Futurist From 1922 Makes Weirdly Accurate Predictions For 2022
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- čas přidán 28. 09. 2022
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Written by WL George for the New York Herald May 7th 1922:
www.loc.gov/resource/sn830457...
Edited by Manuel Rubio
Music from Epidemic Sound/Artlist
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My great grandfather dressed exactly like your great grandfather .
@@williamparks867 Predictions concerning resources all turned out to be wrong - the technology for mining and drilling has unlocked materials that were either unknown or impossible to reach. Same thing goes for agriculture. Many futurists predicted that there wouldn't be enough food for everyone well before now.
If cars ran on water in would cost five dollars a gallon.
He Is Correct XD
I'm curious just who this Futurist was
It's pretty crazy that a guy from 100 years in the past did your sponsor reading for you while describing the future.
You have to plan such marketing campaigns in advance. It's a part of long term investment.
Bruh 💀
Hah!
😂😂😂😂
He got about 50-60% of his predictions right... not the thing about human intelligence tho...
"Austria may unite with Germany"
Oh boy was he in for a doozy
Well we have tryed that and we are pretty much fead up with that Idea.
They are both members of the European Union, doesn't that count?
@@stekra3159 that's the joke.
@@thomaskalbfus2005 the European Union is just mitten Germany only unified via economic power rather than military power
@@GuinessOriginal true but Ukraine might eventually give Germany a run for its money it it joins the EU.
"Austria and Germany might have united"
Yea umm...that happened a bit sooner than he might have thought and it wasn't to last.
But one could argue that they are united now as parts of the EU.
Well in 1922 that is a totally reasonable prediction anyway because Austria desperately wanted to unite with Germany directly after WWI but were not allowed the chance. He couldn't have predicted the massive rise of totalitarianism (even the March on Rome didn't happen until later that year) and that this is the reason why they were united and the Anschluss referendum wasn't exactly fair but even in 1938 most Austrians genuinely supported unification. Therefore you could conclude that when the bad blood from the war between the defeated nations and the victorious Britain and France dies down, the two countries could unite and remain together
A lot of this has been “yeah that happened, but in a more pessimistic way”
@@vardaangandhi9237 unfortunatly eu, still is not as powerful as uniting body. I can not deny it's achivments, but european politics is still a can of spiders. So... Austria and Germany are still different countries with common interests that keep them alligned.
@@EnSayne987 I wouldn't say most supported reunification, otherwise why would the Germans need to rig the election
Impressive. Predictions like this only come from people that understand history and society in a much deeper level.
Touché
or part of a society which is doing everything to create such a scenario
@@NUTZJ98 I've seen that most futurist predictions not only of that time but even from now are utopic and exaggerated. This is why this one particularly comes as a surprised because it is doing a more careful and nuanced approach to this. Obviously it is not 100% precise but it is more accurate than most. I bet you couldn't predict how is it going to be 25 years from now let alone 100 years.
@@_ata_3 _" I've seen that most futurist predictions not only of that time but even from now are utopic and exaggerated. "_
I completely understand your viewpoint. People always seem so optimistic. There's tons of people today that really think we'll live in a utopia in the future. Just look at those tech bro dudes that think singularity will make us immortal gods. They really think in the future humans won't have to work, we would have eradicated every disease, and that robots will do every demand from us.
Man I wish someone had actually written down all of the predictions I would like to read them in a long style format
I like that this guy says that alot of old buildings will remain, because you see alot in future predictions (be it genuine speculation or scifi) that entire cities are completely new. I think alot of futurists forget that "if it ain't broke don't fix it" is by far the cheapest and most practical philosophy
They tore down a church in france some time ago, and replaced it with glass building. Shame.
funny old buildings and things are built better than modern ones. except in places like the PNW who disregarded thousands of years of native knowledge about major earthquakes with a near uniform number hundreds of years between the events. they simply saw no immediate evidence and thought they knew better right up until the 80s and 90s. no we as re due for one and know for certain near everything built here will buckle.
my point is, there isn't much that's new about humanity, we are predictable to screw certain things up over and over.
Holy shit it's d b cooper
@@australopithecus_lucis I'm alive don't narc
It’s actually incredible how much was already discovered and invented by 1922
It often seems to me like a lot of the past century has been improving & perfecting the discoveries of the previous century.
My mother was born into a horse-and-buggy world in 1922; people had cars, phones, electricity, and indoor plumbing, but not everywhere, and not in her rural community. By 20 years later, her brothers-in-law were "saving the world for democracy" in Europe. She was living in the city with modern conveniences, watching those talkie movies in color on her weekends. WWII made everybody cosmopolitan. There were _Italian restaurants!_ 😏☺ So exotic....
In fact, pick any 20 year period; look back to the beginning and forward to the end, and I'll bet you can see how your younger self could not have predicted what actually happened. Who would have known in 2002 that this is where we'd be? I wouldn't.
Human history is tens of millennia old...
That was only 100 years ago..... you realize humans have had civilization for over 4000 years, right? Oh wait, I forgot, nothing existed 100 years ago and virtually everything came into existence just recently
@@mistermoo7602 Don't have a cow, man! But, yes, it's to be expected that the Haves will keep the HaveNots down...Why risk their fortune?
I don't know......to be on the ground floor of that Sun supplying all the Energy we'll ever need thing!?
My great great grandmother, who died 102 years ago, described taking her first ride in a Model T Ford. A neighbor picked her up to go into town to vote in the local election. She said she was so amazed by her ride in a horseless carriage that she talked about it for days.
She died 102 years ago, you have no idea what she said.
@@Tolbat She wrote it in her diary genius. My family still has it.
@@kollow Perhaps you can give the diary for narration on Voices from the Past. It might be interesting to hear the perspective of an ordinary person 100 years ago about the first ride on a car.
Great great grandma?
Mine lived before 102 years ago but despite living in the second Reich, they have never even seen a car.
My great great grandma died like 30 years ago 😶
One of my great grandmas is still alive, two of them just dying 3 years ago.
He starts by correctly assuming our emotions and sociology wouldn't be much different, but then most of his incorrect predictions are where everyone decides to live in massive communes with children raised by the government.
He was a system builder Labour thinker and novelist from the era of HG Wells, Aldox Huxley, Lenin, and the early Italian fascist economists. His hypothetical thinking wasn't far from theirs.
Remember that in 1922 proper Brits send their lads off to boarding school to be raised collectively. He imagined this to keep expanding into a universal idea for all boys...and even girls...run by the government. If the US style public schools or UK compulsory schools had dorms.
This is still the dream of the "elites" at the WEF.
To be fair, living in massive communities with the children being raised by all of them is the historical order of things -- clans or tribes in pre-agriculture and villages or community in agricultural societies. Third-world countries today also tend to have large extended families and tribal groups beyond them.
Tbf we might live to see these things and depending on how you think about it, it’s all ready happening
To be fair, all of those concepts were associated with Communism, and the anti/communism trend of the century was a total 180 for idealists
This man just earned so much respect from me, not necessarily from the predictions themselves (though they are quite close in some cases) but the way he talks about them and about predictions. That ending statement was amazing!
Yes my thoughts exactly the end was absolutely incredible
This guy had extreme insight. I wouldn't absolutely be capable of doing anything like that for 2122 and indeed the very idea frightens me - I'd probably end up depicting a Mad Max-like scenario, in my desperate pessimism.
With any luck because I’ve had enough of this circus
I feel your pain: I'm torn between an eerie post-nuclear war and a very unlikely eco-communist utopia.
A mad max scenario is nicer than the described gilded cage.
@@LuisAldamiz Going back to simpler times would be great, going backwards to go forwards.
If everyone thinks it will be Mad Max then they are predestining themselves to Mad Max.
1922 guy got a few things comedically wrong, but mostly was pretty dang close. Obviously a very sharp dude.
I definitely couldn't do the same for 2122. Hats off.
Men will be women, up will be down…. And thankfully we won’t be around to see it. Lol.
it's a woman
In 100 years in the future It will mostly be the same as now just some slight differences in technology.
Way more wrong than right.
Like if we going 1 for 1.
@amp2193 compared to the rest of predictions of the future made at that time, he got a lot of right.
He was remarkably presicent. He's one of the few futurists that (mostly) understood that future structures and technologies often supplement other existing forms, rather than completely replacing them in a short time (unless those older ways are absurdly inefficient, dirty and costly).
He had a bit of a blind spot for the relationship between capital and labor. He assumed a favorable political environment for antitrust action would persist forever, and that workers would broadly share in the wealth of the future. I'm sure he would be depressed to discover that these relationships are more like a pendulum, with that pendulum shifting in favor of the interests of capital by 2022.
He would have been happy to realize that his mistaken belief that communism and socialism were good would not be taken up by states once the problem was realized. He would then have quickly updated to realize that without the resources of space mining, the unfortunate limitations and drawbacks of corporate capitalism would play out precisely as they did. If he would be sad, I very much doubt he would be surprised.
He did not predict Hitler or Stalin. I think he lived long enough to see that it would be different than he first wrote.
Steampunk Communism Lite was very very popular as a science fiction ideal that had not been physically debunked by real world experience in the year 1922.
In the year 1922 the Communists were hoping to save history as much as the French had. Knowing that it would at first be some unfortunate mistakes of excessive violence, they hoped it would at least lead to worthwhile progress.
This was not the case at all for the Soviet Union. All they proved was that Capitalism was the best we could come up with technologically speaking, and Star Trek was as fantastic as Arthurian Legend, including heroes and monsters that a rationalist would neither fear of or hope in.
Something as significant as space mining could potentially change the status quo of resources sufficiently to make it possible for more "lightsided" socialism to flourish again without being so terribly destructive. It would be greatly expensive for thoughts of redistribution and control to not be utterly disastrous, so it would require leaps of production capacity to rival the great Industrial Revolution of the 1800s. This could be accomplished but we are not there yet even with nuclear power.
He was utterly spot on perfectly in laying as a foundational point the significance of energy, but his mistakes began immediately when he was too optimistic how quickly energy might advance.
The steps are taking longer than he thought they might. I do not think he made the mistake you seem to think he did.
Whether his vision would be happy or good is rather moot, I think he perceives human nature well and guesses what we would choose to try to build, seeing what some people at least think they want.
He just expected the atom to be even more amazingly powerful than it is. He thought we would transfer power wirelessly! He was *correct* to see we would *try* ......but absurd to think 100 years was enough for *that*. Our cell phones are Still limited by cords for the time being.
This is not for lack of trying.
He is able to see past assuming that "what we want = what is good" and sees clearly simply nothing more or less than "what we want = what we will do" regardless of whether it is good or not.
It's extremely difficult to become that rational but it's required to guess the successive layers of consequences and the environment of interactions.
Anti trust is more popular than sex and has been, probably as soon as the ink dried on extending copyright to the benefit of exactly Mickey Mouse and practically nobody else.
Popularity is not truly the issue. The world economy is some 100s of trillions of dollars, and some breakthroughs to progress society simply cost quadrillions of dollars to truly achieve in a manner that fits with both people's will and the physical state of things at one and the same time to align it all up.
His predictions about the status of women in 2022 we're pretty incredible
He did consider himself as a feminist
@@toast-master-6663 Indeed, predictable portrayal as men as inferior in the family and women as perpetual victims yet somehow superior to men... pretty typical sexist anti-male attitude of a feminist.
Tesla predicted all the women would act like Queen Bees..
He Never Married...
It might had been Fun to have a Tesla junior..
Eh, not that great. He thought that the state’s ownership of children would lead to more children when in fact the demographic transition has meant fewer children. And while we send our kids to school, he believed they would be completely owned and raised by the state, which obviously has not happened.
Many of his predictions that were correct turned out to be only about 20 years away. “Talky” films in Technicolor were common by the 1940s and women were able to demonstrate their ability to work in formerly male positions due to wartime needs. Birth control took a bit longer, but it was a desired thing by the women’s movement even in his time.
In fact, most of the things he discussed were true by the 1960s. He had no concept of the Information Age and what effect that would have.
@@toast-master-6663 he dose not take account that Females are replaced by Trans.
His ideas about trust busting and short work hours in America make me feel sad.
Well, it turns out after 100 years of experimenting with the utopian vision of Marx, reality really doesn't work the way they think it does. Corporations which employ tens of thousands of people end up speaking for their interests the way labor unions do, and the politicians listen because they understand that the productivity is essential for society. When people make more goods and provide more services, everyone's quality of life goes up from cheaper access to these. Of course, on the more cynical side, big business oligarchs still buy politicians just like they did in the past, because government is still capable of functioning just like the mafia if you don't have honest and decent people running it.
And then going further to talk about how there won't be much wealth left to be acquired.
And having missed the climate crisis and beginning of a mass extinction.
Basically, even with those very accurate predictions, it still turned out worse than expected.
@@shipwreck9146 We're creating wealth at nearly an exponential rate. The amount of poor people in 1922 in the world massively dwarfed the amount today and that's even with our governments completely sabotaging the economy with lockdowns and over regulation. There's also no mass extinction or "climate crisis". They've been trying to alarm people about the climate since the 60s and have been completely wrong every step of the way. We're just constantly bombarded with lies and a big lie repeated often enough will become accepted as the truth.
What he said about people not working more than 7 hours a day is mostly true though in most cases at least in the West, besides some sad exceptions like crunch in the gaming industry. in the US It's often not more than 8 hours and many people might even work only 6 hours. My shift actually depends on how much there is to do, so sometimes I'm late but most of the time I'm actually early, so even though my shift is supposed to be 8 hours I often end up only going like 7 or 7 1/2.
@@shipwreck9146 The "climate crisis" is the least of the things you should be worried about when it comes to a "mass extinction". When you have a supposed US Climate Czar riding a private jet to one of his meetings and have the richest billionaires buying up farmlands, you know something else is happening behind the scenes
Interesting how he predicted the fall of the monarchies that survived and the survival of the monarchies that fell.
that was hardly a prediction, actually it wasnt a prediction at all. WW1 basically destroyed absolutist monarchies and ushed in the final decline of monarchs as leaders with actual power
He predicted both Sweden and Great Britain to remain monarchies, which they did.
1:30 It's true, my house is haunted by a terrifying little girl from 1922 whose demonic presence seeks only madness and death, and when I showed her my iphone she just kinda shrugged.
relatable
This was shockingly accurate as far as predictions go over such a long time period. And he was spot on about someone from 1922 not being as shocked if brought to 2022 as if you brought someone from 1822 to 1922. The basis for a great many of our things already existed 100 years ago.
Well, that was charming: optimistic without being delusional. It made me feel better, somehow.
He died 4 years after writing this at the age of 43. From heart failure
Oh no! Too soon :(
I could write a 10,000 word essay and it would not convey any more information then your 14 just did.
"Movies will be more attractive!" - 1922
"Video games will have better graphics!" -2002
uncanny
He was mostly right but too optimistic. 😢
in some ways he was also very distopian. he predicted kids would be raised by the government
@@the1ultimatet1u49
Tbf, back then the government wasn't as shit back then. Still shit but not as much of a nightmare as it is now.
@@redline841 it was definitely worse at the time, they had much less transparency and got away with almost anything. while it can still feel this way today, it's nowhere near as extreme as it was back then
@@asdfoifhvjbkaos
Something something, government thought similar to me so I liked it. Plus less technology so you could hide away a while longer.
@@the1ultimatet1u49 kids ARE raised by the government. Unless you go to a private school or get homeschooled you spend most of your childhood at a government funded school learning a government approved curriculum by teachers who are paid by the government. Not only that but the parents will actually get in legal trouble if they dont send the kids there.
Insane how accurate some of this is
Huh? It was comically inaccurate
@@oldoddjobs You must have watched a different video.
The more things change, the more it stays the same.
And how ominous this is all when you really process it all.
@@oldoddjobs no it was pretty accurate tbh, even some things that haven’t happened yet but might within a few decades
I lived in a 1920’s apartment that had a maid’s quarters. Were hired domestic workers really that common? Seems crazy to me. I guess it really was the Gilded Age.
This is now the norm in places like India and South Africa, where there is a growing middle class that is prosperous enough to hire domestic workers to cook and clean.
But as more people get educated and more start earning degrees, the source of these domestic workers for the next generation will die out, which is what happened in the West as well
The gilded age was 30-40 years earlier
don't google how many filipina domestic workers are working overseas
Most slaves in the USA were housemaidens, and butlers. North and South had them in abundance.
@@AimlessSavant, "Most slaves in the USA were housemaidens, and butlers. North and South had them in abundance."
In 1922? I think you'll find the Yankees had a civil war about that about 60 years before that. Most of the other American republics ended slavery in the settlements of their wars of independence during the early 1800s. In part because the Republic of Haiti backed rebel forces in exchange for promises of ending slavery. In part because enslaved people were crucial in winning the wars of independence.
How many enslaved people in the US did domestic work depends on the place and period. Maybe you could make the case that the majority of enslaved people in New England in the 1600s did domestic work. But that was never the case in the rest of the US. Vast numbers of enslaved people were worked to death on cash crop plantations. Claiming otherwise is historical illiteracy at best, cynical lies at worst.
Imagine having to rip up your floor and replace it any time it got dirty. Much easier just to clean it! He was impressively close with a lot though
It sounds absurd and certainly more work than using a rug. But on the other hand our floor is currently covered in a vinyl mat that's a lot easier to clean than carpet and much easier to pull up and replace than the base flooring beneath it. So, I'd give partial credit for that one.
I'm so glad linoleum is making a return.
Think of a swiffer for cleaning the floors though. Wipe wipe wipe, peel off and replace.
Really fascinating perspective. His vision of a glassed over city and communal living sounds like a nightmare to me. I liked some of his ideas though. Some of them were very 1984.
Yeah, I got a slight hint that the writer was likely a person that viewed Socialism, or aspects of it, positively. Likely believed in Marx's argument that Socialism then Communism was the next step in human development. As at this time, there was a big interest in the idea, as it was relatively new, and the end of the Russian Revolution was nearing, which in the early years of the USSR, things looked pretty good under that system. And even in the early '30s there developed groups of people that advocated for Nazism in America, though those mostly died out(from my understanding) once it was reported what was actually going on in Germany. So it wouldn't surprise me much that a Futurist, from this time, would view the future as having some Socialist tendencies.
It reminded me of judge dread
@@danieldietrich9969 Keep in mind that socialism itself tends to be viewed positively, that's why fascists pretend to run on socialist policies up until they get ahold of power, then they no longer need to keep up that mask. If it didn't have popular ideas associated with it, they wouldn't do that. The problem is that socialism/communism tends to rely too much on trust in benevolence/generosity/honesty, and those who are most likely to seek power tend to be fine with just lying about having those traits instead.
@@danieldietrich9969 Here's the catch, a lot of stuff in Germany around that time was actually imported from America.
They are already building a monstrosity like the one describe in Saudi Arabia.
Wise words in the intro. I remember years ago an argument in the early days of the internet with some people who insisted that progress is an exponential curve, whereas I said it's an S curve and you eventually run out of things to discover and invent, but that when you're on the steep part of the S, it appears "exponential". What interested me is that they found the whole idea of progress slowing to be really offensive, almost like infinite progress was a faith to them. Hence an innocuous comment I made about progress slowing down started a flame war, as we used to call them in the old days.
Rapid progress pushes too hard against human nature; at some point human nature pushes back and there's a collapse and a return to the mean (slow progress). I feel like we're in one of those collapse phases -- the progress over the last few decades has been way too fast and isn't slow enough for human nature or even culture to catch up, so things like mental health and especially social cohesion have deteriorated to a breaking point.
@QuantumMeme Nowhere near slowing down is not the same as always having more things to discover. Just by definition, the more you discover, the less there is left to discover. The more you invent, the less there is left to invent.
We haven't been doing science and technology in a coordinated way for very long at all. But imagine a thousand years, or ten thousand years, or a hundred thousand years hence. Can discovery and invention then still be progressing as they are now? It seems very unlikely.
@@Xabylon I agree, we can reach the stars but the turtle still wins the race. Wisdom is the most important aspect of technology. We must think of the consequences so we can use technology in a way that still maintains balance between nature. Alexander Bogdanov's Red Star is a good example of a society that has done this.
It’s funny because that’s how people are talking about AI nowadays
Punctuated equilibriums. It occurs in all chaotic systems, including evolution, ecology, crowds and traffic
women paying for alimony was the most utopian prediction in this video
Dang.
Some do though. It all depends on how the divorce goes.
@@darmorel549 Only in the rarest of rare cases. As was alluded to in the quotes, feminism has pushed for inequality in many areas (medical research, alimony, custody, etc.) and sadly as it views men as oppressive & abusive 'mutations' (their words, not mine) - it's little wonder it's systematically men being left for dust in legal circles.
Least dystopian*
Lol.
Sheesh, this may be as spot-on as you could hope for in hundred-years-ahead forecast
I like the "giant floor tape" idea, but imagine this guy guessing a roomba.
"There's a robot that cleans my house" still blows *my* mind.
robot in the past look humanoid but robot now is just build that makes sense
Not to mention the cleaning robot docks that take fully automated cleaning to a whole other level!
The part where he predicted "The Rings of Power" would be an embarrassing failure gave me chills
I love these types of stories, thank you for sharing! It is remarkable how much she got correct!
The author was a man, there's a picture of him in the beginning. Must have been a male feminist
You´re absolutely right, except, it was a male writer! Just as in 2022, some feminists were men :)
Kinda wild that he predicted the domestic workers to collectivize, and missed household appliances.
Brilliant content, a superb mix between your narration, the selection of contemporary images and the writtings themselves...!
His insight on the death of the “American Dream” is so poignant
Poignant?
@@ernie9538 why the question mark after poignant?
@@kneedeepinbluegrass3086 What does poignant mean?
@@ernie9538 look it up.
It fits in the way that person used it.
Poignant? Its NEVER been easier to achieve the American dream. The advent of eBay and e-commerce in general and social media sites have a loud millions of people to earn income that wasn't available before, and ridiculous numbers of people make really good money at it. Advancing technology means new industries are coming online all the time and those that get in early can make big bucks. And we still have the stock market and real estate and all the traditional investments. How on earth is the American dream dead? There's also still ridiculous fortunes to be made. Look at Tesla in Amazon. These are the golden years to make money in.
I think the final sentences are worth taking to heart. Eacb era is difficult and we should face our challenges the same way as people did in the past, by doing our part in taking care of the world. We are living in very important times for the human race and this planet and all that is left for us is to do our best in keeping the planet habitable for the future.
He could not factor two key elements that define our present: nuclear weapons and ecological catastrophe, which are major existential threats. Also he could not imagine that the Robber Barons would come back with a vengeance. Think that 1922 was just after the great wave of socialist revolutions, successful, failed or something in between, and that includes the reduction of working journey to 8 hrs in many places.
@@LuisAldamiz Have faith in humankind, we are far more resilient than you think.
@@Sam-ui1ll - "Have faith in bacteriumkind, we are far more resilient than you think"... said one bacterim to the other as the Petri Dish both lived in became unlivable, as the whole colony died out of utter success and no more resources.
It's not a matter of scattered resiliance anymore, it's a matter of intelligent collectivistic management of Earth or not. It's not us who are the limit as such, it's the Planet.
In America most records are from 23 & me or ancestry via DNA links but many records are either sealed or locked away in city or state archives and were forgotten about until they are unsealed. Honestly sometimes we don’t know these records exist until they are found. We did lose a single census due to fire but it wasn’t recent. We also look into newspapers and other things of the time. Most American records are available just sometimes looking is the best way to find something.
As someone from DC, seeing the Smithsonian covered by that giant skyscraper made me realize that the height restriction in the city was actually a good thing.
I'm sure those "wireless telephones" will never be a thing. I mean we need to have wires, right? Hehehe....
Incredible how many accurate predictions he made.
Is the girl you have as your pfp from go animate?
It’s funny how this guy’s predictions turned out to be “sort of”. Almost 50/50. Some pretty accurate to today, some predictions way off. It would be funny to travel back in time with an iphone and blow that guy’s mind😂 Show him videos you saved of just walking around in 2022.
I'd like to go back show him Judge Dread and say it was a true story.
I doubt seeing an i-phone would blow this guy's mind.
He is already expecting scientific and technological advancements.
He is also predicting that movies will get colour and sound. The fact that those movies can then be recorded using a fancy handheld telephone device, would probably be far from mind-blowing.
@@myreneario7216 I think want would blow his mind, would be people living in a world of wonders with an I-phone, microwave and TV working in an office heated by clean electric but being unhappy.
I kinda feel like Smartphones have taken out a lot of awe from technological advances because most of it is hidden. Sure a smartphone can do many things but you have to understand it first before you realize and then the magic moment is gone
@@Dave-ks9fi You should be so happy
You should be so glad
So why are you so lonely
You 21st century man?
It’s crazy to know that someone from 1922 called out modern birth control, the welfare system and children basically being raised by the state in public schools and other state sponsored programs so accurately. It’s literally happening right now.
All I was hoping for was flying cars by now but instead we got tiktok.
Don't forget he predicted the decrease in smoking and he even predicted that women would serve congress and be in the presidential cabinet but not president. This guy is amazing.
Don't hope for flying cars, they're a bad idea. Just imagine the average driver and all the noisy traffic but now over your head and not bound to roads
Well, the welfare system dates back to the late 19th century in Germany and the UK
Flying cars are already here, youtube it.
@@tomlxyz Flyong cars wouldn't be owned by "the average driver" they would only be operated by people eith special licenses and would be an expensive form of travel.
"They will be producing literature...more then today" *looks nervously at twitter*
🤔Allowing for a few minor inaccuracies...SPOT ON!...Top marks, for this prophetic look into a future that was, as it is now, a lot more predictable than we might think!...👀
"Americans in the future will be producing literature more that ever before." Comics or porn?
Both sounds good.
Kinda true? Fanfiction is everywhere on the internet though I guess you could argue whether that's literature.
if you consider large language models, which are American, it has produced more text/literature than all of humanity combined in a few years
"In these wars, the airplane bomb will seem as out-of-date as today seems the hatchet."
Conventional explosive still work just fine, but I do very much like the way this guy thinks.
It's possible the military sees it this way but the rest of us don't know because the military keeps their most powerful technology top secret.
Well, we are approaching the era of the self propelled and autonomus 'bombs'. Just look at Ukraine! Drones are everywhere.
He was right about the community dwellings with its own authority. Huaguoyuan in China. We all live in gated highrise communities and our authority doesn't let people go outside anymore.
The State's demand for children and supply, reminds me of 1970s drive to have tons of babies followed by the one-child policy.
Women in the president's cabinet. Yeah we had one in 1998, right in the cabinet.
What do you mean? If you try to walk out a person will physical stop you or threaten to physically stop you? I cant live like that.
@@azchris1979 Me too, can't live, life is painfully depressing every day, just getting by dawn to dusk. I love the Chinese village houses and cities in 1990s and earlier. The doors go straight to the street, it's all about liberalization and no more of that communist control. But the new cities have these new communities with residential towers behind giant fences, stretching from one arterial road to another. Just highways, highrises and shopping malls. It's huge, it's not cute, and it's not for pedestrians. It's meant for high-speed car driving across the city. I always complained about them, saying it's not cozy, it's not cute, it's not Chinese. But everyone disagreed with me, calling me names, saying it's good, it's modern, it's progress, it's luxurious, it's convenient, you just have to buy a car and not be an idiot riding a bicycle. I said those fences are horrible, they look like a prison, (this was before any lockdowns in 2014) and they said gated communities are wonderful, they keep the bad people out. Well now the residents across China are kept inside with those fences, you can look up videos, the security guards and police physically keep people in. And I have no more friends because I speak my mind too readily in the past ten years.
@@hufficag Dang. If this is for real I hope you find some resolution. Can you move to the country?
I liked the way things were when I was a kid where China and most other countries were a certain way with all that tradition. Now they want us all to live in identical concrete boxes.
What was with that whole 'lunch pill' idea that people in the past had? They really stuck with that one, but its pretty obvious why we'd never have it. If you have two food shops and one is selling pills that give you all the calories and vitamins you need, and another one is selling you a nice chicken sandwich with aioli and lettuce, which would you choose when you're hungry? i.e the look, texture and taste of food has a hell of a lot to do with quenching your appetite.
On the other way we do have pills like than now. We eat creatine, all sorts of magnesius potasion and mineral pills. You can buy soup in powder or a small cube. I am not saying we will ever go away from hamburgers cause they simply taste too good, but pills were kinda spot on
It's mostly just that they overestimated the compression. Microwave burritos, protein bars, soylent-style drinkable meals, &c. are all essentially the same thing except not as compact and not as nourishing.
It's probably more of a matter of convenience than anything. We don't have meal pills today, but we have protein bars and shakes that are very compact and have as much nutrients as a regular meal. They're not as good as a full meal, but they're much more convenient, which is why they're so popular.
If it was physically possible, I think people definitely would buy pill foods for the convenience or size for things like backpacking / prepping. The issue is without very different digestive systems we don't have an energy source that can be satiating in that compact of a form, and then that's not even counting protein (which is way thicker) or micronutrients.
Idk I've had pretty long work days that would make me want to just pop some pills and not be hungry at the very least. We do have appetite suppressant but that's not exactly the same.
I think the idea of wireless technology is pretty mind-blowing even to a 20th century girl selling sweets at the central station.
I mean, the internet still blows my Gramps mind, and he's using it since the mid to late 80s, paying hundreds of bucks a month to look at ... what are basically called "Greentexts" nowadays
i really like how the dude begins with "if you're gonna guess what the future is gonna be like, make sure its far enough that you dont live long enough for people to razz you about being wrong"
His vision of community housing sounds like the Soviet union
oh horrors, not that, I 'd rather pay exorbitant rent to an heir of fortune or be riddled with massive mortgage debt up to my pension years that GOMMMUNIZM!!!!!!1111111
@@ComradeHellas Calm down friend
@@ComradeHellas Curious how it's the commie states where the problem is worse
You need to go visit those old Soviet housing projects. They would school you on REAL communism.
@@EricDaMAJ wouldn't we all like to travel
Quite interesting. I caught myself almost laughing at a couple of things it was so ALMOST perfectly accurate
100 years ago, my grandparents and great grandparents were working in a mill, making fabric in Fall River, Massachusetts
"In view however of the improved position of women and her earning power she will not only cease to be entitled to alimony but she will be expected after the divorce to pay her share of the maintenance of the children."
Didn't realize folk back in 1922 were so adept at comedy.
I mean it can be true if the guy has little earning power and lady is making the majority of the money but I agree mostly. For a hundred year prediction he very accurate.
Well, that is how it should have worked out at least.
If a woman worked throughout the marriage (as most women do these day), then she probably won't get alimony unless she can prove extenuating circumstances like if she once turned down a big promotion because the husband didn't want to move or something. Alimony is meant to make up for lost work experience and acknowledges the reality of the difficulty for older people to find work. If the marriage has not significantly negatively impacted her value in the job market, then no, she won't get alimony. And a husband can ALSO get alimony if those circumstances apply to him instead.
If you don't want to give your kids child support, what the hell is wrong with you? No wonder your wife left you.
@@erraticonteuse alimony isn't child support. You just undermined your argument with your final sentence
@@juliantheapostate8295 I understand they are different things, but OP included the child support part of the quote.
Yes I do find a lot of the predictions startling weighty and on point
however what really got me thinking is how much of the "servants" and maids etc were done with by most of our society today across the world. Just to think that back then a lot of our society lived daily as servants, valets, cleaning maids, attached to a household. And now have a lot of those jobs done away by simple electronics
So strange.
He still, even as a feminist and a socialist, could not imagine an economy where the servant class did not really exist.
If you think about it all the delivery and uber do go in the direction of what he predicted, it's just that domestic services on that model did not take off.
@@adajanetta1 the servant class still exists today, they are your janitor, office cleaner, burger flipper etc etc
The big difference is that the service sector is rarely attached to an individual household these days (at least in the US). You can still hire a human housekeeper or groundskeeper who will do a lot of work by hand, but they'll only do your house once or twice a week and care for other houses on their other workdays and they'll usually be working for a whole company of similarly employed people. Young childcare works similarly. You don't hire a nanny, you drop your kids off at a daycare and pick them up alongside other parents.
@@adajanetta1 But I mean they do, they just changed the titles (sometimes), became hired or centralized rather then live in, and usually became protected by more legal rights and higher paid.
What he was describing in the video for instance is really is just a house cleaner, which many people do employ, lots of people still employ gardeners, childcare by others is common but you take the children too the carer rather then the inverse, etc. He was like I'd say half right here the general predication that individual servants associated with a family would decline to near non-existence was correct, but most of his predication about how that services would change were off.
Then again to be fair servants were never really all that common to begin with, there was a small period where people below the very wealthy might have had them, but that period was fairly short and even then they never really migrated down much further then just 'wealthy'. Maaaybe at the very peak there was a small bit of infiltration down into the upper middle class, but generally the middle classes and down that made up most of the population even during these time periods did not commonly have servants.
Just a beautiful, incredibly perceptive piece of writing. The end section is a masterpiece.
That opening 2 minutes was soooo spot on. I mean it’s like an obvious observation but not something one would consider first when asked to describe the world 100 years in the future.
Wow thanks for this gem of a video. I have learned about the futurist movement in my studies and it has sparked my interest ever since.
this guy was so spot on. he must be smiling in his grave
wandering as a ghost observing the now present future
It's actually very impressive how right he got it
It's actually very impressive how right he got it
He died 4 years after writing this at the age of 43.
@@toast-master-6663 That's the most impressive part. He was this intuitive in his 30's.
This is one of the most fantastic pieces you've made!
if he had just switched out "the state" with "the corporations," he would have nailed it
Staying positive is really important. I believe by 2122 we will be well on our way of (re)discovering the wheel after nuking ourselves back to the stone age. We are an industrious bunch!
That or establishing a civilization across the solar system.
@@Perrirodan1 50 50 chance either way
not quite to the stone age though
@@JohnTitor_0 more like 1870's to 1950's. There's too much refined metal lying around to loose access to metal, and most of the technologies developed till the 50's could be made via hand machining.
Props to your pro comment
13:12 The subway still ferrys folks under and throughout new york, but luckily there has been a redesign of the railway involving electronically controlled magnets which allow, albeit still only along a track, for the train to levitate and be pushed forward without the need for contact with the rails, thus negating all resistance save air resistance with the front, and enabling startlingly rapid transport at the cost of notable amounts of electricity, mind you. This has taken off well in japan, for some reason.
The thing that our year 2022 was supposed to produce to startle that little girl was actually produced in 2008.
Smartphones may as well be a form of telepathy.
These are my favorite videos. This is what history is about to me. I want to hear people's perspectives not just the leaders
"Winter won't come" sigh....how I wish that was true!
18:04 he predicted all those online fanfictions existing
Very interesting. He was on what seemed like some wavelength that closely resembles our present.
Very impressive. This was clearly the most prescient among predictions for the future from the early 20th century I've encountered. And its main strength was regarding how *little* change there would be in many aspects daily living. And most of what he got wrong were explored even earlier, but didn't work out, proved unfeasible, or ran their course. And hardly any people recognize the *cyclical* nature of trends when predicting the future.
Thank you. Much to think about here.
4:58 He was right up until about 10-15 years ago. Now, to be a movie star, you just need to be run around in front of a green screen.
Maybe you're being cheeky but a green screen is just a return to classic theater. Acting is pretending something is that isn't. A green backdrop is a lush jungle. Use your acting to make it believable. Same now as done on stage 3,000 years ago.
Not according to Harvey Weinstein.
@@promontorium I think you're being obtuse, the point isnt the green screen, the point is that movie stars nowadays don't have to do much real acting or "talking" as this guy put it, they basically just need to be a vessel over which cg elements can be added. the real star is the cg now not the the human
This guy was so right, look at all the literature we are infinitely producing in the comments section
He got so much right and the stuff he got wrong is still kind of right in a hilariously ironic kind of way
I JUST discovered your channel, it's like a giant documentary history mediatek about my favorite topics
Most of his predictions occurred within 50 years of when he wrote this, but he was most right about how little things actually have changed.
How little things are changed? In which sense? He had no mention of computers, the internet, smartphones, space exploration, or modern medicine.
8:48 That image off telehealth is _eerily_ fucking accurate. The controls he's using aren't quite right, but they _do_ look _a lot_ like _laparoscopic surgical tools._
EDIT: 12:02 Ah, so this is where Doc Hammer and Jackson Publick got the idea for Dr. Venture Sr.'s office XD
there's also robotic surgery to add in to it that's also a thing now. and during 2020 i had an article pop up in my feed about attempts to try doing surgery remotely, where the doctor wouldn't be in the same room or even the same city.
One of the most wonderful channels on CZcams. I am in love with this content, and your narration.
Is there way we can support you and offer suggestions on topics?
This is a weird one to think about. They're both prophetic and able to describe aspects of our present society better than we can (particularly I think of the structure of the family and the relationships in the context of a lot of responsibilities being taken over by the state), but also very stuck in its time, like the communal tenements.
I think I could make a categorical statement here and say everything concerning economics here is wrong: While there was a trend of nationalising industries through a lot of the 20th century there have been frequent instances of privatisation. The prevalence of unions has deteriorated considerably. Women having employment is not always a choice, as implied here, but very often an economic obligation. The capacity to amass wealth has not passed in the United States, or even really in the United Kingdom (recent events notwithstanding), I think the notion of there being limited potential in a country in this manner is silly, and quite contradicted.
The population part was interesting, although the notion that governments could conduct policy for things as long term as future labour forces is laughable. Also the equilibrium between overpopulation and a labour force discounts the option of immigration as a quick and easy supplement for the natural growth of the national population, which is strangely alluded to in this same article with the mentions of better transportation and a harmonised American culture.
Sorry if I appear too nit-picky, this on the whole is very accurate for what it is. Usually past predictions for our time say more about their time than it does ours. While this example certainly does reflect the 1920s, I must admit it's one of the better sets of predictions I've seen.
Double -n If this is the real McCoy ? That a person predicted all .im flipping impressed .Not that I'm a techno junkie a population political analyst geo-graphic specialist .As anyone can read I know jack S**t I REALLY don't .Little as thirty years ago I couldn't inmagine cell phones computers plasma screens (I know ) even that's oh so 90s I can't think of the new tv screens but you know what I mean ? Even the freaking intanet (OH MY GOD ) And so much more .So to Finnish my waffle all I'm saying that person was freaky .
@@neilwilliams929 Some of the stuff goes along the lines of social movements and momentum, but other things are, as you said, freaky, especially some of the technology stuff and the parent v. state thing.
Very underrated comment. This guy gets it. A lot the things the guy talks so wishfully about would be quite concerning if you sit and think about it, and it is as worrying today as ever.
@@robertromanul2212 :)
Double untrue in 2022 upward mobility within the us has all but stagnated! For the first time in us history today's young people are not as well of financially as their parents generation was!
very interesting though he had a number of blind spots. He seems to share the belief a lot of people had in the early 20th century that there wasn't much new to discover and that we would reach a finite limit, instead of there being a whole universe out there of possibilities...literally.
Pretty insightful. Crazy how spot on some of these predictions were, and yet he was incredibly way too optimistic about our Govts role to regulate industry and protect workers. Made me lol and cry simultaneously; though it makes sense given the labor movement of his time. Good find overall.
thats not what he was saying though. he was saying that the government shouldnt regulate industry and that nature should just run its course and things would be better that way. He was saying that the tendency to want the govt to regulate everything is exactly what we should avoid
so they said we'd be running low on fossil fuel now, back in the 1920s? yeah that tracks...
People used to think that fossil fuels would have run out much sooner than they have, there were predictions of peak oil hitting in the 70s or the 80s. We ended up discovering new sources of fossil fuels like offshore drilling, shale oil, and natural gas fracking that greatly expanded the world's supply. Otherwise, it would have been exhausted long ago.
@@lightingbolt85 And we're running out of the harder to get oil now also. That's why so many countries are now looking for alternate sources of energy and the gulf nations are trying to diversify their economy. Using billions of barrels of oil all around the world, for almost every aspect of life, will obviously run out quite quick. I'm really not sure why some people think there is some conspiracy against fossil fuels when the fossil fuel industry in general is quite morally bankrupt and gives 0 shit about the environment.
Damn hes good, hope he does one for 2122 aswell
He's dead bro
HE PREDICTED THE RAILROAD COLLAPSE OF THE 60s?!
Wow, this guy was a really good guesser. He got a surprising number of things right.
Wow this blows out every other prediction by a mile! This is truly impeccable and incredible!
Wow! That was beautiful. Well said.
Scary how accurate his technological predictions are. Scary how inaccurate his socio-political predictions are.
He seriously underestimated how unreasonable the majority can be. Who could have predicted how opposed most workers would be to unions and worker's rights in America?!
@@daffyf6829 😢, man we are in one of the worst potential futures.
@@daffyf6829 Don't think anyone could have predicted open borders bringing in millions of workers every year so that business leaders never had to sweeten the deal to keep native born people working for them. You can blame shitty work conditions mostly on that and not people being skeptical of greedy and corrupt unions.
@@JTNugget cognitive dissonance incoming
Overly optimistic about the development of capitalism.
Sigh
"what was your family doing 100 years ago"
probably share cropping and bootlegging knowing my family
What was my family doing in 1922?
Riding oxcart, planting corn, making bootleg moonshine
What am I doing in 2022?
Riding oxcart (occasionally), planting corn, consuming moonshine.
Grandpa would be proud
@2:00 as an engineer I would have to disagree and say that the more we discover - the more we realize how little we truly know. This is the intrinsic humility of science; a method of inquisition called ‘nullius in verba.’
There is so much left to do. So much left to discover. So many questions. Some that shatter our basic assumptions: matter-antimatter asymmetry for one.
So little time.
Its really interesting. Not only the pretty accurate predictions.
But also trying to grasp the things that influenced this obviously well educated man.
The term "Garden city" stood out to me for example. Its an urban planning movement that in the end did not become dominant because of a variety of problems.
I tend to find it a bit amusing whenever people trying to predict the future's progress always imagine and are mesmerized by grand designs and mega structures with compact standardized, even centrally planned housing and living. I understand, it's because those things could be achieved only with more advanced means. But they never think of how dystopian it all really is, while we can see it with each failed attempt, which hopefully didn't get far.
Seriously, seriously impressive that he predicted WIRELESS technology….. wow…
Yea, THAT was pretty wild.
Why? Radio was already there and wires are expensive. On the other hand, we use WAY more wires than back then.
He probably got this one from Tesla
This was wonderful to listen to. It fascinates me about the TV being in the lab in 1922 wow I had no idea
Excellent piece.
Men’s rights movement: pretty much nailed it, except one thing.
No matter how wild a prediction people made, they never see the internet coming
The telegraph wants to have a word with you.
"The Machine Stops", E M Forster, 1909.
he did see it coming though. "wireless phones will crush the cable industry" if that's not talking about smartphones and the internet then what is it. It wasnt hard for ppl of that time to see the internet coming, the internet is just the telegraph with the wires removed, and wireless power was all the rage back then
Arthur C Clarke did though honestly the beginnings of the internet were established when he made the prediction.
Absolutely amazing!!!!
Probably viewed as the craziest prediction in his time.
He got about half right I'd say. His predictions on residential organization being less than stellar, for instance. The best lesson we can take from this is that, when looking to the future, it's best to think in terms of the current social trends and how they might interact with each other. Idealism and pessimism aren't very useful tools. Also, there will be an element of the unpredictable random, so best to keep in mind that effect.
He was too much of an optimist to anticipate inner city decay
People in general at that time were very optimistic. It was before the great depression or world war 2. The great war had just ended 4 years prior and a huge amount of people were killed in that war leaving a bustling job market and a lot of open spaces and opportunity for people to dream, succeed, and flourish. There were many revolutionary inventions still only barely beginning to be realized like the plane automobile telephone. And people all around the world were tremendously better mannered and nicer in general to everyone. There wasnt all of the drugs and crime as we have today that rots the spirit and minds of today's people. It was commonly accepted that the pursuit of excellence and prosperity was the norm for people and they were still striving to be the most civilized they could be. People also still valued their traits highly and words like honesty and integrity still meant somethingt to people. It was truly a golden time and it would have been very hard not to be an optimist back then. Its hard to imagine such a wonderful world when compared to now in a time where it is very hard not to be a pessimist when you see how bleak our future is becoming.
Crazy, I love this channel, been watching a couple years at least, I'm Choctaw, & I live about 20 minutes from Ft. Gibson, & used to live about 3-4 miles from the Verdigris river, & to top it off I got an ad for that movie Tulsa, weird, I guess.
at 1:50 "...the more we discover the less there is left (to discover)" What a foolish thing to say.
Impressive-I’d say he got about 70% right although he completely left out any sort of ideological developments (for instance, postmodernism-which will dominate in the near future if not now). But I wouldn’t blame him because ideologies are pretty much impossible to predict. All in all, get video-keep it up!