement.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://thezeitgeistmovement.com</a> Check out the video, if only for a couple of minutes.Makes sense to me. Unfortunately a lot of bad will have to happen first.
By 2100: Barring a major catastrophe, there will be a motherfucking shitload of people on the planet, like 20-30 billion. Most of them poor. Average lifespans in wealthy nations will increase, maybe even double. We will have artificial intelligence, and computers vastly more powerful than the human brain, maybe even causing a technological singularity (the computers are able to improve themselves at an astronomical rate). Space tourism bitch. Space hotels. Private Saturn cruises. Basically Total Recall except without the 3 titted ladies and space-midget strippers. Or maybe there will be.... Hopefully no more fossil fuels. Cold fusion might be perfected by then, if not some totally unforeseeable better technology. A significant proportion of the people born after the 80's will still be alive (due to increased lifespans, as mentioned). Inflation will make 100 dollar bills useless. Or a new currency will be invented. Space credits? Space warfare. And hopefully, the female breast will not be considered offensive, and covered up. Ladies will walk around with their tits flapping in the breeze. There will be hardcore porn on daytime TV, or beamed straight to our heads for 10 space credits an hour. Sex robots replace hookers, prostitution becomes acceptable in mainstream society. A new, awesome drug will be invented and legalized and our aforementioned AI and super-super-computers will eliminate the need for labor, and we all sit around all day and watch the exploits of space-gladiators on our holographic space screens. Ahh utopia. I guess you can say I'm a dreamer.
Cryogenics will be a legitimate alternative to death. This will fuel a nationwide religion debate that rivals the abortion debates of today. The internet will be more widespread and ubiquitous than telephone. In advanced countries, foldable screens will lead to everyone having incredible computing power in their pockets. China and India will be the biggest economies in the world. America will have its growth greatly stifled by incredible amounts of debt, held mostly by China. The middle east will no longer be basketcase because their governments will be forced to tax their citizens after running out of oil wealth. After taxation begins, citizens will begin to demand representation. Africa will be the China of 2100
The Cubs will still be looking for that elusive World Series. The Bears will still be looking for a quarterback. On a serious note, cancer will be looked at like smallpox is today: it's not a problem unless you're living in a 3rd world country. China's economic boom will have ended by 50+ years. Chinese civil war perhaps. And still, nobody will effectively control Afghanistan. I talked to one of the Army Rangers on my rugby team today and had my strategical perpective completely changed. (Politics aside)
We will have landed on Mars and terraforming will have begun. It will still be another 100 years before people live there. We will have a colony on the moon that sends back resources and offers tourism, but not nearly enough to pay for itself. America will have a one child policy. Oil will only be used in space travel and planes. All cars will be electric with batteries that last several weeks. Virtual reality becomes an actual... reality and you can be in the video games you play.
Robots. Shit ton of robots. Forget disease, global warming, and clean water. The only major concern in 2100 will be preserving the magnetic field.
- Laser rifles become a reality. As a result a whole new generation of kids fall in love with Star Wars. - Nuclear energy is harnessed for space travel. - The oil fields in the Middle East dry up. - A second civil war occurs in the US. - A nuke is set off in the Vatican, the new pope calls for a crusade, all the crazies kill each other.
Humans will become fat and lazy because of machines...wait a tick. Teleportation finally achieved successfully Gold wont be worth shit anymore Pet collars that will allow you pets to talk. Marijuana finally legalized then banned again REAL x-ray glasses and everything from back to the future 2...love that movie and his hot mom in it.
Back in '68, an airline company called Pan Am started booking flights to the moon after the Apollo 8 lifted off, and started something called the First Moon Flights Club. By 1971, there were over 30,000 reservations made. In the '80s they went bankrupt. The above is the shorthand version of an article from Uncle John's Great Big Bathroom Reader (2003). Interestingly enough, on the same page is the following: "The businessman in 1999 will only need a soup-pill or a concentrated meat-pill for his noonday lunch....Ice-cream pills will be very popular." -- Arthur Bird, Looking Forward (1903) I sincerely hope it doesn't come to that. It would kind of defeat the purpose of my culinary training. FOCUS: Fuck anything and everything else, I want one of these:
Fuck that I will be a popsicle. Hopefully by 2100 the technology will be available to upload the contents of my brain into a computer. If not, I will remain a popsicle until the technology until the technology or a viable alternative is available. I don't plan on dying.
Prediction for 2100: Given the marginal success and general bleeding of the eyes upon line of sight, Jeep Wranglers have elaborated on their 4 door models, with the new 27 door models. New mutant plants are genetically engineered in a lab to create the fibers strong enough to take the tension of the fabric roof. This new model is trail rated, provided you never crest any hills or rocks. 3 inch lift kit standard.
Make sure they move you from the cryogenic freezer to the cryogenic fridge to defrost properly. The sink will not cut it.
-Absolutely no one will know who Tucker is. -People will be waiting for the release of Call of Duty: Futuristic Warfare IX -We won't have any colonies on Mars, the moon or wherever, but we would have managed to send people to Mars (Let's be realistic here, since we landed a person on the moon our achievements haven't been great and there are no great plans for the foreseeable future, I'm not saying we won't achieve this because we can't, but rather because politicians aren't giving this a priority) -China and India will became super-powers or almost, however this will depend on the West and the choices it will make in the decades to came. -People will make unrealistic claims for 2200.
Despite decades of advancement and relative parity amongst the races, some fuckwit beret-wearing college professor will complain that America is "more racist than ever."