Image of the Rochester Institute of Technology, via Wikimedia Commons
When New York welcomed the World Fair in 1964, Isaac AsimovThe prolific science fiction author and biochemistry professor at the University of Boston, took the opportunity to wonder what the world would look like at 50 – assuming that the world has survived the nuclear threats of the Cold War. To write The New York TimesAsimov has imagined a world that you could partly recognize today, a world where:
- “The gadgets will continue to relieve humanity of tedious work. The kitchen units will be designed which will prepare “the falls”, heating the water and converting it into coffee; toast; Fry, poaching or jamming eggs, grilling bacon, etc.
- “Communications will become sound and you will see as well as the person you call. The screen can be used not only to see the people you call, but also to study the documents and photographs and the reading of book passages. Synchronous satellites, in space flight.
- “(M) will continue to withdraw from nature in order to create an environment that will suit them better. In 2014, the electroluminescent panels will be common. The ceilings and walls shine gently, and in a variety of colors that will change to the touch of a push button. ”
- “Robots will not be common or very good in 2014, but they will exist.”
- “The 2014 devices will not have electric cords, of course, because they will be fed by long-lived batteries on radio-isotopes.”
- “(H) Ilways… in the most advanced sections in the world will have succeeded in 2014; The emphasis will be put more and more on transport which will establish the slightest possible contact with the surface. There will be planes, of course, but even the ground trips will take more and more in the air or two from the ground. ”
- “(V) Ehicus with” robot brains “… can be defined for particular destinations … which will then proceed without interference by the slow reflexes of a human driver.”
- “(W) all screens will have replaced the ordinary whole; But transparent cubes will appear in which a three -dimensional visualization will be possible. ”
- “(T) the world's population will be 6,500,000,000 and the population of the United States will be 350,000,000.” And later, he warns that if population growth continues without control, “the whole earth will be a single Manhattan suffocation in 2450 AD and society will collapse Long before that!“Consequently,” there will therefore be a global walk in favor of birth control by rational and human methods and, by 2014, it will undoubtedly have taken effect seriously. “(See our Walt Disney family planning cartoon Earlier this week.)
- “Ordinary agriculture will follow a lot of difficulties and there will be” farms “turning to the most effective microorganisms. Transformed yeast and algae products will be available in a variety of flavors. ”
- “The 2014 AD world will have little routine work that cannot be better done by a machine than by any human being. Humanity will therefore have largely become a call for tenders. Schools must be oriented in this direction. “Fortran.”
- “(M) Ankind will seriously suffer from boredom disease, a disease spreading more widely each year and will develop in intensity.
- “(T) the most glorious word in the vocabulary will have become work!” in our “forced leisure society”.
Isaac Asimov was not the only person in the 1960s who looked in the future in a fairly premonitory way. You can find some additional forecasts on the brand of contemporaries below:
The science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke predicted the future in 1964
Walter Cronkite imagines the 21st century house… in 1967
Note: a previous version of this article appeared on our site in 2014.
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