This is an interesting read: 1900 Predictions.
In 1900, John Elfreth Watkins Jr submitted ‘What May Happen in the next 100 years’. On the one hand, you get
- Trains will run two miles a minute, normally; express trains one hundred and fifty miles an hour. To go from New York to San Francisco will take a day and a night by fast express. There will be cigar-shaped electric locomotives hauling long trains of cars. Cars will, like houses, be artificially cooled. Along the railroads there will be no smoke, no cinders, because coal will neither be carried nor burned. There will be no stops for water.
On the other you get:
- A university education will be free to every man and woman. Several great national universities will have been established. Children will study a simple English grammar adapted to simplified English, and not copied after the Latin. Time will be saved by grouping like studies. Poor students will be given free board, free clothing and free books if ambitious and actually unable to meet their school and college expenses. Medical inspectors regularly visiting the public schools will furnish poor children free eyeglasses, free dentistry and free medical attention of every kind. The very poor will, when necessary, get free rides to and from school and free lunches between sessions. In vacation time poor children will be taken on trips to various parts of the world. Etiquette and housekeeping will be important studies in the public schools.
I don’t think we’re civilized enough for the latter just yet…
He had some really interesting ideas though, and was quite the thinker. In a lot of respects, it’s a shame a few more didn’t come true.
Via J-Walk
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Don’t you find it somewhat embarrassing that we have managed the technology advances but not the social? I certainly do.
Trains may run 150 miles an hour in Europe — but not in America, surely. And very poor students get free lunches… but, oh, how I wish college were free: I might even have disposable income again!
Starrlight: it’s all too true I’m afraid.
I think we’ve cracked 200mph now! Free University education should be a must (along with a few other things) but our leaders have more important things to worry about….