# What did the future use to be like? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 23, 2009, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-the-future-use-to-be-like/504055 "2009-07-23T23:37:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2009, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-the-future-use-to-be-like/504055/41 "2009-07-30T13:46:27Z")
HorseloverFat writes: \> Working 15 hours days as a serf just to make enough calories to work again \> tomorrow didnt really lend itself to such flights of fancy. The average working hours of a peasant in the Middle Ages was, if anything, less than the average working hours of a person today. It was in the early part of the Industrial Revolution that people worked extremely long hours: > **[Working time](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time)** > > Working (laboring) time is the period of time that a person spends at paid labor. Unpaid labor such as personal housework or caring for children or pets is not considered part of the working week. > Many countries regulate the work week by law, such as stipulating minimum daily rest periods, annual holidays, and a maximum number of working hours per week. Working time may vary from person to person, often depending on economic conditions, location, culture, lifestyle choice, and the profitability ... ---
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2009, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-the-future-use-to-be-like/504055/42 "2009-07-30T14:21:36Z")
The Mayans believed that four apocalypses had already happened, at that the fifth, whopper apocalypse was still yet to come. The 7th Day Adventists made some more-believable-than-most predictions. They envisioned a future where things are simply much dirtier, people are compelled to be vegetarians because meat tends to be contaminated, that kind of thing. Europeans at the turn of the century, but before WWI, believed that the world was entering into a grand golden age for humanity. Boy were they surprised! ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2009, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-the-future-use-to-be-like/504055/43 "2009-07-30T14:57:25Z")
The Hesiod scheme of history envisions decline over time, the contrary of progress. Perhaps the biggest conceptual break with humanity’s past was when the future replaced the past as the golden age, and the teleology of history did a 180. I think Christianity was the first ideology to promise a better world in the future. When secularism replaced theology as the dominant paradigm, science and technology replaced God and Jesus as the saviors of the world and the source of a brighter future. God was dethroned. Now Technology in its turn has been dethroned too. What’s left? Drugs? Mysticism? Neo-primitivism? ---
**Author:** ![JoseB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/joseb/32/1530_2.png) [@JoseB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JoseB)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2009, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-the-future-use-to-be-like/504055/44 "2009-07-30T15:38:59Z")
> [@Shot\_From\_Guns](#): > > To nitpick for a second: according to your own examples, the military didn’t develop any of these technologies (at least in the sense of inventing them)–the only took existing technologies and expanded on them/adapted them for their own use. (Unless that was the meaning of develop you were going for.) But that is how it goes with many things: I have the strong suspicion that a lot of interesting inventions would have developed much more slowly if the military hadn’t got their hands on them. The airplane, for instance. I am sure that if the military hadn’t seized on the possibilities of heavier-than-air vehicles (and two world wars, in this respect, helped concentrate the mind wonderfully, so to speak), airplanes wouldn’t be now nearly as advanced as they are. Not to mention space exploration: Rockets as we know them are, essentially, tweaked ICBMs. There is also a counterexample of a technology that began as a military thing and spread out mightily: The ARPANET, the fore-runner of the internet, began as a project to keep military computer networks functional even in the event of the Russians nuking the place. ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2009, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-the-future-use-to-be-like/504055/45 "2009-07-30T15:47:41Z")
> [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > I mostly agree, but I don’t think that serfs toiling in the field were at a loss for imagination. Imagination is cheap. What they lacked is any real concept of progress. To a serf, nothing much changes over your lifetime. You live the same way that past generations did, and your children will live the same way. Yes. The medieval mindset had no concept that the current state of things would change, particularly the relationships of classes of people to each other and to organizations. Individuals could sometimes rise and fall, although fate would almost always force them back into their proper role; but there was no concept that class structure could or would change. A popular concept was the [Wheel of Fortune](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wheel_of_Fortune) – the Wheel rewarded some individuals and brought about the downfall of others, but the emphasis of the concept was on circularity and inevitability in a fixed worldview. Technological change was present in the medieval world, but they _literally_ tried not to think about it (examples: the Pope outlawing the use of crossbows except against non-Christians; blank areas of maps filled with “here there be dragons”). What defines the Middle Ages is the mindset, really, not the technology _per se_. Once the concept of progress (social and technological) entered general use, the Renaissance had begun. The Renaissance was an intellectual transformation, not only in specific ideas, but in the general idea that change itself was not necessarily heresy. The concept of “medieval futurism” makes no sense because anyone able to think about future change is, by definition, already outside of the medieval mindset. ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2009, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-the-future-use-to-be-like/504055/46 "2009-07-30T15:49:51Z")
> [@Nunzio\_Tavulari](#): > > Funny you should ask. There was a news teaser the other day that said Bill Gates wanted to control the weather. Hurricanes specifically. > > [http://www.usatoday.com/weather/research/2009-07-15-gates-hurricanes\_N.htm](http://www.usatoday.com/weather/research/2009-07-15-gates-hurricanes_N.htm) > > Sounds like great theory, but I imagine it’s fairly easy to mess things up on a massive scale and wipe out all life forms. Fortunately, Bill has an unsullied reputation for bullet-proof technology. Heh. Lends an even more sinister meaning to “Blue Screen of Death.” ---
**Author:** ![jbaker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/59ef9b/32.png) [@jbaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jbaker)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2009, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-the-future-use-to-be-like/504055/47 "2009-07-30T16:18:41Z")
Most visions of “the future” occur in fiction, and their purpose is to tell a story, or at least to make a point, rather than honestly to attempt a serious prediction. A noteworthy exception is the book One Hundred Years Progress of the United States, available in full text at [One Hundred Years' Progress of the United States ...: With an Appendix ... - Charles Louis Flint, Charles Francis McCay, John C. Merriam, Thomas Prentice Kettell, Linus Pierpont Brockett - Google Books](http://books.google.com/books?id=bwGP2onSFioC), which has an appendix projecting the year 1970. It’s quite specific, with populations, numbers of farm animals, and so forth. It’s a fascinating read. As you might expect, an effort like this is strikingly insightful at times and amazingly blind at others. In one key respect, though, it was neither: The author assumed that the geographic expansion of the United States would continue. The author had no way of knowing that the recent acquisition of Alaska represented the culmination of American expansion, and that further expansion would be limited to a few islands. Since the actual United States is smaller than projected, naturally its growth did not keep pace with projections. ---
**Author:** ![ajdebosco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecd19e/32.png) [@ajdebosco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ajdebosco)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2009, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-the-future-use-to-be-like/504055/48 "2009-07-30T16:26:59Z")
> [@Shot\_From\_Guns](#): > > To nitpick for a second: according to your own examples, the military didn’t develop any of these technologies (at least in the sense of inventing them)–the only took existing technologies and expanded on them/adapted them for their own use. (Unless that was the meaning of develop you were going for.) But, the inventions I mentioned were not technology, particularly the the compass and gunpowder; they were along the lines of voodoo dolls until a _practical_ application by the military took them to the level of an engineered technology and development. I am certainly no gung-ho pro military man; quite the opposite, but I do recognize how better and bigger ways to snuff out human lives have managed to take scientific application far beyond what would have been developed in a peaceful world, or at least at a comparitively breakneck speed. As I was reading some of the other posts, though, I began thinking about weapons: boomerangs, yo-yos, slingshots, etc. that have become childrens toys. I hardly think their inventors envisioned the amusement factor of their newest finds. 🆒 ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2009, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-the-future-use-to-be-like/504055/49 "2009-07-30T19:24:19Z")
> [@JoseB](#): > > There is also a counterexample of a technology that began as a military thing and spread out mightily: The ARPANET, the fore-runner of the internet, began as a project to keep military computer networks functional even in the event of the Russians nuking the place. Be careful to distinguish real military technology from grant proposals funded by the military. When I first used the ARPAnet in 1974 or so I was at one university talking to another. I’m not sure any military people were even connected. Most of the rockets used for the early satellites (except Vanguard) were not adopted from ICBMs - they were ICBMs. However, remember that before there was military use of rockets there were the civilian inventors, most notably Oberth in Germany. ---
**Author:** ![JoseB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/joseb/32/1530_2.png) [@JoseB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JoseB)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2009, 9:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-the-future-use-to-be-like/504055/50 "2009-07-31T09:59:23Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Be careful to distinguish real military technology from grant proposals funded by the military. When I first used the ARPAnet in 1974 or so I was at one university talking to another. I’m not sure any military people were even connected. > > Most of the rockets used for the early satellites (except Vanguard) were not adopted from ICBMs - they were ICBMs. However, remember that before there was military use of rockets there were the civilian inventors, most notably Oberth in Germany. As to the ARPANET, I will yield to your experience as an early user of it (Heck, in 1974 I was 7… :P) However, regarding rockets, I have to say that, had it not been for the military taking those early civilian inventions in hand, rockets would not have become what they became, with the efficiency they have. Not that I am a gung-ho military man … But, as **ajdebosco** said, it was the military who took those technologies and developed them into a high and practical level. Another one I am thinking of: DARPA paying for the development of autonomous, self-driving cars. The technology has been there for a while (when I was studying for my Ph.D. there were guys in one of the labs at the university who were dealing precisely with that problem), but I think that it is the military taking an interest in it what will push it to a practical level. Or the pervasive use of GPS, which began as a purely military thing for better guiding cruise missiles and planes to their objectives. The theoretical basis for GPS has been there for quite a while, but it took the military to make it into a practical technology (the Russians had -and have- their own system, GLONASS, although this one, as far as I know, is only for the use of their military). So, I guess that what I am saying is that even though many technologies ultimately originated in the civilian sphere, it is the military application of those early technologies what gave them the “push” to become really practical. ---
**Author:** ![Shot\_From\_Guns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ccd318/32.png) [@Shot\_From\_Guns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shot_From_Guns)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2009, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-the-future-use-to-be-like/504055/51 "2009-07-31T18:59:27Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > God was dethroned. Now Technology in its turn has been dethroned too. What’s left? Drugs? Mysticism? Neo-primitivism? Snack cakes. I would like to be the first to welcome our Giant Twinkie Overlords. All hail their golden splendor! > [@JoseB](#): > > But that is how it goes with many things: I have the strong suspicion that a lot of interesting inventions would have developed much more slowly if the military hadn’t got their hands on them. > [@ajdebosco](#): > > But, the inventions I mentioned were not technology, particularly the the compass and gunpowder; they were along the lines of voodoo dolls until a _practical_ application by the military took them to the level of an engineered technology and development. I wasn’t arguing that this wasn’t the case–simply nitpicking that the military did not develop-in-the-sense-of- **originate** , but rather developed-in-the-sense-of- **expanded-on** -and- **found-further-applications-for**. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2009, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-the-future-use-to-be-like/504055/52 "2009-07-31T19:35:37Z")
> [@JoseB](#): > > As to the ARPANET, I will yield to your experience as an early user of it (Heck, in 1974 I was 7… :P) Yes, I’m old. 😃 > [@](#): > > However, regarding rockets, I have to say that, had it not been for the military taking those early civilian inventions in hand, rockets would not have become what they became, with the efficiency they have. > > Not that I am a gung-ho military man … But, as **ajdebosco** said, it was the military who took those technologies and developed them into a high and practical level. Absolutely. The German military got interested in the club, put money and resources behind it, and redirected the rockets from the start to London. A lot of the launches in the late '40s for scientific work were done on captured V2s, before we developed our own. > [@](#): > > Another one I am thinking of: DARPA paying for the development of autonomous, self-driving cars. The technology has been there for a while (when I was studying for my Ph.D. there were guys in one of the labs at the university who were dealing precisely with that problem), but I think that it is the military taking an interest in it what will push it to a practical level. I don’t know how autonomous the drones being used in Afghanistan are, but that’s an example where the military is far ahead of the civilian world because of need. > [@](#): > > So, I guess that what I am saying is that even though many technologies ultimately originated in the civilian sphere, it is the military application of those early technologies what gave them the “push” to become really practical. There is movement both ways. In the old days pretty much all the components in military electronics systems were Mil-Spec special builds. Now there is lots of COTS (Commercial off the shelf) hardware, because the commercial market is way ahead of the military market. I’ve gotten myself a little involved in the military electronics world, and the difference between it and the commercial world is amazing. Each side is ahead in certain areas. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2009, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-the-future-use-to-be-like/504055/53 "2009-07-31T19:36:39Z")
> [@Shot\_From\_Guns](#): > > Snack cakes. > > I would like to be the first to welcome our Giant Twinkie Overlords. All hail their golden splendor! There is no god but god, and Little Debbie is his mother. ---
**Author:** ![ajdebosco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecd19e/32.png) [@ajdebosco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ajdebosco)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2009, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-the-future-use-to-be-like/504055/54 "2009-07-31T20:15:56Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > There is no god but god, and Little Debbie is his mother. I thought it was Sara Lee, Suzy-Q or…:smack: ---
**Author:** ![Shot\_From\_Guns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ccd318/32.png) [@Shot\_From\_Guns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shot_From_Guns)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2009, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-the-future-use-to-be-like/504055/55 "2009-07-31T20:56:03Z")
> [@ajdebosco](#): > > I thought it was Sara Lee, Suzy-Q or…:smack: This is how schisms happen. Dibs on burning the infidels! ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2009, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-the-future-use-to-be-like/504055/56 "2009-07-31T23:32:32Z")
> [@Shot\_From\_Guns](#): > > This is how schisms happen. Dibs on burning the infidels! mmmmm - infidels. ---
**Author:** ![Recliner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/a88e57/32.png) [@Recliner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Recliner)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2009, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-the-future-use-to-be-like/504055/57 "2009-08-05T19:00:24Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > I have noticed the same thing-the conservative nature of architecture. Back in the 1920’s, we had the Bauhaus, LeCorbusier, and FL Wright-giving us boldly designed buildings. Now, people are building Victorian houses, and replicas of 1600 styled houses. If only we could revive the Art Deco Era! I like streamlined stuff, and I don’t like Victorian houses-they make me ill. > I wonder when architecture will go back to modernism..can’t happen too soon for me!:smack: We still have all sorts of “bold” designs from \, but people have demonstrated that they just generally don’t _want_ them. Sure, government structures and office buildings and so on get the post-modernist treatment, but people seem to be very conservative in their dwellings – albeit with minor trends over the decades, iof course. Count me as one who finds a lot of Modernist architecture (at least the Corbusier-type concrete blocks of the 60s) to be eyesores, so I think people stick with the Colonials because…they’re timeless. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2009, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-the-future-use-to-be-like/504055/58 "2009-08-05T19:07:43Z")
> [@JoseB](#): > > There is also a counterexample of a technology that began as a military thing and spread out mightily: The ARPANET, the fore-runner of the internet, began as a project to keep military computer networks functional even in the event of the Russians nuking the place. A common myth. [Here is a debunking from an authoritative source](http://www.isoc.org/internet/history/brief.shtml): > [@](#): > > It was from the RAND study that the false rumor started claiming that the ARPANET was somehow related to building a network resistant to nuclear war. This was never true of the ARPANET, only the unrelated RAND study on secure voice considered nuclear war. However, the later work on Internetting did emphasize robustness and survivability, including the capability to withstand losses of large portions of the underlying networks. [And another, from the director of ARPA in the relevant timeframe](http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bl_Charles_Herzfeld.htm): > [@](#): > > The ARPANET was not started to create a Command and Control System that would survive a nuclear attack, as many now claim. To build such a system was clearly a major military need, but it was not ARPA’s mission to do this; in fact, we would have been severely criticized had we tried. Rather, the ARPANET came out of our frustration that there were only a limited number of large, powerful research computers in the country, and that many research investigators who should have access to them were geographically separated from them. Sadly, it seems this myth will survive a nuclear war just fine. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-the-future-use-to-be-like/504055.md?page=2)