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July 22, 1961, Weekend Magazine |
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Posted on 01/05/2005 5:40:12 PM PST by fo0hzy
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July 22, 1961, Weekend Magazine |
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What sort of life will you be living 39 years from now? Scientists have looked into the future and they can tell you. It looks as if everything will be so easy that people will probably die from sheer boredom. You will be whisked around in monorail vehicles at 200 miles an hour and you will think nothing of taking a fortnight's holiday in outer space.
Your house will probably have air walls, and a floating roof, adjustable to the angle of the sun.
You'll have a home control room - an electronics centre, where messages will be recorded when you're away from home. This will play back when you return, and also give you up-to-the minute world news, and transcribe your latest mail. You'll have wall-to-wall global TV, an indoor swimming pool, TV-telephones and room-to-room TV. Press a button and you can change the décor of a room. The status symbol of the year 2000 will be the home computer help, which will help mother tend the children, cook the meals and issue reminders of appointments.
Cooking will be in solar ovens with microwave controls. Garbage will be refrigerated, and pressed into fertiliser pellets. Food won't be very different from 1961, but there will be a few new dishes - instant bread, sugar made from sawdust, foodless foods (minus nutritional properties), juice powders and synthetic tea and cocoa. Energy will come in tablet form. At work, Dad will operate on a 24 hour week. The office will be air-conditioned with stimulating scents and extra oxygen - to give a physical and psychological lift. Mail and newspapers will be reproduced instantly anywhere in the world by facsimile. There will be machines doing the work of clerks, shorthand writers and translators. Machines will "talk" to each other. It will be the age of press-button transportation. Rocket belts will increase a man's stride to 30 feet, and bus-type helicopters will travel along crowded air skyways. There will be moving plastic-covered pavements, individual hoppicopters, and 200 m.p.h. monorail trains operating in all large cities.
The family car will be soundless, vibrationless and self-propelled thermostatically. The engine will be smaller than a typewriter. Cars will travel overland on an 18 inch air cushion. Railways will have one central dispatcher, who will control a whole nation's traffic. Jet trains will be guided by electronic brains.
By the year 2020, five per cent of the world's population will have emigrated into space. Many will have visited the moon and beyond. Our children will learn from TV, recorders and teaching machines. They will get pills to make them learn faster. We shall be healthier, too. There will be no common colds, cancer, tooth decay or mental illness.
Medically induced growth of amputated limbs will be possible. Rejuvenation will be in the middle stages of research, and people will live, healthily, to 85 or 100. There's a lot more besides to make H.G. Wells and George Orwell sound like they're getting left behind. And this isn't science fiction. It's science fact - futuristic ideas, conceived by imaginative young men, whose crazy-sounding schemes have got the nod from the scientists. It's the way they think the world will live in the next century - if there's any world left!
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Did you miss the accompanying ads? Lingerie, bust enlargement, butt pain salve, dandruff creme...?
We do that here by my insistence; don't have to deal with foraging critters on trash day.
Do you do your own plumbing repairs?
I only work 24 hours per week. (Just don't let my boss find out!)
Who was it that said "If I'd known I was going to live this long- I would have taken better care of myself"?
Ist Prize.
Please FReepmail me if you want on or off my ‘miscellaneous’ ping list.
ping
Speak for yourself, you young wipper snapper.
But only for a few days and then you get used to it.
Ping
ELROY!!!!
Hmmm...
When this piece was written, I was 6 months old.
Sitting here thinking about some of the things that didn't exist then. If anyone feels like it, they can add to my list:
Cell phones
Personal Computers
The Worldwide Web
Intermittent windshield wipers
Airbags
Car seats (for the kids)
8 track tapes
Cassette tapes
CDs
Thinsulate (I love that stuff!)
Breast enlargements
Abortion-on- demand (advancement into barbarism)
Cruise missiles
Suicide bombers
Slam dunks
No-Fault Divorce
Cable TV
Satellite TV
Satellites (period!)
Remote Controls (a great boon to MANkind ;-)
FREE REPUBLIC (the greatest invention EVER!)
DNA identification
SUVs (well, we did have jeeps...)
Prenups
Reality TV
Call waiting
Caller ID
Voice mail
Email
WORD
Debit cards
Infomercials
Pierced and tattooed everything (unless you were a sailor or a pirate)
Ultrasound
CAT scans
Heart bypass surgery
Hip replacement
Laser eye surgery
Blogs
GPS
Drip coffee makers
White boards
Starbucks
Talk Radio
EBay
Instant Messaging
Focus Groups
Barack Obama
Space Shuttles
Space Stations
Space Travel
Tang
Frisbees
Hula Hoops
Video Games
Microwaves
Viagra
I'm sure you can think of more.....
There's quite a few we would be better off without!
Paging the Jetsons......
Yeah baby! ;)
I can, yes. Haven't had to...frequent use of the dishwasher keeps that drain line clean.
Twinkies had been around for a long time prior to '61!
Right now you'll have to be satisfied with glamour undies and ManZan.
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oors will open automatically, and clothing will be put away by remote control. The heating and cooling systems will be built into the furniture and rugs.
n commercial transportation, there will be travel at 1000 m.p.h. at a penny a mile. Hypersonic passenger planes, using solid fuels, will reach any part of the world in an hour.