Will Life Be Worth Living in 2,000 AD?

January 12, 2005 9:19 AM

Life in the future. In the year 2,000 "everything will be so easy that people will probably die from sheer boredom." Workweeks will be 24 hours and the home computer will be the new status symbol.
posted by caddis (45 comments total)

You had me at HAEMMORHOIDS
posted by Saucy Intruder at 9:23 AM on January 12, 2005

You'll have a home control room - an electronics centre, where messages will be recorded when you're away from home. This will play back when you return, and also give you up-to-the minute world news, and transcribe your latest mail.

The status symbol of the year 2000 will be the home computer help, which will help mother tend the children, cook the meals and issue reminders of appointments.

foodless foods (minus nutritional properties)

Our children will learn from TV, recorders and teaching machines.

Mail and newspapers will be reproduced instantly anywhere in the world by facsimile.

Some of these aren't too far off.
posted by briank at 9:27 AM on January 12, 2005

I can only fear what the world would be like if the people I see bumping into each other's carts at Wal-Mart would have their own helicopters.
posted by Arch Stanton at 9:30 AM on January 12, 2005

You may eat: Tablets, dried and processed foods.

bulls!
posted by sourwookie at 9:36 AM on January 12, 2005

I meant "bullseye!"
posted by sourwookie at 9:37 AM on January 12, 2005

"Hmm, they have the internet on computers now...?"
posted by 1016 at 9:42 AM on January 12, 2005

The status symbol of the year 2000 will be the home computer help, which will help mother tend the children, cook the meals and issue reminders of appointments.

OH NO! Mother has HELP tending the children! Think of the FAMILY VALUES being LOST here!!!!
posted by salad spork at 9:45 AM on January 12, 2005

Interesting how much of it came sorta true.

And then there's "At work, Dad will operate on a 24 hour week" and "which will help mother tend the children, cook the meals and issue reminders of appointments".

Apparently, some things were unimaginable back then.
posted by mudpuppie at 9:48 AM on January 12, 2005

I want my 24 hour work week!
posted by miss lynnster at 10:09 AM on January 12, 2005

in the future there will be flying robot teachers.
posted by hellbient at 10:17 AM on January 12, 2005

Ah, yes, the sixties. Those were the days when women resembled guitars .
They were right about foodless foods (minus nutritional properties).

I recall an old Scientific American from the early sixties, with an ad for a desktop calculator, and another for a Porsche 911. You could have either one for about four grand.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 10:19 AM on January 12, 2005

Who'd thunk we'd be having a war in the 2000's?

Red vs Blue
posted by Hands of Manos at 10:21 AM on January 12, 2005

And who would have thought that war would be fought with lasers?
posted by Sibrax at 10:33 AM on January 12, 2005

Damn it...
posted by Sibrax at 10:34 AM on January 12, 2005

I want my 24 hour work week!
posted by miss lynnster at 10:09 AM PST on January 12

Yeah!

And I want my flying car too!!
posted by nofundy at 10:42 AM on January 12, 2005

Glamorous undies!
posted by bardic at 10:42 AM on January 12, 2005

You'll have wall-to-wall global TV, an indoor swimming pool, TV-telephones and room-to-room TV. Press a button and you can change the décor of a room.

Indoor swimming pool? What, did they think we would all be fuckin' millionaires?
posted by puke & cry at 10:46 AM on January 12, 2005

I love stuff like this. Great link. If only they had predicted dancing Martians.
posted by goatdog at 10:51 AM on January 12, 2005

I want my jetpack! And my robot servants! What happened to them?
posted by SisterHavana at 10:53 AM on January 12, 2005

I'll start listening to experts when I get my damned flying car.
posted by borkingchikapa at 10:57 AM on January 12, 2005

I want Moore's law to apply to cars. That Porsche 911 would cost $2 today.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 11:12 AM on January 12, 2005 [2 favorites]

Nobody thought of the pr0n. Didn't these people have the vision to imagine that so many minds would solve the problem of how to see naked coochie 24/7 and to how to keep your johnson hard for a week??
posted by spicynuts at 11:13 AM on January 12, 2005

Uh.... am I the only person here to have taken one look at that and called Photoshop?
posted by jokeefe at 11:17 AM on January 12, 2005

These things are always entertaining, but don't they force you to wonder why some of them are so laughable and some are not? And what accurate predictions we can make now, allowing for something being discovered that's completely unexpected (e.g. antigravity)?

For example: the amount of energy we can get out of a small volume is limited, so we'll probably never have practical jet packs. There a big areas of the earth that are more hospitable (air, gravity, proximity to water) than orbit or the moon, so we'll probably never have 5% of the population off-planet. Artificial Intelligence is hard, so we probably won't have C3PO androids, but we are progessing with small insect-like machines that might do your cleaning.
posted by alasdair at 11:22 AM on January 12, 2005

Do you KNOW how high they were when they wrote this thing? Hoppicopters, solar ovens, pshew! And in '61, all the drugs they were doing were LEGAL!

Damn, but I miss the future.
posted by chicobangs at 11:31 AM on January 12, 2005

Um, sorry. This is all wrong. This is what life will be like in the future.

Also, Everyone heads through life in their own way. You will notice that the inline skater is sailing along in a different world. He uses his inline skates the way you can use your computer.

Now that's the FUTURE!
posted by OhPuhLeez at 11:52 AM on January 12, 2005

your damned flying car is ready...
posted by hellbient at 12:02 PM on January 12, 2005

Uh.... am I the only person here to have taken one look at that and called Photoshop?

No, the copyright 1999 at the bottom gave it away for me, though.
posted by aclevername at 12:19 PM on January 12, 2005

I've read a legit one of these, in a book about computers from 1970. Even that late in the decade, it was still enthusing about how Mother will use the computer terminal in her home to prepare her shopping list. As if that was a process so convoluted that only a 64K supercomputer could solve it.

In neither case did anyone make the leap that the useful part of computer-aided-groceries would be delivery.
posted by nev at 12:53 PM on January 12, 2005

Medically induced growth of amputated limbs will be possible.

Thanks to the president, this possibility is illegal...
posted by Pacheco at 1:10 PM on January 12, 2005

I don't think the copyright at the end means that this stuff was WRITTEN in 1999, that's just when the article (or the posting of the article or whatever) was copywritten in 1999.

It says the article is from a 1961 issue of Weekend magazine, and I don't see anything here that contradicts that.
posted by braun_richard at 1:37 PM on January 12, 2005

In the future our bodies will be shrivelled up but our brains will be bigger.

posted by barjo at 2:27 PM on January 12, 2005

braun_richard, please put the curtain back the way you found it.
caddis has some snake oil to sell.
posted by chicobangs at 2:36 PM on January 12, 2005

JETCAR...if only I'd had this to deliver pizza with in HS....mad tips, yo!
posted by garfield at 2:58 PM on January 12, 2005

I work across the street from the Moeller flying car people. I have seen it with my own eyes.

About 18 mos ago, they vastly improved the muffler. It's no longer earth-shaking (in the literal sense).
posted by mudpuppie at 3:01 PM on January 12, 2005

Even that late in the decade, it was still enthusing about how Mother will use the computer terminal in her home to prepare her shopping list.

70s? Pish! The people at Honeywell were on that in the sixties. They made a "Kitchen Computer" with a cutting board attached!
posted by absalom at 3:03 PM on January 12, 2005

they lied to us
this was
supposed to be
the future
where is my jetpack,
where is my robotic companion,
where is my dinner in pill form,
where is my hydrogen fueled automobile,
where is my nuclear powered levitating house,

where is my cure for this disease
posted by gren at 3:13 PM on January 12, 2005

Garbage will be refrigerated.

Heh. People have been leaving their leftover take-out Chinese (aka "garbage") in the refrigerator since refrigerators were invented!
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 4:24 PM on January 12, 2005

We're trapped in a world before later on...
posted by ruddhist at 4:36 PM on January 12, 2005

garbage will be refrigerated? ... hell, by this weekend, mine's going to be frozen

nev, back in the 30s and 40s, groceries actually were delivered to the home without computers ... and dairy products were as late as the 60s

it's an interesting thing how cultures don't change as fast as technology does
posted by pyramid termite at 4:38 PM on January 12, 2005

I want a hoppicopter! Whatever it is, I want one.
posted by penguin pie at 4:48 PM on January 12, 2005

That t-shirt has the added benefit of forcing those who wish to read it to come up to you and look very closely in order to make out the small text. Just so you know...
posted by deanc at 6:56 PM on January 12, 2005

I-i-i-i-i-t's bogus. But I can tell you, the people of 1960 did not anticipate one, stinkin' little thing about the year 2000 correctly. They knew nothing. Just as the world 40 years from now will be NOTHING like we expect it will be. Tomorrow, January 14, in fact, will be nothing like anyone expects.
posted by Faze at 6:40 PM on January 13, 2005

So far there's been nothing unexpected about January 14th. (eastern time hereabouts...)
posted by dmd at 9:39 PM on January 13, 2005

aaaaaarrrraaaarrgghhghgh.... so many eyes....
posted by dmd at 9:40 PM on January 13, 2005