When we’ll all be talking about BACK TO THE FUTURE II.
I was impressed that they forecast modern GPS. But then I checked. The first GPS satellites were launched in 1978 and the announcement it would eventually be made available for civilian use was made in 1983.
Everything was predicted that way. Want a movie in your livingroom? Call someone who will push previews to you to look at over a computer network. Want new wall art (wallpaper!)? Call someone to send you images over a computer network. Want to order food delivery? Call someone to set it up.
Was the search engine that hard to imagine 25 years ago?
It’s just bizarre that they forecast robots as butlers and pets but didn’t see automation taking over other much less complex personal services.
One thing I don’t think anyone was predicting twenty-five years ago was the explosion of content that internet created. I seem to recall early predictions that one expected difficulty would be finding enough material to put online. I don’t think many people foresaw what would happen when you lowered the barriers - everyone wants to put their own work out there.
Granted a lot of that work is really bad. We’ve gone far beyond Sturgeon’s Law - nowadays 99.9% of everything is crud. But while we’ve reduced the quality a hundredfold, we’ve increased the quantity several thousandfold.
Where were they getting the projections for LAUSD students? The district was supposed to need more than 600 new schools to accommodate 3 million students. Instead enrollment peaked at about 750,000 in 2003-04 and is now only around 100,000 higher than it was in 1987.
Was it just local boosterism or was LA widely expected to grow that much?
Now I think the author was unclear or just confused. A table later says that’s the expected enrollment for the entire six-county area, but the text made it sound like it was for just the one district.
Probably the writers didn’t expect the Cold War to end and the consequent collapse of much of the defence/aerospace industry in SoCal along with the white flight of a lot of middle-class families to place like Arizona or Nevada. From what I’ve seen even schools in the Westside are running at about 90% nonwhite these days, which rather surprises me-are they all going to private schools or something?
I’m surprised at the prediction that your “home computer” would determine news that you would enjoy and print out your own personal newspaper. The idea of reading news on the computer screen was not thought of.
But I think that is to be expected. I remember every step of the progress of technology from then to now. I hated the idea of cell phones when they became popular. I don’t WANT people to be able to get a hold of me sometimes. Then:
Texting: What’s the point? You have a phone. Just call someone.
Facebook: What’s the point? I don’t want to talk to people I haven’t seen in 15 years.
Kindle: What’s the point? Just read a damn paper book!
However, I’ve adapted to all of these things, and it would seem strange without them. These past futuristic stories suffer from the same shortsightedness we’ve all had: We can’t see past our own front yard. It’s crazy how we couldn’t see something like Cloud or other MP3 music storage, but instead would envision robots carving grooves into LPs on command, or instead of cell phones, having robots manning a telegraph machine, or basically anything with robots. 
Yeah, it’s real easy to imagine a general purpose robot that can grab a sponge and stand over the sink washing dishes. It’s harder to imagine a dishwasher. And social attitudes–in the future food will come in pills, but it will be Mom’s job to press the button that dispenses the pills, and she’ll put the pills on the table for everyone. And it will be Mom’s job to clean the house, which means she’ll push the button the wall that activates the autoclean machinery.
Come to think of it, maybe scientists could program my Roomba to say “Error – clean Roomba’s brushes” in a soft Southern accent if they really wanted to.
Future social attitudes do provide some comedy, but it’s probably best to refrain from opinions on social change in an article about technological change, lest discussion of your whole prediction turn into a hijack about domestic roles.
So, if a guy in 1960 writes an article talking about technology of the future and inserts even one line like “Men and women will now share household tasks” the whole discussion of his article won’t be about the new technology but a social argument.
Best to stay away from that and keep social norms as they are now so the discussion is just about the technology.
Look, I can agree about not turning a “what if” article into a screed—which can even turn out just as dated and unimaginative.—but leaving out thinking about social norms entirely hamstrings a scenario. It not only implies we are defined solely by our technology, but also the effects technological development has on us, or we on it.
Right, but let’s say that I think in 50 years, instead of couples of 2 (same sex or not), we will join in families with 4 adults (4 men, 3 men 1 woman, 2 men 2 women, etc.). Should I include that in a piece about technological advances? The discussion of my social change would dwarf the discussion of the technological change…which is the whole point of my article.
Even if you limit it to a discussion about the effect of technology on social roles (e.g. Mom can now work because a robot cooks and cleans for her!) then the discussion, at least in 1960, would turn on how that would destroy family life or work life by having women working instead of being a fun piece on imaginary technology.
Babylon 5 had people lining up at a vending machine that printed out personalized newspapers (& accepted old ones for recycling). It was made in the 90s and set in the 22nd century.
Works that try and predict social change get things even more wrong than technological change. I can remember reading books from the 70s & 80s that had space colonies, ocean cities, and artificial wombs by the year 2000. Social changes included widespread open marriage, polygamy, children only having 1 same (because women stopped changing their names and the hyphenated surnames started to get unwieldy) with nary a mention of homosexuality. One book that took the form of a biography of a girl named Milleny (first child of the new millennium) mentioned in passing that all the worlds LGBT politicians came out in 1981, the laws were repealed, and it ceased to be an issue worth mentioned. Also the US switched to the parliamentary system as a result of the 2nd Ford administration. I wish I could remember the name of the book.
I remember book that was written in the 80s predicted things like male pregnancy being a normal option for infertile couples by 2019, widespread sex changes, and teenagers being given robotic sex toys. This was alone side stuff like a an epic movie about Apollo 11 being filmed on the Moon, pension crisis, and Spanish programing dominating prime time.
And there’s no suggestion that the bank teller Camille spoke with was in India or the Philippines. It would’ve been even funnier it the boy’s pen pall in Beijing had been his pen pall in Leningrad. Even Star Trek had the USSR existing for centuries after it collapsed.
But if you don’t bring up any of the impact of the technology, or what brought about the technology, you’re undercutting the whole point of technological advancement. And a future-period piece becomes “here’s a scene from our modern day, except the calender date is different, and there’s a robot standing in the corner, waving.”
I don’t think that’s a very bold prediction, though. By 1988, there had already been almost 40 years of computers getting cheaper, faster, smaller, storing more data, and being used in increasing numbers of ways.
Just stating our reality, but also you should consider that use of cloud storage requires that everyone have free access to the internet, while thumbdrive storage only assumes access to a computer. Not much of a difference, granted, but it could be their reasoning. Or it could just be the backass state of technology here. I’m kind of surprised that they don’t require homework on 3.5" floppy disks.
The cover painting looks just slightly off to me.
I don’t know, looks like they’re starting construction already. And funny enough, in the painting it looks like the L.A. Times building is gone, so maybe they’re predicting the demise of print media.