What will life be like in 2008 (1968)

[cloudy]

40 Years in the Future
By James R. Berry

IT’S 8 a.m., Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2008, and you are headed for a business appointment 300 mi. away. You slide into your sleek, two-passenger air-cushion car, press a sequence of buttons and the national traffic computer notes your destination, figures out the current traffic situation and signals your car to slide out of the garage. Hands free, you sit back and begin to read the morning paper—which is flashed on a flat TV screen over the car’s dashboard. Tapping a button changes the page.

Read more.

 

[Edward Teach]

40 Years in the Future
By James R. Berry

IT’S 8 a.m., Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2008, and you are headed for a business appointment 300 mi. away. You slide into your sleek, two-passenger air-cushion car, press a sequence of buttons and the national traffic computer notes your destination, figures out the current traffic situation and signals your car to slide out of the garage. Hands free, you sit back and begin to read the morning paper—which is flashed on a flat TV screen over the car’s dashboard. Tapping a button changes the page.

Read more.

Flat TV screen on the dash and touch screen - not a bad prediction 40 years out.

 

[fifty5]

Dwellings for the most part are assembled from prefabricated modules, which can be attached speedily in the configuration that best suits the homeowner. Once the foundation is laid, attaching the modules to make up a two- or three-bedroom house is a job that doesn’t take more than a day. Such modular homes easily can be expanded to accommodate a growing family. A typical wedding present for the 21st century newlyweds is a fully equipped bedroom, kitchen or living room module.

Lots of future gazers have been predicting the modernisation of building techniques for ages - but it still doesn't happen: buildings are still assembled by hand, from ridiculously small modules (bricks or breeze blocks), on-site, in the open air.

More - or 'most' - we have an increasing number of tiddy little DC converters - to run stuff directly, or charge batteries for phones/cameras/walkmen/etc. YTF isn't there any move to wire houses with a 6/12/18/24 volt DC supply for all these bits?

 

[JagFarlane]

Lots of future gazers have been predicting the modernisation of building techniques for ages - but it still doesn't happen: buildings are still assembled by hand, from ridiculously small modules (bricks or breeze blocks), on-site, in the open air.

More - or 'most' - we have an increasing number of tiddy little DC converters - to run stuff directly, or charge batteries for phones/cameras/walkmen/etc. YTF isn't there any move to wire houses with a 6/12/18/24 volt DC supply for all these bits?

mmmm too costly really to run the extra cable...put in the extra converter...place a fuse box in plus...extra wiring means more of a chance of fire etc etc

 

[fifty5]

mmmm too costly really to run the extra cable...put in the extra converter...place a fuse box in plus...extra wiring means more of a chance of fire etc etc

Granted with existing housing stock (at least up to a point - all the double adapters and trailing leads aren't immune to those problems), but the claim made by the future-gazers is that houses ought to be pre-assembled in factories as wall/floor/roof modules, with utility services already manufactured-in: gas, phone/TV/internet, high-volt AC and low volt DC electricity. Lay the foundations (that probably must be done on-site), then plug together a combination of walls and floors and drop on a roof. About 2 days to build a new house - costing a fraction of what's currently the case.

The frequent comparison is to challenge readers to imagine the cost of a car if it were assembled at the curb individually for each customer.

And for those who insist that houses are too individual to manufacture that way, I'd just advise them to look at any new Wimpy or Barrett estate. (Big UK building firms - I'm confident the US has equivalents.) Maybe they should be, but in practice they aren't.

 

[Belegon]

Correctly predicts the rising importance of home computers but no hint of email or the internet... except this: The world’s information is available to you almost instantaneously.... correctly envisions the ideas of direct deposit and a debit card, both unheard of at the time...

Also predicts pay for view and a form of ebooks...

not bad in some ways, way off in others. I wish he had been right about this one though

People have more time for leisure activities in the year 2008. The average work day is about four hours.

 

[sr71plt]

Just for laughs, I keep a Junior Scholastic article from the late 50s that predicted that by 1980 all of the highways would be rail, and you'd just hook you car up on the on ramp and punch in what off ramp you wanted to be ejected at. No gas useage. Increasingly sounds like a good idea.

It does harken to a TV commercial we have going here that starts off talking about a vehicle that gets incredible gas mileage and shows what could be a hybrid--and then flashes to a railway car the automobile is being put on to transport across country along with other autos. An ad for using trains, of course.

 

[cloudy]

It does harken to a TV commercial we have going here that starts off talking about a vehicle that gets incredible gas mileage and shows what could be a hybrid--and then flashes to a railway car the automobile is being put on to transport across country along with other autos. An ad for using trains, of course.

Just saw that one last night, and I honestly thought it was for the Prius, which is the car in the ad, but it's for CRX - the railroad.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Progress of any sort is always frozen by people with enough money to bribe politicians.

We can eliminate urban congestion, create inexpensive energy, etc if we unleash imaginations and effort. But too many people make piles of money from the status quo.