The History of the Future
When I was younger, (a long time ago), I was entranced by many visions of a future that our lives would become. Being a Baby Boomer, born of parents that had gone through the Great Depression and World War II, I grew up during the tremendous optimism of the late 50s and early 60s. In fact, the period between 1958 and 1963 is often described as the Golden Age of American Futurism. My young brain was filled with wild techno-utopian fantasies of what the U.S. and the World was about to become. And, there were many magazines, books, movies and the rapidly growing TV market, eager to show us the way to that future.
So what were some of these visions? To start with, there was the idea of glass domed houses and cities where the weather would not be a problem. Of course domed houses and cities would, like greenhouses, be rather warm, and we have already done that by injecting too much CO2 into the atmosphere. Larger yields and bigger crops were envisioned, but what to do with supersize veg and fruit? It still would have to be bite-sized at some point. Robotic warehouses where anything could be found in a matter of minutes and shipped out was an idea, but then Amazon is already pretty much there now. Home computers that would be shrunk down to the size of a spare bedroom was imagined, but we did much better by the 2020s, we have several computers the size of a book in our house now. Home offices, got that now. Video enhanced police protection, getting there. Robotic, bloodless surgery, working on that. Wristwatch communication with tiny TVs and other wearable devices has also been realized along with electronic home entertainment and other portable learning systems. Robotic butlers and cooks, not there yet. Wall to wall TV, getting closer. Weather control, nope. Space colonies on the moon, no. Jetpack mailmen, no. And the repugnant idea of using chimps and apes as slave labor, nope, nope, nope.
In 1957, the Federal Highway Act was passed, providing for 41,000 miles of a national system of interstate and defense highways that would make for speedy, safe, transcontinental travel, and carmakers took note. Some of the ideas of that time are most remarkable for the imaginative approaches they envisioned for the future of personal travel on these new freeways. To start with, flying cars. We might get there someday, and we wouldn’t need those freeways. Solar powered and electric cars, working on that. Driverless cars, ditto. Rocket transportation, I don’t like that idea much, let’s get back to supersonic aircraft. Quick-change car colors, now that’s an interesting idea, instead of buying a new one every few years. Cars that hovered on a cushion of air, but then what about braking? Computerized roadways were always a big idea for the future, though I haven’t heard much about that for a while. Walking cars that could go anywhere, hummm, it has possibilities. All in all, it doesn’t seem to matter what we can imagine for the future, it always turns out to be much stranger than fiction.
(Below, a 1960s concept of a modern 21st century car, all chrome with a bubble top windshield. Now that’s what I am talking about for the future.)
