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Predictions for the year 2000


shadowcat1313

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Re: Predictions for the year 2000

 

:rofl:

 

Though honestly it's interesting how many were actually correct (or at least partially correct... THEY PREDICTED FAST FOOD... after a fashion).

 

Just remember, electricity is the answer to all the worlds problems.:winkgrin:

 

And telephones! Don't forget telephones! :winkgrin:

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Re: Predictions for the year 2000

 

Sounds to me like they predicted the Internet (or at least TV) back in 1900:

 

Prediction #10: Man will See Around the World. Persons and things of all kinds will be brought within focus of cameras connected electrically with screens at opposite ends of circuits, thousands of miles at a span. ...The instrument bringing these distant scenes to the very doors of people will be connected with a giant telephone apparatus transmitting each incidental sound in its appropriate place....
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Re: Predictions for the year 2000

 

It's always fun to play with alternative histories - and there are plenty of them out there to play with. You could have a really fun campaign (or at least fun designing one) based on some of these "future lists" from the past, World's Fair predictions, alternate history books, etc.

 

Interestingly enough, regarding fast food, they had "burger joints" in ancient Greece, where they served fresh-cooked hamburgers (with pine nuts!) on buns to passers-by.

 

Some of these predictions came true, and it's an interesting intellectual exercise to figure out why the ones that didn't, didn't. Some of them are obviously physics, some obviously economics, some human nature.

 

But it's always fun to think about "worlds of tomorrow!" It's no great surprise that a circa-1900 list was of a highly ordered world, Victorian or late 40s-50s worlds tended to be optimistic and highly technically-based, and 60s predictions more pessimistic.

 

Oh, and the 70s. Buck Rogers, need I say more?

 

Each and every predicted future could be a campaign, a strange world visited in a campaign, etc.

 

You could do a "Star-Trek"-style "Strange New World of The Week" campaign for quite a while based on nothing but predictions of the future world from our own history.

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Re: Predictions for the year 2000

 

My Gods.

 

Some of that was way out there. Some fell short (the average American will "live fifty years instead of thirty five.") And some was startlingly on target.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

And the inevitable palindromedary

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Re: Predictions for the year 2000

 

There is an interesting book trilogy by Phil Pullman His Dark Materials that starts in a world a lot like ours, but diffurrent and it was fun to try to pick out what things named in that world are in ours. One was Coal Silk. It took me quite a while to figure out that it was plastic/nylon from the usage.

 

Using these perditions, and a little philology, you could come up with an interesting 'modern setting' that just isn't our modern setting.

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Re: Predictions for the year 2000

 

Prediction #24: Vegetables Grown by Electricity... Electric currents applied to the soil will make valuable plants grow larger and faster, and will kill troublesome weeds. Rays of colored light will hasten the growth of many plants. Electricity applied to garden seeds will make them sprout and develop unusually early.

Okay, but they left out that screams and shouts of "It's alive!" will occur when the Brocolli breaks its restraints and strangles the assitant gardener with its power cable.

 

I'm going to giggle over the "silent city" prediction for some time though.

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Re: Predictions for the year 2000

 

My Gods.

 

Some of that was way out there. Some fell short (the average American will "live fifty years instead of thirty five.") And some was startlingly on target.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

And the inevitable palindromedary

 

Actually, according to the Centers for Disease Control, we were already living to fifty (on average) instead of thirty five in 1900. And that 50 includes infant mortality dragging the average down. I suspect shenanigans on this also.

 

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/tables/2003/03hus027.pdf

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Re: Predictions for the year 2000

 

The 2007 outloook:

 

 

#6: Enforcing wireless tech into out brains? Possibly, but some of the conspiracy theorist and diehards (and me) will definitely be opposed to doing that to ourselves.

 

#8 Not to start a global-warming argument but what they are describing is not global warming disasters, they seem to be describing a "people too stupid not to live on the coast but rather want to live on the coast" disasters. More people live on the coast, more people are prone to bad things happening to them via tsunamis/hurricanes. :rolleyes:

 

 

#9 Well, of course people will work longer into life in the future. Without Social Security they cant afford to retire. :rolleyes:

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