Living in the Future

A glimpse into past predictions of the future, including both the absurd and the spot-on.

It's hard not to love past predictions of the future, especially when they come in children's book form. Someone was kind enough to dig up and post every page of a 1972 book called 2010: Living in the Future. It includes some completely absurd predictions ("In the year 2010 everyone wears a jumpsuit") and some that seem pretty spot on:

Now you are up and dressed it is time to go to the kitchen for breakfast. On one wall of the kitchen there is a cooking unit, made up of small ovens, refrigerators, deep freezers, and cold-storage compartments. All the cooking is done automatically. It is controlled electronically by a small built-in computer. There is a control panel to work the cooker. It looks like a typewriter, with rows of numbered and lettered keys. To order breakfast, you spell out what you want on the control panel.

Now of course we don't have the built in computer, but just about every morning I fire up my iMac and order some breakfast from SeamlessWeb and it just shows up at my door 20 minutes later. It's a wonderful world.