# Any film or T.V. Sci-fi predict flat screen T.V./computer monitors? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 12, 2012, 11:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-film-or-t-v-sci-fi-predict-flat-screen-t-v-computer-monitors/618547 "2012-04-12T11:22:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![lalaith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/96bed5/32.png) [@lalaith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lalaith)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2016, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-film-or-t-v-sci-fi-predict-flat-screen-t-v-computer-monitors/618547/41 "2016-01-02T02:41:17Z")
The Syfy channel is doing a Twilight Zone marathon today. One episode, To Serve Man (March 1962), had a flat screen with a wide screen format. I thought of this thread when I saw it. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2016, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-film-or-t-v-sci-fi-predict-flat-screen-t-v-computer-monitors/618547/42 "2016-05-18T20:13:23Z")
I just ran into [Love in the Future](http://www.flyingcarsandfoodpills.com/#!love-in-the-future/ojooj). That sure looks to me like a flat screen. Though it’s called a “television” it’s really a two-way picture phone. The date is an amazing April 1932. The magazine is _Pep Stories_, one of the endless number of risqué, spicy, or girlie pulps put out in the 1930s. The stories were all innuendo. Nothing happens in this one deeper than a kiss. Just putting a man in a women’s bedroom without her screaming was outrage enough. \*Pep \*didn’t even have a section of nude photographs. The girlie pulps swiped from every other genre for plotlines. “Love in the Future” is true science fiction by the standard that its plot requires a futuristic technology - a picture phone - to exist. No f&sf database or reference book mentions it. The author, Frank Kenneth Young, is in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database, though, for a story in _Mind Magic_ and a poem in _My Self._ This deserves inclusion, as well. Just shows that television was a future given from the very start, in modern form. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2016, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-film-or-t-v-sci-fi-predict-flat-screen-t-v-computer-monitors/618547/43 "2016-05-18T20:35:33Z")
I’m still chasing this down and haven’t written a full article about it. But check out [L’Uomo Meccanico (The Mechanical Man)](https://youtu.be/ruTNAbX5TDI?t=22m21s), an Italian film about a robot from 1921. The link goes to a scene in which we see two robots battle, with the creator apparently guiding his robot by remote control through a flat-screen viewer. Whether that is television or a movie screen or something else is hard to tell, but it looks even more modern than the one in “Love in the Future.” My guess is that it was easier to imagine flat-screen television before televisions in all their clumsy three-d depth became common. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2016, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-film-or-t-v-sci-fi-predict-flat-screen-t-v-computer-monitors/618547/44 "2016-05-18T20:47:34Z")
> [@Unintentionally\_Blank](#): > > I used to think 'non technical people’s living areas were so very boring, because they didn’t dedicate part of their life to a TV, Stereo System, Media storage. Now I’m thinking that the home of the future (say 50 years from now) will LOOK like that, when the displays are off. Esp if you consider how unobtrusive tablet displays are. If it’s off, and someone isn’t looking at it, it’s just another thin book-looking thing. Potentially our homes will just be a room with a padded toilet seat and a small kitchen. The majority of our visual experience will be replaced with computer generated objects and displays that are projected directly into the visual cortex by a lense or integrated into the eye or optical nerve itself. Why bother with physical items at all, if you can live in a mansion and transport to work in an instant, virtually? ---
**Author:** ![TBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c89c15/32.png) [@TBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TBG)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2016, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-film-or-t-v-sci-fi-predict-flat-screen-t-v-computer-monitors/618547/45 "2016-05-18T23:40:02Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > And that prediction is more striking when one becomes aware that when the sequel 2010 was made, the monitors of “the future” suddenly changed from the flat screens of 2001 into huge box shaped CRT monitors, talk about devolving technology! Maybe in their universe, by 2010 everyone was just really into retro gaming, where nothing beats a CRT. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_R.Mortiss](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tim_r.mortiss/32/142_2.png) [@Tim\_R.Mortiss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_R.Mortiss)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2016, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-film-or-t-v-sci-fi-predict-flat-screen-t-v-computer-monitors/618547/46 "2016-05-18T23:49:01Z")
> [@Richard\_John\_Marcej](#): > > **The Jetsons** had large, flat screen TV’s for home viewing. And flat screen telephones. [![](https://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/58b3c95b7127ef7dab06d578ce3b7a0fb4cfc7c8/c=0-2-398-300&r=x408&c=540x405/local/-/media/USATODAY/test/2013/12/02//1386012246000-Screen-Shot-2013-12-02-at-14128-PM.jpg) ](https://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/58b3c95b7127ef7dab06d578ce3b7a0fb4cfc7c8/c=0-2-398-300&r=x408&c=540x405/local/-/media/USATODAY/test/2013/12/02//1386012246000-Screen-Shot-2013-12-02-at-14128-PM.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2016, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-film-or-t-v-sci-fi-predict-flat-screen-t-v-computer-monitors/618547/47 "2016-05-19T00:08:17Z")
> [@cochrane](#): > > I remember George reading his newspaper on the screen, too. It seems the Jetsons predicted the death of printed papers. **Babylon 5** predicted that in the future personalized newspapers would be printed on demand by vending machines. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2016, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-film-or-t-v-sci-fi-predict-flat-screen-t-v-computer-monitors/618547/48 "2016-05-19T00:32:42Z")
> [@](#): > > Quoth **Sage Rat** : > > The majority of our visual experience will be replaced with computer generated objects and displays that are projected directly into the visual cortex… Assuming you meant “retina”, there, that’s already how everything you see works. It’d all projected directly onto your retina through the lens of your eye (and possibly the lens of a pair of glasses or contacts). ---
**Author:** ![furryman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/furryman/32/99_2.png) [@furryman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furryman)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2016, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-film-or-t-v-sci-fi-predict-flat-screen-t-v-computer-monitors/618547/49 "2016-05-19T17:44:45Z")
> [@TBG](#): > > Maybe in their universe, by 2010 everyone was just really into retro gaming, where nothing beats a CRT. LOL: I recently finished playing Phantasy Star 2(1990) on my flat screen TV. ---
**Author:** ![Intergalactic\_Gladiator](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/intergalactic_gladiator/32/112_2.png) [@Intergalactic\_Gladiator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Intergalactic_Gladiator)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2016, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-film-or-t-v-sci-fi-predict-flat-screen-t-v-computer-monitors/618547/50 "2016-05-19T19:06:04Z")
Mildly related (but not really), I worked as a PR intern at NEC when the flat monitors were just breaking into the market. They were a pretty big deal then and the people making Stargate wanted to borrow a bunch for a scene set in the future (uture-uture!). For some reason, it took a lot of haggling between the two parties and I think NEC finally loaned them one or two. They took the monitors and built them into the set, putting fake ice around them or something so they really weren’t recognizable anyway. So yeah, Stargate kind of predicted flat screen monitors would be in the future and covered in ice when they were already being made or something, I guess. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2016, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-film-or-t-v-sci-fi-predict-flat-screen-t-v-computer-monitors/618547/51 "2016-05-19T20:05:05Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Assuming you meant “retina”, there, that’s already how everything you see works. It’d all projected directly onto your retina through the lens of your eye (and possibly the lens of a pair of glasses or contacts). D’oh, yes retina. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-film-or-t-v-sci-fi-predict-flat-screen-t-v-computer-monitors/618547.md?page=2)