Future Visions
Food Pills, Mouth Pieces and Castles in the Air
This post is also available in: German
100 years ago a few experts wrote down how they expected the future to be like – the future we live in today, that is. Apart from a few curiosities they came up with some accurate descriptions of Amazon, Skype or smartphones.
“On New Years Day 2009 (…) a conspiracy will erupt across the planet. In the first violent act of their revolution students 20 to 30 years of age will drive all journalists into huge deportation zeppelins and ship them to Mars.”Ellen Key:
”Women a Hundred Years From Now“
Journalists shipped to Mars by a mob – it reads like a PEGIDA-fan’s dream, but it is taken from a book that came out in 1910. In “The World a Hundred Years from Now” a good dozen authors reflect on the future, i.e. on the time we live in today.
At the beginning of the 21st century we feed ourselves exclusively with food pills. Alcohol, caffeine and tobacco have been abolished. Messages are sent via “Air Trumpet” (nice name for WhatsApp). People live on artificial islands (so far so good) – pulled by whales. Rich families live in the clouds, no less, and are connected to the earth via sky elevators.
The Future that never was
There are plenty of ideas that do sound quite plausible, though, and that makes you wonder why some of them didn’t become reality. Universal time, for example, in order to get rid of the problems caused by different time zones. Being able to cast a ballot at election time from any place on Earth. Foreigners are compatriots, because advancements such as air travel have turned Man into a cosmopolitan.
The most remarkable part are all the devices and developments that the book describes with amazing accuracy: From the Smartphone to “Energiewende” the visionaries of the early Nineteenhundreds landed a few remarkable hits, considering that they lived at a time when urban traffic still consisted mostly of horse-drawn carriages, and the electric bulb and the first motion picture were just about 15 years old. The telephone was still a luxury. The Wright brothers went on their first motorized flight. Henry Ford had just started making the first “cars for everyone”.
The Book as Free Download
I hope you will have as much fun reading this as I had in putting it together. Thanks to the Gutenberg project you can have a look at the original texts and illustrations here, if you read German fracture script (just kidding). One American author, Hudson Maxim, is quoted in the original that was translated into German at the time.
The Smartphone
“The citizens of the Wireless Age will have their “receivers” with them wherever they go. They will be attached somewhere to their person, be it at the hat or elsewhere, and they will be tuned to a myriad of vibrations that the individual is seeking a connection to. Wherever he will be, he will only have to point the dial to the number he desires to speak to, and the other party will immediately feel their receiver vibrating or send a signal right away. Of course it will be up to them if they want to listen or break off the connection.”
“As long as he doesn’t leave the inhabited and civilized quarters, he will not need to also carry a “sending device”, because there will be “sending stations” on every road, in every omnibus, on every boat, every airship, and on every train ( … )”
“On the way to his office and back he will no longer have to strain his eyes with reading a newspaper, for on the subway, or on the commuter train, on the omnibus or wherever else he may be riding, or even if he walks, he will be able to connect to the “spoken newspaper” and he will receive all the day’s news, all political events and all stock prices he desires.”
“( … ) strictly speaking it is not much more than an ingenious combination of the cinematograph, the telautograph, the telephone and whatever else we have called all those great preceding inventions.”
(Robert Sloss: “Das drahtlose Jahrhundert“ = “The Wireless Century“ apparently the German text has to be considered as the original here, even though this author was American)
Autonomous Vehicles
“Travel will also be miraculously different in the Wireless Century: Enormous speed will be coupled with splendid safety. The “wireless engineers” have already not only invented the Aerophore [sic] but they have also perfected it in such a way that an automatic signaling device will automatically indicate to a train driver if another train is running on the same track in only about two English miles’ distance. Of course the device will also indicate in which direction the other train is moving. That way both train drivers will be able to slow down their trains or to stop altogether or to steer their trains to a different track. In any case it will be quite impossible for them to collide.”
“The same apparatus will warn the sailor of dense fog and will announce to him any other vessel either crossing his course or coming straight at him. Any other obstacle in his way will also be accurately signaled by the device, including the exact distance to his vessel. The device was even constructed in such a way that it will not only give a stop signal to the engine room, but it will also make the engines automatically come to a standstill as soon as it has signaled [any danger].”
(Robert Sloss: “Das drahtlose Jahrhundert“ = “The Wireless Century“)
Amazon
“Shopping will be even more pleasurable than it is today. Anyone will be able to wander through department stores while sitting in a room, and stop at whatever merchandise you want to examine more closely, or that you may wish to buy.”
“And everything will be displayed before you looking very real, because of course all images will be rendered in their natural color. “
“( … ) We request a telautophonic connection to Paquin’s, select a bridal outfit, transmit ( … ) measurements and have the dress delivered by a wireless air engine.”
(Robert Sloss: “Das drahtlose Jahrhundert“ = “The Wireless Century“)
The Demise of the Newspaper
“It has to be noted that newspapers no longer existed in 2009. All news traffic, including that from Mars was transmitted via a broad network of wireless telegraphy that every private building owned by modestly wealthy people had access to.”
(Karl Peters: “Die Kolonien in 100 Jahren“ = “The Colonies 100 Years from Now)
Skype
“Lovers and married couples will no longer be separated, even when there is a distance of hundreds or thousands of miles between them. They will always be able to see each other, to talk to each other, in short, it will be a time of bliss and love, there will be no more grass widows; in the future a physical wife will always be able to see what her husband is up to, and the husband in turn will be able to know how and if his wife is constantly thinking about him.”
(Robert Sloss: “Das drahtlose Jahrhundert“ = “The Wireless Century“)
Movies, TV and Computer Animation
“Every little village will have its theater, but the actors will live and play in New York, London, or Paris. The country stage will be a screen, and “Hamlet,” played in London, will be transmitted by teleview, telephone, and telharmonium and reproduced upon the stage screen at Chautauqua.”
(Hudson Maxim: Machine Made Millenium)
“For public entertainment concerts without musicians and theaters without actors have been instituted by [the general sense of] social responsibility. Pianolas, phonographs and puppets have been perfected in such a phenomenal way that you only need electric switches in order to trigger an enjoyment of the arts.”
(Ellen Key:”Die Frau in hundert Jahren“ = ”Women a Hundred Years From Now“)
Die Energiewende*
“At the present rate of coal-consumption all those great stores of carbon that the sun stored up for us in the carboniferous period will be exhausted in a few generations. Not only this, but we are also burning up our air, as Lord Kelvin has shown us. Every ton of coal consumed renders unfit for breathing twelve tons of air. So that, even if we had coal enough to last us indefinitely, we should not have enough oxygen in the air to burn it up, but should fill the air with carbonic acid gas to suffocation.”
“Possibly we shall invent some motor which will utilize efficiently the heat of the solar rays. ( … ) Water-power is an indirect utilization of the heat of the solar rays.”
(Hudson Maxim: Machine Made Millenium)
The Minimum Wage
“Wages will largely be negotiated in public. Public Wage Offices made up from representatives of the general public and of the various trades will determine minimum wages, and they will give legal authority to wage tariffs that will also be considered as minimum wages. In the same way they will set up regulations concerning the number of hours worked per day in public and private enterprises. All this can be predicted with great certainty as a result of the victory of labor democracy, which already exists in its infancy today and will continue to be developed step by step.”
(Ed Bernstein: “Das soziale Leben in 100 Jahren” = “Social Life 100 Years From Now”)
Women’s Emancipation
“All men and women have divided up their day into four equal segments: six hours for sleeping, six hours for working the electric buttons, six hours in parliament and six hours of social life.”
“The male and the female type will have become amalgamated to such a high degree that it will only be by certain differences in clothing, kept for reasons of convenience, that the sexes can be told apart.”
(Ellen Key:”Die Frau in hundert Jahren“ = ”Women a Hundred Years From Now“)
“The more Woman will penetrate the realm of activity [presently reserved for] Man, the more diverse her activities will become in public life ( … ), the more strongly Woman will come after Man and will partake in a stronger beard growth for the same reasons. Today about 10% of women are said to have stronger beard growth already; this percentage will rise continuously and in an admittedly far-away future the beard will no longer be the attribute of Man.”
(Friedrich Knauer: “Das neue Jahrhundert” = “The New Century”)
Drones
“The warfare of the future will be like a chess tournament. Every move will be under the eyes of the world, for concealment and secret maneuvers will be impossible. Newspapers will have their aerial scouts hovering over camp and fleet and field, and every move of ocean craft or land squadron will be reproduced on maps in every stock-exchange and newspaper office throughout the world, and each move will be the study, plan, and conjecture of thousands of observers.”
(Hudson Maxim: Machine Made Millenium)
“The commander-in-chief will not have to wait for his reports too tell him how the battle is going, but he will be able to overlook the whole battlefield. What’s more, he will not just see that one battle field, but the whole country where military operations are taking place. He will even be able to give direct marching orders not only to the whole army, but also to smaller contingents.
Decisions will be made according to the evidence seen by his commander’s eye alone; for in his quarters ( … ) everything will be visible to him, his army’s moves as well as those of the enemy.
Reporting will have reached an extraordinarily high level, of course, because the smallest small-town rag and its subscribers will be able to indulge in the luxury of following events directly from their room and see them in all detail.”
(Robert Sloss: “Das drahtlose Jahrhundert“ = “The Wireless Century“)
The Cold War
“We presently own powers of destruction in such a magnitude that any struggle between two contestants would amount to nothing less than mutual suicide. If you can pulverize any mass of people or of buildings by just pressing a button, no matter how far away you are from them, then I don’t know which strategic or tactical rules should apply to a duel that is fought between two peoples with those means.”
(Bertha von Suttner: “Der Frieden in 100 Jahren” = “Peace 100 Years From Now”)
The European Union
“All European states, bar none, will form a community of states a hundred years from now. This will exclude the option of war between two states, the way it is unthinkable today that there is a war between the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Kingdom of Prussia or the German Reich. Increasing air travel has created such a mass of common interests and needs that a hundred years from now this community of states will have a joint European parliament and a joint European legislation. Through this joint legislation and because of the constitution of the European community of states any war between European states will not only be expressly prohibited, but downright impossible.”
(Rudolf Martin: “Der Krieg in 100 Jahren” = “War 100 Years From Now”))
Illustrations: Ernst Lübbert
Related blogposts: