These 19th Century Postcards Predicted Our Future 157
kkleiner writes "Starting in 1899, a commercial artist named Jean-Marc Côté and other artists were hired to create a series of picture cards to depict how life in France would look in a century's time. Sadly, they were never actually distributed. However, the only known set of cards to exist was discovered by Isaac Asimov, who wrote a book in 1986 called 'Futuredays' in which he presented the illustrations with commentary. What's amazing about this collection is how close their predictions were in a lot of cases, and how others are close at hand."
Re:Predictions (Score:5, Informative)
It has a name - apophenia [wikipedia.org]. We unconsciously fit the predictions to the present and thus give them more credence than they deserve.
Re:Predictions (Score:2, Informative)
Babylon 5, considered at the time as one of the most progressive scifi shows of the era, showed people on space stations standing in line to get newspapers dispensed by computers. It was inconceivable even then that computers would replace printed media.
And another from this incredibly interesting 1972 Rolling Stone article: [wheels.org] "One popular new feature on the Net is AI's Associated Press service. From anywhere on the Net you can log in and get the news that's coming live over the wire or ask for all the items on a particular subject that have come in during the last 24 hours. Plus a fortune cookie. Project that to household terminals, and so much for newspapers (in present form)."
Re:Predictions (Score:4, Informative)
Mobile phones. Even as recently as 1980, when cellphones were already a reality, nobody saw the ubiquitous pocket phone coming.
1980?
How about Dick Tracy in 1946?
http://f00.inventorspot.com/images/Dt2wrr.jpg [inventorspot.com]