This is What The 1940's Thought 2011 Would Look Like

Steven Bogos

The Taco Man
Jan 17, 2013
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This is What The 1940's Thought 2011 Would Look Like


Some of the predictions from the Showa-era Japanese newspaper are surprisingly accurate, while others are hilariously wrong.

These photos surfaced recently on the Vipper [http://vippers.jp/archives/7160873.html] forums, and give an insight into what the people of Showa-era Japan thought the future would look like. Some of the predictions are actually pretty spot-on, while others are hilarious Jetsons level fallacies.

In the photo to the right, we can see "2011" Tokyo, where tutus are the most fashionable form of clothing, cars are both capable of flight and disappointment, and video-screens show space colonization efforts. However, if you look off into the distance, you can see some planes utilizing vertical take-off, technology that has actually been invented since. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VTOL]

Another photo shows a classroom, featuring discipline robots that smack kids with a red ball on a stick when they make a mistake. Touch-screen computers are in use in the classroom (something that is now happening [http://www.ipadineducation.co.uk/iPad_in_Education/Welcome.html]) and the teacher has been replaced with a slideshow.

Other photos accurately predict sprinkler systems, automated fire alarms, Roombas, 3-D televisions, and teleconferencing, but also make some bold claims on mobile tables that bring dinner to you, automatic clothes irons, and more wacky fashion statements.

[gallery=1542]

Some members of the Vipper community were spurred on by the pictures to make their own predictions of what the year 3013 may have in store:

"Robots will be smarter than us."

"Endangered species will make a comeback."

"Humans will no longer have chins."

"Human legs will become too weak from over-reliance on elevators, chairs and cars, and degenerate into slug-like appendages."

How about you? What do you think the future of 3013 holds in store for the human race (that is of course if we don't all nuke each other to death before that)?

Source: Rocket News 24 [http://vippers.jp/archives/7160873.html]

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Bat Vader

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Mar 11, 2009
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I love how whenever I see one of these how the future would look things that somehow even though everything looks futuristic but in actuality it is way more under developed than what today actually is.

Honestly, I would love to go back in time and just show people the wonders of current technology like tablets and smart phones.
 

Roxas1359

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Aug 8, 2009
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In the year 3013 Valve will announce that they are making Half-Life 2 Episode 3/Half-Life 3, and that it will come out on February 32 of that year. XD
 

Quaxar

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Sep 21, 2009
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I don't know, looks like Japan to me alright. Especially if you take that one with the flying car out.
 

PoolCleaningRobot

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Mar 18, 2012
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and the teacher has been replaced with a slideshow
This level of accuracy is 2spooky4me

I like to thing we're doing better than what was predicted. Sure we don't have flying cars, but we do have the Internet and small devices that can access porn anywhere. Anyone who would trade instant porn for flying cars has failed our species

In 3013 we'll connect all our minds together like the geth or something. World peace and all that stuff will follow
 

The Rogue Wolf

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I guess I'll make the most realistic prediction:

In 3013, people will be laughing at the ridiculous predictions those backwards putzes in 2013 were making. I mean, what did they know, walking around having to carry communication devices instead of being linked to the NeuraNet.
 

dragongit

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Feb 22, 2011
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By the year 3013, I will be dead, and unable to care what happened in said time period.

I love the first image, if you get the answer wrong they have programmed automatic child beating machines.
 

Yuuki

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Mar 19, 2013
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Another photo shows a classroom, featuring discipline robots that smack kids with a red ball on a stick when they make a mistake.
I...wat o_O
That is BRILLIANT! Then teachers can't possibly be accused of using corporate punishment, just blame it on the discipline robots :D

"Robots will be smarter than us."
Urgh, that's a pretty vague statement. Robots ARE already smarter than us in many ways, especially when it comes to doing math-driven shit like number crunching, working with algorithms and puzzle solving. Google's algorithm could almost be called a sentient AI :p

But the "human" kind of smart, i.e. emotional intelligence, is something that robots are possibly decades if not centuries away from being able to comprehend. I really don't know if even waiting till the year 3000 will see robots surpassing humans in terms of emotional intelligence or brain-level complexity, because the ultimate question is this - how can a human build something more intelligent than himself, especially when we're still largely clueless about how OUR OWN BRAINS work lol? Neuroscience is still a new branch of science.

"Endangered species will make a comeback."
Hmmm this is an interesting one, I call 50/50. Either we develop the technology and methods to bring back endangered species from the brink of extinction, OR we continue down the path we're heading in now i.e. species continue to die out at an alarming rate.

"Humans will no longer have chins."
I thought that would've been obvious! :p

"Human legs will become too weak from over-reliance on elevators, chairs and cars, and degenerate into slug-like appendages."
By the year 3000? Haha no, evolution doesn't happen anywhere near that quickly! It can take 100,000 years or longer for noticeable changes to occur, and keep in mind that evolution is almost exclusively driven by the NEED or REASON to adapt/evolve. It doesn't just happen "because it has to", which is why some species of lizard/cockroach haven't budged an inch on the evolutionary scale. They reached some sort of "ideal" design a millions of years ago, a design which allowed them to survive just fine through the ages without needing to evolve further.

Maybe by the year 20,000 or 30,000 humans may have undergone a slight change in terms of weaker legs. I can definitely see something like that happening over a longer time scale, our heads are getting bigger in proportion to our bodies and arms/legs are getting weaker. On the plus side, our fingers have becoming a lot more dexterous.


As for my prediction, I'm fairly certain we're all going to nuke each other to death long before any natural disaster takes us out. It's just too damn likely.

If not that, then there's always zombies.
 

Kaymish

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Sep 10, 2008
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well they are not far off with the dresses the women are wearing i remember a skirt version of the tutu hips being around my wardrobe a couple of years ago
anyway i reckon that between now and 3013 floating cities will become a idea that can be considered without laughter what with all the polar icecaps melting and stuff
and maybe the whole 3D fad will have done another 50 cycles
 

wetfart

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Jul 11, 2010
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Steven Bogos said:
Another photo shows a classroom, featuring discipline robots that smack kids with a red ball on a stick when they make a mistake. Touch-screen computers are in use in the classroom (something that is now happening [http://www.ipadineducation.co.uk/iPad_in_Education/Welcome.html]) and the teacher has been replaced with a slideshow.
Teacher been replaced with a slideshow? Reminds me of college where the professors just read to us power point slides some grad student had to make them.
 

BoogieManFL

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Apr 14, 2008
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DVS BSTrD said:
In the year 3013, we will no longer be using Jesus's birth as a reference point.
Somehow I doubt we'll redefine so many years of history to appease atheists and people of other faith because now it's more of just how it's done. Imagine the amount of work and time it would take to convert digital data, and the confusion of future generations as they learn history? I imagine it would like people talking about the metric system when all you understand is the imperial system, possibly worse depending on how different it would be.

What would be the benefit of the trouble, really?
 

CyberMachinist

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Oct 8, 2012
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In the year 3013 We will be able to digitize ourselves into machines, games will be played as if we were in them and porn well become as close as it can get.

That or we become pure beings of energy.......... Then giant pillars of salt.

yeah I'll stop now before i start rambling about bending robots and mutant demons on mars.
 

JSF01

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Jan 19, 2011
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I am pretty sure the article is wrong about these images being from the 1940's. Based on the images I would guess they are from the late 1950's or early 1960's. When people draw pictures of the future the technology of the day will influence how people envision the future. This is especially true when the a person is trying to envision a believable future. This leads to people taking cutting edge technology of the day and trying to extrapolate where it may go to in the future. Look at the phone in the one image and notice how similar to the old style push button phones. Push button phones like that only just started coming out in the early 1960's
The farther back you go from that point the more likely people would envisioned future phones as rotary phones like this ad from the 1940's depicting what a phone in the future may look like


Next take a look at the class room with computers. In 1949 Popular mechanics magazine was just predicating that computers in the future may weigh as little as 1.5 tons. Computers also where not using those magnetic tape reels yet either. 1951 was the first time the magnetic tape was used to record computer data. Visually those computer styles look 1960's.

Than visually look how close it seems to match other visions of the future from the early 60's, like the Jetsons or Startrek. If these were actually from the 1940's than the predictions in these pictures turned out amazingly accurate predictions of 1960's technology and or what people in the 1960's would picture the future as.

the Showa-era is broken down into two parts pre and post 1945 so that could be where the mistake was made, depending on how the article was written (for example if the article originally said the pictures where done 20 years into the Showa-era for the state of Japan would be 1960 while counting 20 years from the begging of the Showa-era that would be 1946)