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Old 05-26-2014, 11:56 AM
 
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I would like to know to older members on this board. Did you have any ideas what you thought the year 2000 was going to look like: For example: "I thought that by the year 2000 we would be having flying cars and jetpacks, and moon vacations by now!!!" What did you guys think about what the future was going to look like by today?

 
Old 05-26-2014, 01:39 PM
 
Location: Central Nebraska
553 posts, read 593,243 times
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Most people were not terribly interested and dismissed most of the predictions, though might enjoy the entertainment such predictions provided.

I grew up in the 60s and was always interested in Space, Oceanography, Science Fiction and predictions of the Future.
Cities would be under domes. Cars would float above the street by magnetic levitation and sidewalks would move (slidewalks). Our food would come from greenhouses and we would farm the seas raising both seaweed and fish. We would have underwater hotels. Telephones would allow us to see who we were talking to. We could go to the airport and board a combination jet airplane and rocket that would fly us into orbit. We would have dome cities on the Moon and Mars. Books would be on microfilm. We could taylor the genetic make-up of our children. Wii wud speel wurdz xe wei xei saundeed (I'd have to brief you on my tinkering with phonetic spelling which grew out of the realiztion most spelling reforms required the whole English-speaking world to get new typewriters with new keyboards that were too big for the fingers of the human hand to reach and other languages had no more than two sounds per vowel and if they did not use accent marks they might write the vowel twice for the long sound but once for the short sound. I'll have to see if there's a Forum where I can put up a thread on it.)

In the 1970s the proposal for Earth-like space stations was made. (Google "Collonies in Space by T. A. Heppenheimer".)

The Internet was not forseen. The Y2k bug was not forseen--it may strike in 2038 since it was avoided by the shortcut of subtracting 38 years from the date because 2000 had the same calendar as 1972. In general, personal computers were not forseen.
Some ideas were simply perposterous: We'll control the climate by setting off nuclear explosions in the upper atmosphere. We'll mine ores from the earth with nuclear explosions. We'll replace lawns and gardens with astroturf and artificial flowers. Our floors will be conveyor belts covered with carpet that will roll over each night so that yesterday's carpet will be bathed and cleaned today to be rolled over at night for freshly-cleaned carpet tomorrow while today's is being cleaned. (And every morning your furniture will be piled against the wall the carpet rolled against.)
 
Old 05-26-2014, 04:37 PM
 
Location: Tijuana Exurbs
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Growing up, I fully expected the Cold War with the Soviet Union to be continuing in the year 2000.

As for astroturf lawns, there are a smattering of those in my neighborhood. No plastic flowers though.
 
Old 05-27-2014, 01:36 AM
 
Location: Sydney, Australia
11,645 posts, read 12,868,126 times
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I was 7, at the oldest, in 1999, so I wouldn't remember too much. I did know that the year 2000 was coming up after 1999 (I was always a number/clock freak and I was smart for my age when it came to time).

Anyway, my parents used to whisper that the world would end in that year (probably jokingly).
 
Old 05-27-2014, 01:43 AM
 
Location: Earth
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I only remember the threat of imminent disaster regarding the Y2K bug - talk about anti-climax.

Personally, I had no expectation of a golden age of super-technology but since I have an ex-hippy mother, I'm still awaiting the Age of Aquarius.

It's probably been and gone.
 
Old 05-27-2014, 03:56 AM
 
Location: London
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No one cared. All people wanted was a newish quality car and a great house to live in with all mod-cons.

Apart from the Internet, nothing much has changed in 40 years in everyday life. A 1970s kitchen/home had the same appliances as today, they just looked a little different. You could still pick up a plastic telephone in your home and speak to people anywhere on the planet. Jet planes took people around at the same times of travel as today. TVs were in every home and many homes had many of them. Hi-fis were ubiquitous, small transistor radios and cassette decks were available. People went on foreign holidays. Restaurants served similar food to today, etc, etc. The overall changes have been slight.

People were getting more aware of pollution, but considered it the responsibility of governments to put right. No one bought anything because it was eco not knowing what eco was.

No cared about the Cold War as a permanent status quo was in place.
 
Old 05-27-2014, 04:49 AM
 
Location: Viña del Mar, Chile
16,393 posts, read 30,850,308 times
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In 1999 I was 12. I remember being at home watching Nickelodean in 1997 or 1998 and watching a segment where they asked these kids what they thought life would be like in the year 2000. They were talking about all these outrageous inventions and technology.

The only thing I thought was, these kids are idiots. How can life change that much?
 
Old 05-27-2014, 07:48 AM
 
Location: USA
6,230 posts, read 6,899,656 times
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I must of been about 12 or 13 back in 2000. I remember sitting in front of a bulky desktop PC and cathode monitor to browse internet on a slow dial up modem. I never did envision being able to have a device in my pocket that could connect to the internet 24/7 at blazing speeds.
 
Old 05-27-2014, 07:56 AM
 
Location: England
26,273 posts, read 8,394,060 times
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I remember going to see the movie '2001 - A Space Odyssey' in 1968 when I was 15 years old. I wondered if such a world would occur by that time. I remember thinking to myself I'd be 47 years old, which seemed shocking enough!!

In fact, life is very similar today, and no where near as different as such films predicted. Things have changed of course, and we have advanced technologically. Something like the internet wasn't in the dreams of forecasters. Same with cell phones. But people are much the same as they were back then.
 
Old 05-27-2014, 08:01 AM
 
Location: Jamestown, NY
7,840 posts, read 9,158,896 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by CAllenDoudna View Post

The Internet was not forseen. The Y2k bug was not forseen--it may strike in 2038 since it was avoided by the shortcut of subtracting 38 years from the date because 2000 had the same calendar as 1972. In general, personal computers were not forseen.
Y2k was NOT a "bug". It was dopey idea that was popularized by the writer James Kunstler, and proves that having a little knowledge but no understanding is often worse than being ignorant, especially when presented by someone with an agenda.

Kunstler claimed that most major computer systems around the world, including those that ran the power grid, would crash on 01/01/00 because they wouldn't be able to handle the new century. Too bad the fool didn't understand that no computer programmer, especially in the 1980s, would be so stupid as to make a computer system dependent on a specific date as Kunstler claimed. Too bad so many people fell for his BS. Millions upon millions of computer programs were checked and rechecked and except for some reports that might have printed the wrong date, there was no "Y2k bug" anywhere ... even among the millions of computer programs that weren't checked. Not a single light flickered because a power grid computer system depended upon a specific date.

PS - Your claim about 2038 is even dumber than Kunstler's original claim. Understand this: computer programmers do NOT write programs depending upon specific dates or specific years. They might write programs based on the month or the date changing (such as an accounting program that automatically runs "end of the month processing" when the month changes) but year specific dates are NEVER, EVER used. I've been a computer programmer for nearly 30 years and have NEVER, EVER seen or heard of anyone who used your alleged "shortcut of subtracting 38 years from the date". If there was code to be fixed in anticipation of Y2K, it was fixed not band-aided by hard-coding some false past date into a program!
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