Tonight we're going to look into the future, all the way, to the year 2008

[Shawn Hopkins]

http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2008/...the-year-2008/

Article from 1968 about what life will be like, um, about a month from now. All I can say is I'm going to be glad when we get those 250-MPH self-driving air cushion cars with TVs in them next month. The housecleaning robots sound like they'd sure beat the heck out of the Roomba, too, and I'm looking forward to a four hour work day.

On the other hand some of this was pretty accurate, like when it talks about the importance of the home computer, the move away from paper currency and the move toward online shopping.

Actually, I think it is the friggin' future, anyway. Sure, I guess we don't all have spaceships and rocket packs, but we do have an omnipresent worldwide computerized communications network that allows us instantaneous business and social transactions, we've survived natural and manmade disasters that would have been laughed off as too ridiculous for pulp novels if you'd pitched them in 1968, a black man is this close to being president, we all carry around high tech communications devices that make Star Trek communicators look stupid, our gum cleans your teeth and if you get your hand cut off they can sew you another one on.

[Dr.Pepper]

I liked how they said the average workday is four hours long.

[chdr]

This is why I've stopped taking publications like Popular Science seriously.

[jrh31584]

I like to take times like these to drudge up some old predictions about the year 2000 made in 1900.

http://www.yorktownhistory.org/homep...redictions.htm

[GWOtaku]

We've made a lot of the good progress this article predicts, so I'm pretty satisfied. However, I demand passenger rockets.

On a serious note, so far as housecleaning robots go, as a matter a fact we are well on our way. My sister actually has an iRobot vacuum. I've seen it in action, it's an impressive machine.

[Chykin]

Some of it is so...

[Light Lucario]

Personally, I'm still waiting for hover boards that Back to the Future II showed us having by 2015. We have made progress in technology, but it is pretty interesting how people imagined the future to have flying cars and personal sized rockets. I wouldn't mind that if it was energy-friendly.

[defunctzombie]

Well, it's amazing that almost everything said about the computer is true or is near it. This article reminds me of a quote:

"The doctor gave me a pill and I grew a new kidney!"

Don't we wish that was true...

[Raidon Makoto]

I can't wait to start taking some intelligence pills next month, not that I need them. :P Oh, and food that tastes like steak, but isn't? XDDDD

[Lavenderpaw]

The only thing that turns me off about progress is the fact that it makes us all lazier. Check out Wall-E to see what I mean.

[Shawn Hopkins]

The only thing that turns me off about progress is the fact that it makes us all lazier. Check out Wall-E to see what I mean.

At first I thought you said something about progress giving us all lasers. Which, you have to admit, would be awesome.

[defunctzombie]

The only thing that turns me off about progress is the fact that it makes us all lazier. Check out Wall-E to see what I mean.

But there will always be people like me who are too lazy to invest in the new so we keep doing the old.

[purplehairedwonder]

The only thing that turns me off about progress is the fact that it makes us all lazier. Check out Wall-E to see what I mean.

Ironically, this was a discussion in one of my classes last week. We work more now than our hunter/gatherer ancestors ever did. So it seems like the more we progress, the more we find to do... so we're actually busier. Go figure.

[Taco Wiz]

Yeah. A time before school, and work, and bill paying, and stuff...

[Quacktoon]

We've still got a few weeks. Who knows? Maybe all of these things will happen.

[The Nameless]

I like to take times like these to drudge up some old predictions about the year 2000 made in 1900.

http://www.yorktownhistory.org/homep...redictions.htm

Predications 11, 27 and 28 are alarming and frightening to me.

And prediction 16 seems similar to Newspeak from 1984 (even though that wouldn't be published for another 49 years, it's still frightening). Why would we get rid of C, Q or X? It seems stupid. One would probably expect the alphabet to grow, not shrink. Of course, that begs the question: What would a 27th letter look and sound like?

[JAG]

Hilarious.