If you’re as old as I am, you probably remember quite a few “predictions” about the year 2000. In the 1990s, it was all about how the computers were going to go haywire and plunge us into an informationless dark age causing people to stock up for an apocalypse scenario. I bet they felt a bit sheepish.
Cartoons in the midcentury loved showing the 2000s as full of hovercars and bubble helmets when space exploration became a reality. But predictions about the year 2000 date back even farther, and the predictions, by today’s standards, seem adorably quaint. They’re also educational, as they offer us a glimpse of the social values and scientific limitations existing 115 years ago.
In 1899 and 1900, a German chocolate company called Hildebrands created a series of postcards called “Life in the Year 2000.” These postcards depicted all kinds of crazy projections on what people would do in a hundred years. As you’ll see, they didn’t account for any changes in fashion.
1.) Personal Airships
2.) Taking Those Airships to the North Pole
3.) Personal Flying Machines
4.) X-Ray Technology for the Police
5.) Cities with Ceilings
6.) Weather-Controlling Machines
7.) Undersea Boats
8.) Battleship Trains
9.) Moving Sidewalks
10.) Moving Buildings with Trains.
11.) Long-Distance Theater
12.) Walking Across Water
We think the Ladies Home Journal were more on the ball, as far as predicting the future was concerned. However, it’s fun to look back and see what people in the past thought their future would hold. They would probably enjoy taking selfies. We can only hope that, one day, someone will write an article on how silly our predictions for the future were! Just imagine a giant cockroach giggling, “Wow, the humans thought they would really last this long! Ha!”
Postcards From 1899 Predict Life In The Year 2000. It"s Adorable.
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