The other day, I was thinking about when I was growing up and what I thought the future would be like back then. For some reason my fascination with the future started at an early age. Maybe it was all that Star Trek I was watching on TV. Maybe it was that I was growing up in a time when men were walking on the moon. Maybe it was because there was a progressive streak of technology-loving projects that came into fruition when I was at an impressionable age (i.e., BART). Maybe it was watching 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Wars and thinking it was the coolest thing I had ever seen on the big screen. Whatever the case, when I was a kid, I would often talk to my friends about what the future would be like.
After long discussions with my friends (who were either equally interested in what I was talking about, or just humoring me ’cause they knew I was a geek), we settled on a few things mostly culled from our movie-going experience and addiction to TV. So the list below is not all that original but I was convinced that this would all be the norm by the time it was 2001. Oh, and I was 10 years old or so when much of this was talked about, so…
1. All personal modes of transportation would have the ability to fly.
2. “X rated” films would be shown on TV (Remember: this is 1975 when I’m talking about these things).
3. Space travel would be like getting on an airplane.
4. Everything in our home would be voice-command. When we were hungry for something we would just say “Hamburger…fries…milkshake” and just like the food dispensers in Star Trek, the food would appear in seconds.
5. Our clothes would look more like uniforms (you know, for that “future” look).
6. There would be no more war because we would eventually be united under a government that was called “United Earth” and we would focus on finding other planets that had life — a la Star Trek.
7. Old people –who had trouble walking — would have anti-gravity gizmos that would allow them to float around so they wouldn’t be bound by a bed or feel like shut-ins.
8. We would abolish money and everything would be free (Again, I’m between 8 and 10 when I thinking about this stuff, and it’s pretty clear that I was not a natural capitalist).
9. Some of us would live in underwater cities because overpopulation meant we had very little room to build on land.
10. Everyone would have robots in the home to do the more mundane household tasks.
So, how did we do? Let’s see…Cars don’t fly around like I thought they would, but it seems the new Lexus can parallel park on its own, and the picture of Maya on the right is of a car that really does fly. X rated films have been shown on TV, and excluding Nip/Tuck, you generally have to pay extra to watch it. No easy space travel, but we’re getting there. Does “The Clapper (Clap on/Clap off)” count as a kind of voice command? And what about microwave food? Some of that stuff only takes minutes to cook. How about clothes that look like uniforms? Well, that’s pretty much a given, except that we have many uniforms to choose from. No “United Earth” and no “search for new life, and new civilizations.” No anti-gravity boots, either. Money makes the world go around, so forget those communist yearnings. Now that I’ve seen Star Wars: Episode I, I don’t want to live in an underwater city because I’m afraid I’d look like Jar Jar Binks. However, we do have robotic vacuums that look pretty great! Unfortunately, they take a long time to clean the house, but you don’t have to “Choke the alligator” yourself.
Yes, all the “progress” we’ve made has fallen short of my idealized view of the future, but I still love new gadgets and futuristic crap.
When you were a kid, what did you think the future would be like?
–PK
9 thoughts on “Dreaming of the Future”
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I kinda hoped for the united earth thing and ordering food and having it appear before me. Other than that, I figured we’d be somewhat advanced, but certainly not flying about in our cars. But, then I also wanted to twitch my nose and be like Samantha on Bewitched.
I’m with ML. I thought more about twitching my nose and making things happen. 😉 But by now, I thought there would be cures for a lot more diseases, that we would all be rich, and yeah, the flying cars thing was a given. Also figured there’d be a lot more space travel.
The way we get food sound good. I thought we would get away with the internal combustion engine and go with a more efficient engine. I thought we would do more with space travel. Things are just a hybrid of what we grew up with.
I thought there would be world peace, a cure for cancer, everyone would be rich, AND here is the kicker…..all races would combine and be one race so noone would be different.
Having powers like “Sam” on Bewitched would be great. But if I had a mother like Sam did, well, then I would probably twitch her away.
Yes, I too thought that everyone would by flying around and robots in the house a la the Jetsons.
Ok first off, that Lexus thing is rather irritating to me and makes me feel that stupid people will use it. Who needs to have driving skills!
Sorry about that, I don’t know where that came from.
I was sure we’d at least have flying cars.
I'd have a husband and seven kids, horse a cow and a few dogs….hahahaha I guess I did not watch enough Star Trek..
Two predictions I particularly remember from my childhood (I’m now 56):
– automation and computers would reduce the work week to 20 hours. What they didn’t say was that half the people would still work long hours while the other half were unemployed. Or that most of the jobs would move to China where people are still cheaper than machines.
– nuclear power would give us electricity too cheap to meter. Instead it’s probably the most expensive form of power generation, and we still haven’t worked out how to dispose of the damned waste safely – or stop politicians from wanting to turn it into bombs.
Still, I have a PC on my desk that’s more powerful than the mainframe I was programming 30-odd years ago, and a cellphone in my pocket. I can have a device in my car that tells me exactly where I am on the planet. I can watch and record from dozens of colour TV channels instead of watching 2 black and white ones, and I can have my own personal copy of most movies. I can listen to music while jogging. I can reheat food in minutes in the microwave. Life-saving heart transplants are a routine operation, and new knowledge in genetics offers the hope of cures for many more diseases. Tools like the Hubble Telescope have enabled astronomers to see further into time and space than they ever dreamed of when I was a child. Instead of a clumsy slide rule, I can perform calculations on a gadget the size of a credit card that doesn’t need batteries. I can fly pretty much anywhere in the world within a few hours. I can access millions of pages of information about almost any subject without a trip to the library, and communicate instantly with my family and friends around the world. Men have walked on the Moon, and may walk on Mars before I die.
We live in the world of our childhood science fiction, and we often forget how remarkable it is.