What Will Life Be Like In 2008?

tblake writes "Back in 1968, Modern Mechanix mused what life would be like in 40 years. Some things they came pretty close on: 'Money has all but disappeared. Employers deposit salary checks directly into their employees' accounts. Credit cards are used for paying all bills. Each time you buy something, the card's number is fed into the store's computer station. A master computer then deducts the charge from your bank balance.' Some things are way off: 'The car accelerates to 150 mph in the city's suburbs, then hits 250 mph in less built-up areas, gliding over the smooth plastic road. You whiz past a string of cities, many of them covered by the new domes that keep them evenly climatized year round.' And some things are sorta right: 'TV screens cover an entire wall in most homes and show most subjects other than straight text matter in color and three dimensions. In addition to programmed TV and the multiplicity of commercial fare, you can see top Broadway shows, hit movies and current nightclub acts for a nominal charge.'"

Goddammit!

Goddammit, I want my flying cars!

Re:Goddammit!

Flying cars? Fuck flying cars, I want my four hour work day god damn it:

People have more time for leisure activities in the year 2008. The average work day is about four hours. But the extra time isn't totally free. The pace of technological advance is such that a certain amount of a jobholder's spare time is used in keeping up with the new developments--on the average, about two hours of home study a day.

They were just confused that the ease in which we can accomplish four 1968 work hours would eliminate us from having to do an additional four hours of additional work.

Re:Goddammit!

Flying cars? Fuck flying cars, I want my four hour work day god damn it:

Move to France. The future is now!

Re:Goddammit!

Answer: Windows admins

I guess even he knew

Even forty years ago, he wasn't naive enough to suggest Duke Nukem Forever being available.

I'm impressed

I'm actually impressed with how dead on a lot of the predictions are. Most predictions from the 60s and 70s were outrageous. One thing I think we've gotten much better at is figuring out the technological limitations of the near future so as to not make such outrageous predictions ... sort of. Supposedly we're all going to be in flying and/or driverless cars by 2015.

Re:I'm impressed

Well, I think you almost hit the nail on the head. "most predictions from the 60s and 70s..." There were quite a few of them right? Seemed like every author or magazine wrote at least one article talking about what stuff would be like in the year 2000, 2010, etc...
So we've got plenty of predictions from the 60s and 70s, and this guy mananged to get several of his right (though others are way way off).

What's that they say about an infinite number of monkeys? We only had a finite (if large) number of predictors, but unlike monkeys most of them wont just write down "j ,kmdsxzqw3i98" either. It's nice for him that he got some stuff mostly right, but unlike you being impressed at this, I would have been more impressed if none of them did.
As for the driverless car thing, I think that it could conceivably happen in my own lifetime, but I don't expect it anytime soon. Certainly not as a common thing in the next decade.

beg to differ

Some things are way off: 'The car accelerates to 150 mph in the city's suburbs, then hits 250 mph in less built-up areas

Speak for yourself...

Money has all but disappeared

This is a little offtopic (feel free to moderate me appropriately), but I can think of no better
place to ask this than here at /. and its grammar-nazis!

From the summary:
"Money has all but disappeared."

What does this sentence mean, please?
Whenever I read it, I read it as: "Everything imaginable happenned to money, except disappear."
Or even: "Money has changed color, has lost its value, has been globally unified... but disappear? No way!"

But by the context of the summary, it seems I am getting exactly the opposite of it.
Although I consider myself quite good at English, it is not my main language.
Can someone clear this up for me?
Thank you.

Re:Money has all but disappeared

I believe it's an idiom. The meaning of "all but [something]" is "almost [something]".

TFA was off in one important respect...

...in his prediction of intelligence pills.

Either that, or a lot of people I encountered today need to adjust their dosage.

Re:TFA was off in one important respect...

water? you mean like from a toilet?

Re:TFA was off in one important respect...

but it's got ELECTROLYTES!

Sorry Amazon, prior art...

"When you see what you want, you press a number that signifies "buy," and the household computer takes over, places the order, notifies the store of the home address and subtracts the purchase price from your bank balance."

"One click", I have you now!

Online shopping

What I found most interesting about this article is how shopping in 2008 is actually BETTER than was imagined in 1968. The author thought items for sale would be displayed on a television, and people would order items through a different interface -- the telephone -- by pressing on a telephone keypad.

Instead, today we can interactively view an item for sale on the Internet, get competing prices, read reviews from real people around the world, and order the item through the same interface using buttons with descriptive labels. It seems so obvious now, and as a developer I still think we have a ways to go, but look how far we've come! This wasn't even fathomable 40 years ago.

Sounds about right

People have more time for leisure activities in the year 2008. The average work day is about four hours. But the extra time isn't totally free. The pace of technological advance is such that a certain amount of a jobholder's spare time is used in keeping up with the new developments--on the average, about two hours of home study a day.

They got it almost spot on: 4 hours actual work; 2 hours slashdot; 2 hours talking; 2 hours walking around the office; 1 hour making coffee's; 3 hours replying to emails; 3 hours answering telephones; 1 hour break time; 2 hours travel time; 2 hours home study time; 2 hours sleep. Rinse-and-repeat.

Let's go point by point

> two-passenger air-cushion car
Didn't happen sadly
> national traffic computer
Read "GPS system"
> morning paper /flat TV screen / Tapping a button changes the page.
Your basic ebook
> smooth plastic road
Still concrete, altho progress has been made in using polymers in road construction
> cities... covered by the new domes
This one didn't happen
> The traffic computer ... feeds/receives signals to and from all cars / keeps vehicles /apart.
GM has prototypes that do just this. It's creepy to see them on the road.
> attache case / draw the diagram with / infrared flashlight on what looks like a TV screen
You basic tablet
> The diagram is relayed to a similar screen in your associate's office, 200 mi. away.
Have this
> He jabs a button and a fixed copy of the sketch rolls out of the device.
The printer
> vehicle parks itself / municipal garage
Again, GM has made leaps and bounds for this
> Private cars are banned inside most city / Moving sidewalks and electrams carry the public
Your basic Arcology idea, but not yet in practice.
> With the U.S. population having soared to 350 million
Close, only 270 million
> transportation is among the most important factors keeping the economy running smoothly.
Quite true, and also where we are starting to break apart
> Giant transportation hubs / located /from 15 to 50 mi. outside all major urban centers.
Some cities have done this, but not in the US to date
> Tube trains, pushed through bores by compressed air
This is ancient, but not in use
> launching pad from which 200-passenger rockets
Commercial rocketry is currently for the super-rich, and only a gimmick for now.
> SST and hypersonic planes
Concorde was retired a few years back
> jumbo jets.
The mainstay of transportation
>Electrostatic precipitators clean the air
Ionic Breeze anyone?
>climatizers maintain the temperature and humidity at optimum levels.
We have this in spades
> Robots are available to do housework and other simple chores.
Vacuuming is about all we have here with the Roomba
> New materials for siding and interiors are self-cleaning and never peel, chip or crack.
He got this one right
> Dwellings / prefabricated modules / attached speedily
Dead on here, most home construction now involves at least some prefabrication.
> job that doesn't take more than a day.
Didn't wind up this fast save for Extreme Home Makeover
> Such modular homes easily can be expanded to accommodate a growing family.
This sadly did not wind up the case.
> A typical wedding present / a fully equipped bedroom, kitchen or living room module.
Man, and all I got was 4 waffle irons....
> determines in advance her menus / prepackaged meals / automatic food utility
Didn't happen
> microwave oven and is cooked or thawed.
Did happen
> disposable plastic plates / knives, forks and spoons / so inexpensive they can be discarded
This very much happened.
> The single most important item in 2008 households is the computer.
100% bingo!
> These electronic brains govern everything from meal preparation and waking up the household to assembling shopping lists and keeping track of the bank balance. Sensors in kitchen appliances, climatizing units, communicators, power supply and other household utilities warn the computer when the item is likely to fail. A repairman will show up even before any obvious breakdown occurs.
We have not gotten to this point yet, however, it is appearing piecemail
> Computers also handle travel reservations, relay telephone messages, keep track of birthdays and anniversaries, compute taxes and even figure the monthly bills for electricity, water, telephone and other utilities.
This is now almost a decade old
> Not every family has its private computer.
Now he called it short.

The pace of change is slowing down.

The pace of change is slowing down. Look at four 50 year periods in history.

1. 1808 In 1808, life was pretty much like it had been for the previous thousand years. Land travel was on foot or by horse; most people never went fifty miles from their birthplace in their entire life. Heating was from burning wood; lighting from candles. Everything was made by hand. But things were just starting to pick up steam, literally. The first locomotive was in 1804. The very first passenger train ran in 1807. Iron was rare, and steel rarer still.
2. 1858 Railroads connected the major cities in Europe, England, and the US east of the Mississippi. Gas lighting had appeared in cities. Some ships were steam powered. Western Union had telegraphs up and running. Factories were coal burning and steam powered. Textiles were being manufactured by power looms and were much cheaper. Iron was plentiful; steel was still rare. The first oil well was a year in the future.
3. 1908 Major cities had electricity. Telephones were available. All commercial shipping was steam powered. The first cars were running, and the first aircraft had flown. Big hydroelectric plants at Niagara Falls were running. Steel was widely available and cheap. The first skyscrapers had been built. An active oil industry was producing.
4. 1958 Radio, TV, electronics, computers, and atomic power were all working. Transistor radios were available. Oil and natural gas were supplanting coal. Huge farm surpluses were a normal event in the US. The first satellites were in orbit. Large jet transports were flying. Good highway system pervasive. Vaccines for polio, tetanus, diphtheria, yellow fever. Antibiotics widely available. The problems of transportation, power, manufacturing, and agriculture had all been overcome, more than overcome, for the first time in history.
5. 2008 Improvements over 1958, but few breakthroughs. No major new power sources. Energy costs up during this period, for the first time in 200 years. No major new form of transportation. No major improvement in space launch technology. Some progress in biotech but no major life extension. Much progress in electronics and computers.

Progress is flatlining.

Re:Auto-pilot cars @ 150 MPH

The notion of centralized control is way off. Each car (as it is now with human drivers) needs to be aware of its surroundings and behave properly in an orderly swarm fashion. Any sort of centralized system should analyze traffic and offer broadcast hints back to the vehicles for upcoming road conditions and preferred alternate routes, instead of micromanaging everything from a single point of failure.

Re:Auto-pilot cars @ 150 MPH

Actually, the Vehicle-to-Vehicle and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure programs at many of the leading auto industry R&D programs, are working on exactly this approach.

Certain portions of CA infrastructure have been equipped with the first generation of this equipment (DSRC 1000m range radio equipment) and there's even a traffic light in Palo Alto (Page Mill Rd & El Camino Real) where you can receive broadcast status and phase information as you approach.

You make the cars aware of each other, and aware of the road, at first for safety and driver-assistance purposes--and the you gradually phase in the AI portion as it matures.

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_infrastructure_integration [wikipedia.org]

Re:Another bad thing about centralized control

Note: this is not a video game. This is in Sweden.

No,nonono. You did it wrong. Here, let me:

"Video game...? THIS... IS... SWEDEN!"

Re:Where are the flying cars?

Anyways, flying cars are a stupid idea. Three dimensional traffic would be a major headache, just ask a flight controller how they would feel about adding several billion more vehicles to the sky in order to make flying cars ubiquitous.

If only we could invent some sort of thinking machine to rapidly process more information than the human mind could ever handle!?

Transportation really needs to move into 3 dimensions, it's the only way to resolve congestion. Being stuck in 2 dimensions is just causing a lot of congestion and is too dangerous.

That said, my fanciful wish is for digging tunnels all over the place so we don't have to look up at a sky clogged with millions of aircraft. Having a mechanical failure in a tunnel is safer than in the sky, too.

Re:Where's my Intelligence Pill?

You should've remembered to take your memory pill. But then, that's the trick, isn't it?

Re:Wellll....

People have more time for leisure activities in the year 2008. The average work day is about four hours." As if any society would ever let its plebes goof off that much!

Ah, but you didn't finish the paragraph! A closer look reveals startling truths:

People have more time for leisure activities in the year 2008. The average work day is about four hours. But the extra time isn't totally free. The pace of technological advance is such that a certain amount of a jobholder's spare time is used in keeping up with the new developments--on the average, about two hours of home study a day.

Closer than you would guess! The average person works 4 hours, and spends at least 2 hours reading Slashdot (though admittedly not at home. You can't fault the guy too much for that error). The other 2 hours are split between Wikipedia bingeing, blog reading, and Fark.

Dwellings for the most part are assembled from prefabricated modules, which can be attached speedily in the configuration that best suits the homeowner. 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.

Ah, a depiction of the epitome of 21st century living: The modern trailer park!

The housewife simply determines in advance her menus for the week, then slips prepackaged meals into the freezer and lets the automatic food utility do the rest. At preset times, each meal slides into the microwave oven and is cooked or thawed. The meal then is served on disposable plastic plates.

Just plain scary how close this is. If I had a nickel for every time dinner was a Kid's Cuisine or Hungry Man I'd have a lot of nickels.

Students visit a campus once or twice a week for personal consultations or for lab work that has to be done on site. Progress of each student is followed by computer, which assigns end term marks on the basis of tests given throughout the term.

Again, a vision of the future! I probably go to class once or twice a week and my end grade is indeed determined by the Scantron sheets I fill with Rorschach inkblots.

Besides school lessons, other educational material is available for TV viewing. You simply press a combination of buttons and the pages flash on your home screen. The world's information is available to you almost instantaneously.

Al Gore couldn't have said it better himself. Maybe vague, but it does fit the Internets and associated tubes pretty well.

TV screens cover an entire wall in most homes and show most subjects other than straight text matter in color

True enough. I'm sure I don't need to elaborate the "other matter". Or so I've heard anyway.

Mariculturists have turned areas of the sea into beds of protein-rich seaweed and algae. This raw material is processed into food that looks and tastes like steak and other meats. It also is cheap; families can have steak-like meals twice a day without feeling a budget pinch.

Ah ha, Kraft Foods! This amazing fellow was able to predict the rise of "processed cheese food" and "mechanically separated meat products". Brillant!

Heart disease has virtually been eliminated by drugs and diet.

Nobody bats a thousand I guess.

No need to worry about failing memory or intelligence either. The intelligence pill is another 21st century commodity. Slow learners or people struck with forgetful-ness are given pills which increase the production of enzymes controlling production of the chemicals known to control learning and memory.

He couldn't have been closer if he'd just given us the name of the wonder drug Ritalin!

Anyway, he was spot on. Finally a reviewer who didn't have flying cars in their list.

Re:250 mph

Yeah, yeah. There are places on the Autobahn that have no posted speed limit. But the thing most people who've never been to Germany don't realize is that if you're going over 100 kph (about 60 mph), and you're in an accident--even if it's clearly, backed-up-by-solid-evidence not your fault-- then your insurance company will not cover damages, and the state/city can find you responsible.

It's been about 10 years since I lived there, so this may not be the case anymore...