> Even so, mankind will suffer badly from the disease of boredom, a disease spreading more widely each year and growing in intensity. This will have serious mental, emotional and sociological consequences, and I dare say that psychiatry will be far and away the most important medical specialty in 2014. The lucky few who can be involved in creative work of any sort will be the true elite of mankind, for they alone will do more than serve a machine.
> Indeed, the most somber speculation I can make about A.D. 2014 is that in a society of enforced leisure, the most glorious single word in the vocabulary will have become work!
2 - Windows mostly obsolete - no
3 - Polarized glass in windows - kind of - mostly no, though some exist
4 - Opacity of glass changing based on light intensity - yes, but rare
5 - Underground housing - yes, but rare
6 - "Light-forced vegetable gardens" - yes, but rare
7 - Surface of the Earth used only for large-scale agriculture, grazing and parklands - no
8 - Kitchen gadgets - yes
9 - Robots with computers minituarized to serve as their "brains" - yes
10 - Trash picking and gardening robots - yes
11 - 3D movies - yes
12 - Waiting in line for movies - yes
13 - All appliances lack electrical cords - no
14 - Appliances "powered by long-lived batteries running on radioisotopes" - no
15 - Fission power supplies "well over half of the power needs of humanity" - no
16 - Experimental fusion power plant - no? (experiments with fusion power yes, but no power plants, afaik)
17 - Large solar-power stations - yes
18 - Power stations in space - no
19 - Road building factories - no
20 - "crowded highways along which long buses move on special central lanes" - no
21 - "ground travel will increasingly take to the air a foot or two off the ground" - no
22 - Aquafoil - kind of - these exist but are of very limited use
23 - Jets of compressed air lifting land vehicles off the highways - no
24 - Self-driving cars - yes
25 - Moving sidewalks downtown - no
26 - "Compressed air tubes will carry goods and materials" - no
27 - Video calls - yes
28 - Screens for studying documents and photographs and reading passages from books - yes
29 - Global satelite communication - yes
30 - Moon colonies - no
31 - GM creating "large soft tires intended to negotaiate the uneven terrain that may exist [on the moon]" - no
32 - Communication between Earth and moon via laser beams - no
33 - Plans for a manned expedition to Mars - yes
34 - Models of an elaborate Martian colony - kind of
35 - "Wall screens will have replaced the ordinary [TV set]" - no
36 - Transparent cubes for 3D viewing - no (though VR might qualify as being similar enough)
37 - World and US population predictions - yes
38 - Underwater housing - no
39 - Underwater cities - no
40 - Micro-organism factories for efficient food production - no
41 - Food made of yeast and algae - kind of (algae yes, though not popular... yeast, not so much)
42 - "algae bar", "mock-turkey", "pseudosteak" - yes
43 - Mechanical replacements for hearts and kidneys - yes
44 - Life expectancy in some parts of the world at 85 - yes
45 - Worldwide propaganda drive in favor of birth control - yes
46 - Rate of population growth has been reduced compared to 1964 - yes
47 - World Population Control Center - no
48 - Mankind has become "largely a race of machine tenders" - no
49 - Schools with closed-circuit TVs and programmed instructional tapes - yes
50 - All high-school students taught computer fundamentals - yes
51 - Mankind suffers badly from "the disease of boredom" - kind of, for some
52 - Psychiatry is "far and away the most important medical specialty" - no
53 - We live in a society of "enforced leisure" - no
---
Totals:
Yes - 22
No - 26
Kind of - 5
And #50 as a no. High school students learn to operate computers, but the vast majority do not learn binary or programming.
Anyone want to make 50 predictions about 2069?
I soo wish this were true. Don't how the support was for Nuclear power back in the day. But wish it were mainstream today. Nuclear engineering would've been one of the most sought after disciplines and more innovation and research could've gotten us much closer to sustained fission.
Context of the 1964 prediction: Very limited use of AC, and of insulated windows. Hot-water radiators. Window films don't exist; limited window tinting. Daylight-equivalent electric lighting is in limited commercial use.
Confounds: Residential tech diverged from commercial/industrial. Residential still emphasizes natural light, and blends outdoors, in part due to expensive energy.
So, "yes".
>> electroluminescent panels will be in common use. Ceilings and walls will glow softly, and in a variety of colors that will change at the touch of a push button.
Context: Hanging incandescent fixtures. Introduction of hanging ceilings with embedded lighting.
Confounds: Electroluminescent tech never came together, remaining dim, short-lived, and power hungry. Gas-discharge fluorescent tube dominated. Residential remained incandescent, eventually switching to CFD and LEDs. Window film invented a couple of years later. Window film, window insulation, and AC, enabled glass walls.
Ceilings - yes (inset fixtures and diffusers). Walls - yes (glass) and no (other). Variety of colors - no/kinda (aside from 1960's transients and customized dorm rooms, only limited blackbody colors). Change - no.
So, "kinda"? The prediction bet on the wrong horse, and lost properties specific to it. But it was partially saved by changing window tech and glass walls.
>> Windows need be no more than an archaic touch, and even when present will be polarized to block out the harsh sunlight. The degree of opacity of the glass may even be made to alter automatically in accordance with the intensity of the light falling upon it.
> 2 - Windows mostly obsolete - no
... A conversation in 2034: Omari: Windows are archaic? That's silly. Li Xiu Ying: Yeah (gestures to create a shared AR window).
Windows, as a 1964-like dominating primary tech for lighting and cooling, do seem archaic.
Confounds: Window tint and window insulation reduced the downsides of windows, so high ceilings and fans went away, but windows didn't. People like natural light. Reduced importance of shades/blinds/drapes has left them mostly manual, and less common. Adjustable-opacity window tech never came together.
Archaic - kinda. Polarized - yes. Opacity alters - no.
Story: Why does the newish MIT Media Lab's facade have a lattice of bars? The building code has a 1970's limit on window percentage, to save energy. That's now obsoleted by better films, but... code.
Story: It's summer in the 1950's, and your office near the top of the Empire State Building is sweltering. What do you do? Open some windows to get a cross-ventilating breeze going, of course, what else is there?
Takeaways: Bet on trends, not single horses. It seems common when judging past predictions, to neglect the past context, and thus to underestimate how much they got right.
“In 2014, there is every likelihood that the world population will be 6,500,000,000 and the population of the United States will be 350,000,000. Boston-to-Washington, the most crowded area of its size on the earth, will have become a single city with a population of over 40,000,000”.
