
What Will Life Be Like in the Year 2008? - pg
http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2008/03/24/what-will-life-be-like-in-the-year-2008/
======
DaniFong
_People have more time for leisure activities in the year 2008. The average
work day is about four hours. But the extra time isn’t totally free. The pace
of technological advance is such that a certain amount of a jobholder’s spare
time is used in keeping up with the new developments, on the average, about
two hours of home study a day._

Intriguingly, this is probably true. The difference is that 'home study of new
developments' actually just takes place at work, and the 8 hour workday is
still going strong, if only as an illusion.

The pattern seems to be that the predictions for technology, especially
anything requiring complicated physics or engineering, are wildly inaccurate,
while the predictions for social, organizational, or behavioral change are
either on the money, or too conservative.

Since consumer programs are usually meant to aid existing behaviors, the
authors predictions don't overshoot the mark by nearly so much.

Sometimes, social institutions are completely ignored as subjects of change.

"Other conveniences ease kitchenwork. The housewife simply determines in
advance her menus for the week, then slips prepackaged meals into the freezer
and lets the automatic food utility do the rest. At preset times, each meal
slides into the microwave oven and is cooked or thawed. The meal then is
served on disposable plastic plates. These plates, as well as knives, forks
and spoons of the same material, are so inexpensive they can be discarded
after use."

How quaint. What on earth is said 'the housewife' supposed to do? _not be a
housewife_ , perhaps?

~~~
gills
To paraphrase: "in the future, we will be able to consume more than we
produce."

The physics and engineering are fuzzy because nobody with the requisite
knowledge would proclaim such a thing.

~~~
pchristensen
I think that the "we" means the average Joe and Jane Schmoes, not the
aggregate society. Or maybe we just outsourced out production to other, poorer
countries that _don't_ have domed cities and still vacation on land.

~~~
blogimus
Maybe. All I know is that I've outsourced my consumption to wealthier people.

------
pg
"When you see what you want, you press a number that signifies “buy,” and the
household computer takes over, places the order, notifies the store of the
home address and subtracts the purchase price from your bank balance."

One-click online ordering in 1968. The only difference is that the info is
stored on the client rather than the server. This makes it pretty clear how
badly the Amazon patent fails the nonobviousness test.

~~~
river_styx
Eventually the legal world will catch up with technology, and those kind of
silly patents will be no more.

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
We can only hope...

------
pmsaue0
It's 8 a.m. Monday August 25, 2008, you are headed to your cubicle 30 miles
away. You throw your briefcase into your Camry, throw yesterday's Starbucks
cup behind the driver's seat, turn on the radio to Bob and Tom in the morning.
The car accelerates to 40 mph in the city's suburbs, then hits 45 mph in the
less built-up areas. You lurch past endless strings of billboards and strip
malls. Traffic is heavy, but there is no need worry -- it has been like this
forever. Suddenly your cell-phone buzzes. A business associate wants a sketch
of a new kind of impeller your firm is putting our for sports boats. You hit
silent. You hate that he calls you before you get to work.

Ninety minutes after leaving your home, you arrive at your office. You
silently organize your desk and then watch 30 break.com videos. You think,
it's so wonderful to be alive in 2008.

~~~
Agathos
(that looks like fun...)

Medical research has marginally improved the chance that babies born in the
21st century will live long and healthy lives, assuming their parents have
health insurance. Heart disease has become an epidemic as people consume more
high-calorie, processed foods and get much less exercise, thanks to the
innovations described above. If hearts or other major organs do give trouble,
the patient may be lucky enough to get a transplant, if he doesn't die waiting
for a donor.

Medical examinations are a matter of sitting in a waiting room for an hour or
two, then receiving a five-minute examination that is similar to one performed
in 1968, but much more hurried. Blood and urine samples will be analyzed in
the lab later that day, but by that time the patient is back in his cubicle
and the doctor, who regrets every day that he went into primary care, will not
be paid to bring him back and discuss the results in person.

------
gaius
_Many families reserve time on a city or regional computer to serve their
needs._

That looks quaint to us, but at the same time we're busily shoveling
everything we can into the cloud.

~~~
KirinDave
Touche! We managed to liberate our data and computation from big blue and then
all we can think about is putting it back!

But maybe the difference is that we're all packing supercomputer heat at home
and super-extra-duper-distributed-computers up in the cloud. Most futuretalk
articles from back in the day always assumed the equivalent of a dumb
terminal, and even well after Moore's law was established very few people
seemed to realize those implications for the average home's computing power.

------
prakash
_The average work day is about four hours._

Take that 37signals ;-)

------
petercooper
If you like this sort of stuff, also:

The Usborne Book Of The Future
[http://www.pointlessmuseum.com/museum/usbornebookofthefuture...](http://www.pointlessmuseum.com/museum/usbornebookofthefutureindex.php)

It has excellent illustrations and is, as far as I can tell, a lot closer to
reality than this other one.

~~~
Agathos
I still have my copy of Star Travel somewhere. I loved that book.

------
notauser
<http://www.paleofuture.com/> is a great source for this kind of stuff.

------
dangoldin
Surprising how accurate the predictions are for computers but entirely off for
other technologies.

~~~
jodrellblank
"Yeah", he replied using his pencil-thin infrared flashlight input device.

------
ca98am79
and life in 2048? Kurzweil predicts the Singularity occurs around 2045.

~~~
jodrellblank
It's Monday August 25th, 2048. You are old. Kids around you are fed up of your
stories with no point, your failed dreams of longevity, rejuvenation and
mental uploading sound like all fifty year old future predictions have ever
done. There is technology everywhere, but like I said, you're old and it's all
Greek to you (and after the cheap nervous system splice, you can't stop your
hands shaking enough to coherently access the menus and change it back). Your
colleagues aren't phoning you to ask for a boat impeller design as
magnetohydrodrives became popular after the rise of the room temperature
semiconductor and your firm went under a dozen years ago. There is still no
one-pill-meal and the first moon base plans (all autonomic) are only 3 to 5
years from approval by the Brazilian Government.

The eleventy o'clock bell rings. Everyone stops what they are doing and
switches to the two-minute-hate channel for a good rant and to diffuse a
daysworth of anger. Today's figure was picked for raising hopes too high and
contributing to the misery of millions. It's Ray Kurzweil. You vent your
spleen all over (there's surgery that can fix that now, but you couldn't
afford it if you sold your left kidney, assuming you hadn't already done so).

Amazingly, you do live in a dome-covered city. It's stiflingly hot and muggy
year round.

