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The world had been decimated in many places because of the war. Things could be rebuilt in a new way. There was suddenly a new form of energy at our disposal: atomic energy. Penicillin and the Polio Vaccine looked to be precursors of wiping out bacterial and viral illnesses, among other things.
But really, the predictors IMO were too conservative. Maybe we don't all have jetpacks on our backs, but The Internet? Cellphones? Computers you can carry? They didn't even have transistor radios in 1950.
Women who had male jobs and didn't wear dresses all the time? The ability to stop contraception with a pill? DNA for fighting crime? Harnessing solar energy? These commonplace things were not imagined.
Interesting post. I think people overrate how important the Internet and cell phones are. All of the things we do online were possible with previous technology. The Internet just concentrated it into one place. Even if the Internet failed to become popular the information explosion still would have continued.
The futuristic thing about the Internet was the idea it would eliminate borders and make us one people, but all it's really done is make the modernist power structures even stronger.
That's not to say we haven't seen a huge amount of progress, particularly from the 80s onward. Surrogate motherhood and gene therapy are amazing, as are the medical bionics we have now.
As a avid reader of science fiction I have often looked at a lot of old predictions about what the future is going to be like. Most of these old predictions were from the 1950s about what the world of the 21st century would be like but many of them were way to optimistic about the 21st century. I would like to know why were people so optimistic back then about what the future was going to look like?
Because they had seen such transformation. Imagine yourself born in 1919, as my grandmother was, one of the first females who would have no recollection of a United States in which women could not vote. You remembered the Depression, clothes that could not be hung out to dry because locusts would eat them right off the lines. When you were little, airplanes were rickety canvas-covered things; when you turned twenty, war broke out, and the airplanes were sleek, mean-looking low-wing monoplanes. Six years later, war was won, a bomb existed that could erase cities, the bolt action rifles of your youth had given way to early automatic rifles and submachineguns that put a machine gun in the common trooper's hands.
You had seen the rise of the refrigerator, and were now seeing the interstate highway. You had seen polio, a frightful killer, gone from the landscape along with a number of other childslayers. If rockets could deliver bombs to targets, what if they could go to space? And all along, you got reassurance that we were the good guys and gals. They were the communists, the enslavers, the brutes. We were better than them. Obviously it was just a matter of time and common sense before their people demanded to be like us.
If you grew to maturity and raised your children in the years in which my granny did, you might have a fairly open mind about what the 21st century might hold. The challenge of history is to step back in time, forget what we know of our day, and see it through their eyes. For help with that, I just call my grandmother and ask her questions, then listen and learn.
I was born in 1955. When I was growing up there was:
No color TV
Just 3 channels on TV
No electronic calculators - you had to know how to count
No personal computers
No internet
No faxes
No photocopiers
No cell phones
No digital cameras - film only
No GPS - you had to know how to read a map
In fact, the whole electronic and digital world that we take for granted today simply didn't exist. That has been the core of the technological transformation/revolution of the past 50 years.
I was born in 1955. When I was growing up there was:
No color TV
Just 3 channels on TV
No electronic calculators - you had to know how to count
No personal computers
No internet
No faxes
No photocopiers
No cell phones
No digital cameras - film only
No GPS - you had to know how to read a map
In fact, the whole electronic and digital world that we take for granted today simply didn't exist. That has been the core of the technological transformation/revolution of the past 50 years.
You forgot one: no fat people. A pre-technological benefit, perhaps?
You forgot one: no fat people. A pre-technological benefit, perhaps?
Possibly. But there are other factors.
First, we are better off financially than we were 50 years ago and can afford more food, afford to eat out, etc. etc.. When I was a child, we almost never ate out. All meals were home cooked.
Second, there is a much bigger variety of places where you can eat out now and at a wide range of price points so that everyone can afford something.
Third, the rise of convenience foods both in fast food restaurants and in the stores. A lot of people don't cook from the basics anymore and use foods that are full of additives. This is often because they are working and don't have the time or energy to cook or because they never learned to cook. And many parents are too busy to teach their kids to cook so the vicious circle is perpetuated.
Fourth, we have a more sedentary lifestyle. As people left the cities for the suburbs, enabled by the arrival of affordable cars, they walked less, had less time because of the commute and exercised less.
Fifth, there have been cultural changes. Kids are not out playing in the neighborhood the way we did. Activities are much more supervised and kids are generally less active. And the digital revolution has provided more sedentary entertainment and play options so they don't feel the need to go out to play.
Obviously there are many more factors but these are a few off the top of my head. I am sure that you could add a few more.
As a avid reader of science fiction I have often looked at a lot of old predictions about what the future is going to be like. Most of these old predictions were from the 1950s about what the world of the 21st century would be like but many of them were way to optimistic about the 21st century. I would like to know why were people so optimistic back then about what the future was going to look like?
I was born in the late 1930's and grew up in the Fifties, so I am one of those people.
First of all, "people" weren't "so optimistic." People spent next to no time - or no time - thinking about anything like the 21st Century. Aside from Sci Fi fans, a rather small part of "people" people weren't concerned about this kind fantasizing. Occasionally some enthusiastic science teacher would burst into little classroom arias about such stuff, but it was quickly back to the reality of understanding the physics or chemistry textbook.
The marvels were the new things that entered people's everyday lives - plastic, synthetic fabrics, television, mass produced frozen foods, etc.
The only teacher who seriously presented this futurism to us was one who taught the two new courses in our high school curriculum - psychology and sociology. He held up Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles and said something like: "If you want to see our future, read this book." Clearly this teacher had a far better bead on the future of mankind with the severe limitations of the human being than all those fans of tales concerned with marvelous gadgetry.
I was born in 1955. When I was growing up there was:
No color TV
Just 3 channels on TV
No electronic calculators - you had to know how to count
No personal computers
No internet
No faxes
No photocopiers
No cell phones
No digital cameras - film only
No GPS - you had to know how to read a map
In fact, the whole electronic and digital world that we take for granted today simply didn't exist. That has been the core of the technological transformation/revolution of the past 50 years.
Amazingly even in the 90s most of these technologies were not a given.
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