Comments on: Will Life Be Worth Living in 2,000 AD?

Will Life Be Worth Living in 2,000 AD?

caddis — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 09:19:33 -0800

In the year 2,000 "everything will be so easy that people will probably die from sheer boredom." Workweeks will be 24 hours and the home computer will be the new status symbol.

By: Saucy Intruder

Saucy Intruder — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 09:23:33 -0800

You had me at HAEMMORHOIDS

By: briank

briank — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 09:27:48 -0800

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. 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. foodless foods (minus nutritional properties) Our children will learn from TV, recorders and teaching machines. Mail and newspapers will be reproduced instantly anywhere in the world by facsimile. Some of these aren't too far off.

By: Arch Stanton

Arch Stanton — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 09:30:30 -0800

I can only fear what the world would be like if the people I see bumping into each other's carts at Wal-Mart would have their own helicopters.

By: sourwookie

sourwookie — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 09:36:33 -0800

You may eat: Tablets, dried and processed foods. bulls!

By: sourwookie

sourwookie — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 09:37:14 -0800

I meant "bullseye!"

By: XQUZYPHYR

XQUZYPHYR — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 09:41:38 -0800

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. Sure there will, thanks to those pills we give our children to learn better.

By: 1016

1016 — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 09:42:37 -0800

"Hmm, they have the internet on computers now...?"

By: salad spork

salad spork — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 09:45:14 -0800

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. OH NO! Mother has HELP tending the children! Think of the FAMILY VALUES being LOST here!!!!

By: mudpuppie

mudpuppie — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 09:48:06 -0800

Interesting how much of it came sorta true. And then there's "At work, Dad will operate on a 24 hour week" and "which will help mother tend the children, cook the meals and issue reminders of appointments". Apparently, some things were unimaginable back then.

By: miss lynnster

miss lynnster — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 10:09:22 -0800

I want my 24 hour work week!

By: hellbient

hellbient — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 10:17:43 -0800

in the future there will be flying robot teachers.

By: weapons-grade pandemonium

weapons-grade pandemonium — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 10:19:20 -0800

Ah, yes, the sixties. Those were the days when women resembled guitars . They were right about foodless foods (minus nutritional properties). I recall an old Scientific American from the early sixties, with an ad for a desktop calculator, and another for a Porsche 911. You could have either one for about four grand.

By: Hands of Manos

Hands of Manos — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 10:21:38 -0800

Who'd thunk we'd be having a war in the 2000's? Red vs Blue

By: Sibrax

Sibrax — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 10:33:56 -0800

And who would have thought that war would be fought with lasers?

By: Sibrax

Sibrax — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 10:34:52 -0800

Damn it...

By: nofundy

nofundy — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 10:42:23 -0800

I want my 24 hour work week! posted by miss lynnster at 10:09 AM PST on January 12 Yeah! And I want my flying car too!!

By: bardic

bardic — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 10:42:41 -0800

Glamorous undies!

By: puke & cry

puke & cry — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 10:46:58 -0800

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. Indoor swimming pool? What, did they think we would all be fuckin' millionaires?

By: goatdog

goatdog — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 10:51:15 -0800

I love stuff like this. Great link. If only they had predicted dancing Martians.

By: SisterHavana

SisterHavana — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 10:53:05 -0800

I want my jetpack! And my robot servants! What happened to them?

By: borkingchikapa

borkingchikapa — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 10:57:39 -0800

I'll start listening to experts when I get my damned flying car.

By: weapons-grade pandemonium

weapons-grade pandemonium — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 11:12:22 -0800

I want Moore's law to apply to cars. That Porsche 911 would cost $2 today.

By: spicynuts

spicynuts — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 11:13:41 -0800

Nobody thought of the pr0n. Didn't these people have the vision to imagine that so many minds would solve the problem of how to see naked coochie 24/7 and to how to keep your johnson hard for a week??

By: jokeefe

jokeefe — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 11:17:36 -0800

Uh.... am I the only person here to have taken one look at that and called Photoshop?

By: alasdair

alasdair — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 11:22:00 -0800

These things are always entertaining, but don't they force you to wonder why some of them are so laughable and some are not? And what accurate predictions we can make now, allowing for something being discovered that's completely unexpected (e.g. antigravity)? For example: the amount of energy we can get out of a small volume is limited, so we'll probably never have practical jet packs. There a big areas of the earth that are more hospitable (air, gravity, proximity to water) than orbit or the moon, so we'll probably never have 5% of the population off-planet. Artificial Intelligence is hard, so we probably won't have C3PO androids, but we are progessing with small insect-like machines that might do your cleaning.

By: chicobangs

chicobangs — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 11:31:43 -0800

Do you KNOW how high they were when they wrote this thing? Hoppicopters, solar ovens, pshew! And in '61, all the drugs they were doing were LEGAL! Damn, but I miss the future.

By: OhPuhLeez

OhPuhLeez — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 11:52:48 -0800

Um, sorry. This is all wrong. This is what life will be like in the future. Also, Everyone heads through life in their own way. You will notice that the inline skater is sailing along in a different world. He uses his inline skates the way you can use your computer. Now that's the FUTURE!

By: hellbient

hellbient — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 12:02:47 -0800

your damned flying car is ready...

By: aclevername

aclevername — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 12:19:10 -0800

By: nev

nev — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 12:53:03 -0800

I've read a legit one of these, in a book about computers from 1970. Even that late in the decade, it was still enthusing about how Mother will use the computer terminal in her home to prepare her shopping list. As if that was a process so convoluted that only a 64K supercomputer could solve it. In neither case did anyone make the leap that the useful part of computer-aided-groceries would be delivery.

By: Pacheco

Pacheco — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 13:10:14 -0800

Medically induced growth of amputated limbs will be possible. Thanks to the president, this possibility is illegal...

By: braun_richard

braun_richard — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 13:37:55 -0800

I don't think the copyright at the end means that this stuff was WRITTEN in 1999, that's just when the article (or the posting of the article or whatever) was copywritten in 1999. It says the article is from a 1961 issue of Weekend magazine, and I don't see anything here that contradicts that.

By: barjo

barjo — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 14:27:03 -0800

In the future our bodies will be shrivelled up but our brains will be bigger.

By: chicobangs

chicobangs — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 14:36:40 -0800

braun_richard, please put the curtain back the way you found it. caddis has some snake oil to sell.

By: garfield

garfield — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 14:58:10 -0800

JETCAR...if only I'd had this to deliver pizza with in HS....mad tips, yo!

By: mudpuppie

mudpuppie — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 15:01:24 -0800

I work across the street from the Moeller flying car people. I have seen it with my own eyes. About 18 mos ago, they vastly improved the muffler. It's no longer earth-shaking (in the literal sense).

By: absalom

absalom — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 15:03:01 -0800

Even that late in the decade, it was still enthusing about how Mother will use the computer terminal in her home to prepare her shopping list. 70s? Pish! The people at Honeywell were on that in the sixties. They made a "Kitchen Computer" with a cutting board attached!

By: gren

gren — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 15:13:21 -0800

they lied to us this was supposed to be the future where is my jetpack, where is my robotic companion, where is my dinner in pill form, where is my hydrogen fueled automobile, where is my nuclear powered levitating house, where is my cure for this disease

By: Secret Life of Gravy

Secret Life of Gravy — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 16:24:06 -0800

Garbage will be refrigerated. Heh. People have been leaving their leftover take-out Chinese (aka "garbage") in the refrigerator since refrigerators were invented!

By: ruddhist

ruddhist — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 16:36:59 -0800

We're trapped in a world before later on...

By: pyramid termite

pyramid termite — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 16:38:56 -0800

garbage will be refrigerated? ... hell, by this weekend, mine's going to be frozen nev, back in the 30s and 40s, groceries actually were delivered to the home without computers ... and dairy products were as late as the 60s it's an interesting thing how cultures don't change as fast as technology does

By: penguin pie

penguin pie — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 16:48:33 -0800

I want a hoppicopter! Whatever it is, I want one.

By: deanc

deanc — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 18:56:39 -0800

That t-shirt has the added benefit of forcing those who wish to read it to come up to you and look very closely in order to make out the small text. Just so you know...

By: Faze

Faze — Thu, 13 Jan 2005 18:40:43 -0800

I-i-i-i-i-t's bogus. But I can tell you, the people of 1960 did not anticipate one, stinkin' little thing about the year 2000 correctly. They knew nothing. Just as the world 40 years from now will be NOTHING like we expect it will be. Tomorrow, January 14, in fact, will be nothing like anyone expects.

By: dmd

dmd — Thu, 13 Jan 2005 21:39:20 -0800

So far there's been nothing unexpected about January 14th. (eastern time hereabouts...)

By: dmd

dmd — Thu, 13 Jan 2005 21:40:01 -0800

aaaaaarrrraaaarrgghhghgh.... so many eyes....