Thinking about the Future

People were predicting that we would have moving sidewalks and pneumatic tube delivery of everything like food or newspapers. They thought airships will be invented and be flying in the sky daily. They basically envisioned the opposite of the slums in the cities and the cities will be beautiful. Boston specifically predicted that in 100 years, the city will have a morning and afternoon local newspaper. They thought the population would be between 350 and 500 million people. Life expectancy will grow because people will find a way to fight disease better and sewage and garbage would be nonexistent. They envisioned that everyone would have cars, airships sailed over the city, and moving sidewalks would make transporting giant populations easier. Smoke and noise would also disappear from cities with new ways to generate heat. This list is more of a wish list because the people of Boston live in a big city where all these new inventions would benefit their comfort in the city. Many of these things improved, but did not come true. Garbage in cities are still a huge issue and of course there are no airships yet. The trend of these things are improvement of city life in many aspects like smoke and traffic. Airships seemed like the most bizarre. People do seem to be anticipating a better future.

The Smithsonian

An civil engineer in 1900 predicted digital color photography, the height of Americans to increase,  invention of mobile phones, pre-paid meals, the population growth to decrease, hot house vegetables (faster), TV, bigger fruit, no more C, X, or Q in alphabet, and no more cars or mosquitoes. These predictions seem like a wishlist to help improve everyone's lives. The alphabet losing letters and no more cars seem to be the most bizarre and out of reach. Everything else seems reasonable or has already happened. The trends in these items are improving the health of Americans like making bigger fruit and decreasing disease and mosquitos. People are anticipating a better future by imagining these items. I think our future is going to consist of more environmentally safe transportation and machinery, and more efficient forms of energy conservation, but also some mistakes along the way that will hurt the planet and the people. The future could be better, but might also be very dark and unsafe.

BBC