
Visit to the World's Fair of 2014 (1964) - adora
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/23/lifetimes/asi-v-fair.html
======
burlesona
That was an interesting read. Many things wrong, but many things right, and
perhaps nothing so sobering as the closing thoughts:

> Even so, mankind will suffer badly from the disease of boredom, a disease
> spreading more widely each year and growing in intensity. This will have
> serious mental, emotional and sociological consequences, and I dare say that
> psychiatry will be far and away the most important medical specialty in
> 2014. The lucky few who can be involved in creative work of any sort will be
> the true elite of mankind, for they alone will do more than serve a machine.

> Indeed, the most somber speculation I can make about A.D. 2014 is that in a
> society of enforced leisure, the most glorious single word in the vocabulary
> will have become work!

~~~
NikolaeVarius
A goddamn Nostradamus

------
pmoriarty
1 - Glowing ceilings and walls - not really, most people still use separate
light fixtures

2 - Windows mostly obsolete - no

3 - Polarized glass in windows - kind of - mostly no, though some exist

4 - Opacity of glass changing based on light intensity - yes, but rare

5 - Underground housing - yes, but rare

6 - "Light-forced vegetable gardens" \- yes, but rare

7 - Surface of the Earth used only for large-scale agriculture, grazing and
parklands - no

8 - Kitchen gadgets - yes

9 - Robots with computers minituarized to serve as their "brains" \- yes

10 - Trash picking and gardening robots - yes

11 - 3D movies - yes

12 - Waiting in line for movies - yes

13 - All appliances lack electrical cords - no

14 - Appliances "powered by long-lived batteries running on radioisotopes" \-
no

15 - Fission power supplies "well over half of the power needs of humanity" \-
no

16 - Experimental fusion power plant - no? (experiments with fusion power yes,
but no power plants, afaik)

17 - Large solar-power stations - yes

18 - Power stations in space - no

19 - Road building factories - no

20 - "crowded highways along which long buses move on special central lanes"
\- no

21 - "ground travel will increasingly take to the air a foot or two off the
ground" \- no

22 - Aquafoil - kind of - these exist but are of very limited use

23 - Jets of compressed air lifting land vehicles off the highways - no

24 - Self-driving cars - yes

25 - Moving sidewalks downtown - no

26 - "Compressed air tubes will carry goods and materials" \- no

27 - Video calls - yes

28 - Screens for studying documents and photographs and reading passages from
books - yes

29 - Global satelite communication - yes

30 - Moon colonies - no

31 - GM creating "large soft tires intended to negotaiate the uneven terrain
that may exist [on the moon]" \- no

32 - Communication between Earth and moon via laser beams - no

33 - Plans for a manned expedition to Mars - yes

34 - Models of an elaborate Martian colony - kind of

35 - "Wall screens will have replaced the ordinary [TV set]" \- no

36 - Transparent cubes for 3D viewing - no (though VR might qualify as being
similar enough)

37 - World and US population predictions - yes

38 - Underwater housing - no

39 - Underwater cities - no

40 - Micro-organism factories for efficient food production - no

41 - Food made of yeast and algae - kind of (algae yes, though not popular...
yeast, not so much)

42 - "algae bar", "mock-turkey", "pseudosteak" \- yes

43 - Mechanical replacements for hearts and kidneys - yes

44 - Life expectancy in some parts of the world at 85 - yes

45 - Worldwide propaganda drive in favor of birth control - yes

46 - Rate of population growth has been reduced compared to 1964 - yes

47 - World Population Control Center - no

48 - Mankind has become "largely a race of machine tenders" \- no

49 - Schools with closed-circuit TVs and programmed instructional tapes - yes

50 - All high-school students taught computer fundamentals - yes

51 - Mankind suffers badly from "the disease of boredom" \- kind of, for some

52 - Psychiatry is "far and away the most important medical specialty" \- no

53 - We live in a society of "enforced leisure" \- no

\---

Totals:

Yes - 22

No - 26

Kind of - 5

~~~
gshdg
Huh, I would count #35 as a yes, fwiw. They may not be built into the wall,
but from the perspective of someone from 1964, today’s large flat panel TVs
are basically wall screens.

And #50 as a no. High school students learn to operate computers, but the vast
majority do not learn binary or programming.

~~~
barbecue_sauce
I would argue learning how to operate a computer does constitute computer
_fundamentals_. Programming is more advanced.

~~~
gshdg
A matter of how one interprets the original, I guess?

> All the high-school students will be taught the fundamentals of computer
> technology will become proficient in binary arithmetic and will be trained
> to perfection in the use of the computer languages that will have developed
> out of those like the contemporary "Fortran".

------
jjw1414
Pretty close on the populations. The moon colonies, not so much.

“In 2014, there is every likelihood that the world population will be
6,500,000,000 and the population of the United States will be 350,000,000.
Boston-to-Washington, the most crowded area of its size on the earth, will
have become a single city with a population of over 40,000,000”.

