Future Progress

"1955 Atomic Flying Car"

     The future was always an interesting topic to people in history, so it is intriguing for me to read about predictions people have had. After reading the article on BBC, it's crazy how accurate some were. The man in 1900 that is being exhibited made accurate prediction for one hundred years in the future, like colored digital photos, mobile phones, rising heights of Americans, preprepared meals, population growth, television, and tanks. These were all more "wish list" type predictions rather than warnings, and these were of those that came true. On Smithsonian, fifty year predictions were made in 1952. It was predicted that there would be no other world war in this era and that the world would be continuously increasing in wealth and prosperity, at the same time the threat of overpopulation would no longer be a problem. There was another where someone predicted space travel to be much more casual and people to take daily trips to a number of surrounding manmade moons. Obviously some seem a bit inaccurate considering there are still no manmade moons, but the world has gained wealth and prosperity in the sense that there has not been another world war per se. There were a few more entertaining predictions displayed on Mental Floss. These were categorized as twelve year predictions as a German chocolate company made them in 1900. Some include, police with x-ray, flying machines, air ships, undersea ships, water-walk, ship railway, roofed city, theater, and good weather machine. These were all funny to see these people describing, and some were more accurate than others, like undersea ships rather than a good weather machine or ship railways. Almost all the predictions I read were more wish list than warnings. These all seemed to be fun predictions for these people to make and what they would hope to happen someday. They do seem to expect a better world and specifically improved innovations in technology. Three prediction I have for one hundred year, which is a pretty long time, are: cancer is finally cured, people will have travelled to Mars, airplanes will be even more advanced and taking people across the world much faster.