1931 Predictions For 2011

[Velleity]

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Check out sociologist William Fielding Ogburn's, born in 1886 and dead in 1959, prediction in 1931:

The population of the United States eighty years hence will be 160,000,000 and either stationary or declining, and will have a larger percentage of old people than there is today. Technological progress, with its exponential  law of increase, holds the key to the future. Labor displacement will proceed even to automatic factories. The magic of remote control will be commonplace. Humanity’s most versatile servant will be the electron tube. The communication and transportation inventions will smooth out regional differences and level us in some respects to uniformity. But the heterogeneity of material culture will mean specialists and languages that only specialists can understand. The countryside will be transformed by technology and farmers will be more like city folk. There will be fewer farmers, more wooded land with wild life. Personal property in mechanical conveniences will be greatly extended. Some of these will be needed to prop up the weak who will survive.

Inevitable technological progress and abundant natural resources yield a higher standard of living. Poverty will be eliminated and hunger as a driving force of revolution will not be a danger. Inequality of income and problems of social justice will remain. Crises of life will be met by insurance.

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The role of government is bound to grow. Technicians and special interest groups will leave only a shell of democracy. The family cannot be destroyed but will be less stable in the early years of married life, divorce being greater than now. The lives of woman will be more like those of men, spent more outside the home. The principle of expediency will be the dominating one in law and ethics.

[nraforlife]

nothing to see here. Any regular newspaper reader of the time could have dona about as well.

[Pepsi]

Things are changing so rapidly.    Who could imagine just 5 years ago Google and Apple battling for phone dominance?   Man I first sat down at a computer at 12 years old.   Now my 5 year old knows how to use a computer and his mom's iphone too.. Today's generation is so wired and connected, it's changing everything, particularly how people interact with each other.    I can't imagine where things are gonna be in 5 years!