In this charming minute-and-a-half, Walter Cronkite demos the home office of 2001, as envisioned in 1967. Amazingly, reality seems to have far outpaced their imagination!
I love the first line, by the way: “This is where a man might spend most of his time in the home of the 21st century.” Apparently professional futurists in 1967 couldn’t imagine women working!
Via Cyborgology.
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Comments 17
Alison — February 24, 2013
Here is an impressive infographic about fiction predicting the future:
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/11/21/giorgia-lupi-future-timeline/
I thought I saw one by xkcd but couldn't find it!
Araina23 — February 24, 2013
Wait, why do I still have to go to work?
Casey — February 24, 2013
Haha, owning stocks.
Legolewdite — February 24, 2013
"The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed." William Gibson, April, 1994
Basiorana — February 24, 2013
I find it fascinating how challenging it is to predict social change. Technological change is easy to extrapolate-- details might be wrong and timelines usually are, but you can get the basic idea of computers and nanotech and the like before the research is all there. Yet sci fi is relatively stuck in the issues of their era or only slightly more progressive than it. Sure, the original Star Trek showed interracial relationships and women in the workforce, but the ship was almost all men and the women took non-combat roles and wore miniskirts; later series fixed those issues but most command posts are held by men and homosexuality doesn't exist. Asimov famously predicted many major technological advances but he didn't predict women's liberation, even moderate acceptance of homosexuality, or racial equality. And of course there is the ubiquitous smoking in old sci-fi movies and books-- no one predicted how ostracized cigarette smokers would become. I guess it's easier to understand machines than people.
[links] Link salad is a handsome ape with girlish eyes | jlake.com — February 25, 2013
[...] 1967 Futurists Imagine the 21st Century — Um, yeah. Heh. [...]
Gest — February 26, 2013
walter cronklite suck my dick
orangelion03 — February 27, 2013
What a lovely future. No spam, no ads, no pop-ups...
Gokyo — March 1, 2013
Is anyone else disturbed by the fact that the man of the house appears to be monitoring his wife and daughter doing domestic work via closed-circuit cameras?
Aquesta setmana hem llegit… preguntes i respostes de Bill Gates, els esports a les xarxes socials i la foto més gran de la història | Betes i Clicks - desenredant la xarxa — March 18, 2013
[...] el vídeo de la setmana l’hem trobat a través del blog Sociological Images i és un reportatge de 1967 en que els futuristes del moment imaginaven com seria l’oficina [...]
XSA – News » Blog Archive » Aquesta setmana hem llegit… preguntes i respostes de Bill Gates, els esports a les xarxes socials i la foto més gran de la història — March 19, 2013
[...] el vídeo de la setmana l’hem trobat a través del blog Sociological Images i és un reportatge de 1967 en que els futuristes del moment imaginaven com seria l’oficina [...]
Jack William — May 17, 2021
A lot of discoveries held in the 21st Century and technology grows really fast during this time. The papersowl also writes a book on this topic and they predict few things too.