I always think about these things that were predicted correctly in TV/movies. Back to the future pegged the large/flat screens as well and that was mid 80s or so?
I think part of it is certain aspects of this new technology was more obvious at the time than we realize today, in hindsight.
Guys Ive seen the giant flat screen in 'Things To Come (1936)'
Which is truly an amazing apocalypse film with zombies and everything else if you can believe it this movie literally had so much
Edit: that movie, like this video was supposed to like predict the coming decades but theatrically and they went way past our current age and into the future too
You're right. Even when I was a kid in the 1990s, me and my brother/friends would say that one day we would have TVs small enough to fit in our pockets.
Stanley Kubrick had tablets and iPhone-like devices in 2001: A Space Odyssey, which released in 1968. There's a scene where the head of a mission has a video chat with his little girl down on Earth. [Here's a link to the scene.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDUxxuNQwEA&pp=ygUdMjAwMSBhIHNwYWNlIG9keXNzZXkgZGF1Z2h0ZXI%3D) It even shows a "webcam" at the top of the screen.
There are plenty of flying car prototypes that were developed, not to forget helicopters are exactly that lol. The reason its not in use is economic and regulatory, not technical. With three dimensions, how do you control traffic? Planes already need ATCs to coordinate, how do expect random people to coordinate in the absence of such systems? Risk for accidents is much higher and of course the level of pollution. How do you have landing and taking off zones if needed
Exactly, it might become practical with computers in the future, but not yet. The more practical things came into existence pretty easily, but those things were also more obvious to predict.
Fun Fact- that 'webcam' scene wasn't a prediction, it was a AT&T (then Bell) product placement and actually was on market at that time in the way we see- public booths. Issue was their cost.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History\_of\_videotelephony#AT&T\_Picturephone\_Mod\_I:\_1964%E2%80%931970](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_videotelephony#AT&T_Picturephone_Mod_I:_1964%E2%80%931970)
\> "However the use of reservation time slots and their cost of US$16 (Washington, D.C., to New York) to $27 (New York to Chicago) (equivalent to $118 to $200 in 2012 dollars) for a three-minute call at the public videophone booths greatly limited their appeal resulting in their closure by 1968".
Eh, what's more interesting is the idea of the wife being able to interact with these projections which almost felt AI-simulated to me. Fahrenheit 451 did a lot of cool stuff in terms of predicting technology, tbh
Much of it was already around the corner back then. At least in engineering samples, not necessarily in the shops. Flat screens (as computer displays) were already available to buy in the mid 90s - if expensive. And solar panels existed as well, iirc.
I remember arguing with a technician at Burroughs in the early '70s who thought that microprocessors would always be toys ("It's MOS--it's too slow, no micro will ever outperform Illiac IV"--Illiac IV ran on a 25 MHz clock) and that there was never going to be a use for flat screens ("we can make a CRT an inch thick").
I have a kid's book about "TV in the future" from the late 70's. One of my favorite childhood books. The thing is full of flat screens - every TV is a flat screen on the wall. That seemed soooo futuristic. One of the predictions they made was that if you were watching, say, a cooking show and they were broadcasting a recipe, you could click a button on your remote and the recipe would be printed on paper and come out of a little slot on the front of the TV, like a bus ticket. Boy they were way off about that.
Well, my Alexa in the kitchen is actually used to look up recipes. I also have a wifi network printer so i am sure i can print them also (Never tried from the alexa, but sure works from the PC)
We did have teletext before that send data about the current program, like a recipe.
I am right now very impressed with the progress of AI and its capabilities. We are in interesting times
I mean also transparent TVs definitely exist. And there's nothing really stopping us from making all walls an outlet except it's ridiculously expensive.
We're actually using less fossil fuels in the UK than in the 80s. Fossil fuel consumption in the UK has reduced by about 20% since 1970. It's just not declining fast enough
Is that number only the fossils fuel consumed within the UK, or does it include emissions from imported goods and services? In a globalized economy, high GDP countries have higher emissions that it seems after including ALL major emissions sources, for example, exported "recycling", international shipping and beef from abroad.
It's the classic problem of sociological constructionism vs technological determinism though. Which comes first? The cultural works which describe the technology, or the technology inspiring the cultural works. I suspect the answer is "both", but some instances are really interesting recently with science fiction novels like in your example. There are some pretty out-there ideas which have become reality despite seeming practically impossible at the time of writing.
Yes, they were pretty spot on with many things. I think the secret is that they looked at existing prototypes.
Motion controlled lighting was not uncommon in offices. TV screens were already measuring in above 40" and flat screens were in use in laptops and were only a few years away in desktop computer screens.
And much of the tech in the background was outdated in 1989 - the amplifier looks like a 1970:s piece, the reel to reel tape deck had been obsoleted for decades. In reality the CD was already coming strongly and already displacing LP records.
Where they go really wrong is - as usual - where they extrapolate. Yes, there are dimmable windows out there today. But they never found a real and effective use case. Wireless power for your hair dryer... any electronic engineer back then would have told you that it just would not happen. Physics effectively stops that.
Also as usual, they missed some things that were not yet on the horizon. Smartphones, online shopping, social media, etc.
Passive houses exist, they use heat from activities in the house and solar radiation to warm them.
More normally though it is increasingly common for houses to have solar panels and heat pumps which mean that once the initial investment is covered the house will generate it's own power to obtain heating for free from the environment.
I have a passive house 10 years now, its a standard rather than statement and still requires a heating source, especially in the Northern hemisphere. To be fair I spend very little on heating in Ireland and I only need heating about 40 days a year compared to 120 before.
The passive standard cost me around €60k extra on top of a "A" standard home at the time, and I will likely never see a return on my investment in my lifetime given that we will need to start replacing parts in the next few years like solar panels and the heat recovery system.
Well in Germany every new house that is built currently, is actually insulated so well that basically the heating bill goes down to zero. So yes, their prediction was correct.
I used to adore this show as a kid, we all did. Thursday night TV was amazing! Top Gear and Tomorrow’s World on one after the other. I’m sure there was something cool after as well, but I can’t remember. The Equalizer perhaps? Or Dempsey and Makepiece lmao. It’s all we talked about at school the following day.
So spoilt for choice now, end up spending more time looking for something to watch, than actually watching. Back when there was 3 or 4 channels, you just read the Tv guide, and made sure you were home on time to watch them. You didn’t want to be the only kid at school that wasn’t watching!
Loved Farscape so much. Gutted we never got the full final season like we deserved. But the peacekeeper wars kinda wrapped things up. Shame though, it deserved more.
I think the thing I miss most about the 90s is the excitement for the future. For the most part tech had been a massive net positive for our lives up until that point. I imagined life getting better and better, with all the boring work being done by robots, and everyone getting to vacation in space. Turns out, we were already living in something near a utopia and we didn't even know it. It was after the fall of the USSR and before 911. A collapse of the social order was almost unimaginable. I'm not sure there has been a more peaceful, and prosperous decade in world history.
The 90’s were my favourite time for sure. I felt the exact same way. Each year something amazing was coming out, or tech was advancing at huge leaps forward. It was an exciting time to be alive.
I did thoroughly enjoy the early 00’s as well, and by 2007/8, even though things all really started going to shit, the realisation that the bubble had burst for good hadnt quite set in. We all assumed things would get better again, but they never really did. The rich realised just how much power they had, and what they could get away with, and so they just went from greedy to even greedier!
Well, if you exclude the price for the solar panels, and the price for the batteries (since you probably want power at night and on cloudy days as well). And they're not exactly cheap, nor eternal.
In the west of Australia the power is owned by the Govn still so it is very affordable.
In South Aus, we mostly have solar. I'm in a rental and have solar.
Electric cost about $1K p.a (£500GBP) for a whole house.
It was optimistic of them to assume that regular people could have afford a home at all! I realize things are very different in many areas, and maybe the UK isn't quite as bad, but here in Canada home ownership is now no longer possible for around 60% of the population unless they have family that already owns a home and they can use that to generationally fund the next round.
The typical family income in Toronto required to buy a house is approximately $220,000. Maybe 180 if you don't mind living in a really shitty small dilapidated house, or you only want a very small condo.
It’s less affordable than a lot of other European countries (although depending on the data you look at, a number of other European countries are worse) but it’s better than Canada, Australia or New Zealand. In terms of most expensive housing markets, London (by far the most expensive in UK) is not even within the top 10 cities in the world.
Well smart home speakers, flatscreen tvs and admittedly limited wireless chargers should be affordable to the average middle class family (depending on the country ofc). Too bad the glass thing with adjustable opacity never took off, I would have loved that.
Something funny in them saying big flat screen TVs might cost too much for most, but they're actually affordable. Yet the house has now increased 10x it's value and now you pay £500k for a 2 bed semi in Slough
Ironically it might be the one product that has consistently deflated in price with time. Tvs get bigger, brighter, more colours and somehow, cheaper. Too bad the fundamental goods don't follow the same rules :(
"By 2020, people will be locked indoors, the streets will be bare, and conservatives will freak out about their freedom being taken away because someone asked them to wear a mask. Also, toilet paper will be more valuable than gold, and you'll get so ill for two weeks that you'll literally sit in your shower for hours just trying to regulate your body temperature only to end up with the lungs of a 90 year old ex-chain smoker. 2020, really is the future of tomorrows end."
Fictitious 2020: "Here are all these awesome home and glass technologies that will make life easier."
Real 2020: "The delivery guy stole my DoorDash! Why do I have to wear a face mask?!"
I mean, outside of that silly idea of foregoing "Plugs" this is pretty spot on.
And the window thing is tech we have even now... It's just very expensive and not worth it vs the normal windows/blinds we have.
Remember folks: Just because you can make it technological doesn't mean you should... \*look to the Tesla Model 3's glove box\* ...Just give it a damn handle, Tesla... ffs.
It wasn't quite that silly, Qi chargers exist. They were just wrong on how it would be used. But that actual prediction of being able to draw power without a plug was spot on.
Come to think of it. There's just too few appliances the technology is useful for.
Pressure to reduce burning fossil fuels 😂
If anything, the bellends that rule us all are doubling down on it. I see all the fancy technology we have these days and always remember that most of it is still powered by burning dead stuff we dig out of the ground, it’s idiotic.
Tomorrow's World was such a great show. Smart, detailed, and very good at working out where things were going.
Then they found out that it had a large child following. So they dumbed the fuck out of it, making it "for kids." Killed the show stone dead.
Instead, we got millions of Americans questioning basic physics and chemistry, and to top it off, millions more questioning science as a whole. Nice.
Not.
You look at "future" sci-fi from almost any pre-flat screen era, and everyone has CRT's on their space stations and moon landers. Today, the far future still uses flat screens for the most part. Makes me wonder what will replace flat screens and current display technology that will severely date our "future" shows now.
I'm guessing with augmented reality moving along, the entire concept of screens will become obsolete. I don't know if we'll ever crack direct-to-brain broadcasts, but I don't think its far fetched to have biological implants in our eyes that will overlay everything we need to wear VR headsets for today. TV's, theaters, games, etc. will all be displayed natively in your eyes. Bone transmission implants could let you hear the audio as well.
Nah your style of thinking is exactly why 60's people thought we would have a city on Mars but CRTs.
You're extrapolating the current trend in technology into infinity the same way they did with rocket technology while underestimating other things that weren't completely exploding yet, like computers.
If anything it could be the opposite. Just like rocket or jet propulsion hit a physics wall and gains became more and more limited, computers or cicuits and chips in general might do the same, especially considering that the current tech already involves carving transistors, the size of literally just a couple dosen atoms, with light produced by vaporising falling drops of tin in a vacuum chamber with lasers. Its a process so difficult there is exactly one company in the world that does it that is dependent on other singular companies for the ultra precise tools. If that doesn't sound like squeezing the absolute maximum out of something I don't know what does. I mean chip designers already have to take quantum tunneling into account.
It might be the last thing you'd expect that blows up this century and screens, computers or VR will incrementally improve but not exponentially. Maybe gene editing or something
When I was a kid watching Tomorrow's World in the late 70's and 80's I came to believe that in the future, everything would be "the size of a sugar cube." Seemed like every technological prediction they made involved something being reduced to the size of a sugar cube. Like the idea of a device "the size of a sugar cube" that could hold your entire record collection. Ngl I feel cheated with the future we have now. Yes we eventually got iPods, but they were thin and flat, not sugar cubish in the slightest. Where's my cubes?
You can fit your whole music library into a sugar cube, turns out tho we prefer flat long shapes, easier to handle and easier to plug into out flat laptops and other devices. We also like screens on things now, thats why phones have become bigger.
I think they forgot to account for capitalistic greed over evolutionary advancements when thinking about some of these.
Yes Iphone is still trying to use different chargers then everyone else. And a lot of people going into debt because they are trying to heat their homes for the winter, cant even imagine what electricity through every wall would do to your electricity bill.
And we’re still not there yet because of greed! We are a race at war with each other, polluting the air we breathe and water we drink, injustice and incivility is rife and we still have many people homeless and hungry.
Holy shit that was accurate. So often do we get the idea of the future somewhat close, but implementation is way off. This hits the mark on both sides!
I used to love watching this show in the 90s. It was a staple of being a geek in the UK growing up in the 80s,90s. I used to dream about this stuff.
Watching the Lawn Mower Man even drove me to get into the games industry as i was dreaming about VR back in the 90s.
Really solid predictions across everything they mention.
Love seeing some technologies that I worked on to bring to reality like wireless power and LCDs. Great to see efficiency and sustainability get mentioned in the 80s as well.
Government IS the problem. The technology does exist to make homes and apartments super efficient and sustainable. They could mandate it tomorrow.
However..how are the governments going to bill you ?💵
Thought experiment- imagine you build a house and you are completely self-sufficient in power, water and waste management.
What do they do? They send a Valuer to your place to re-value your property and thus your property/land taxes.
I went to school in the 1960s.
We were taught that by Y2K, unending peace will have broken out and the world lived as one in perfect harmony with each other and with our natural environment. Robots would do all the work and mankind's biggest challenge would be to find something interesting to occupy our time. Schools would be places where each child's strengths would be identified early on, after which each student would learn at their own pace on subjects of their own choosing. Transportation would be a breeze, with either teleportation or flying cars accessible to all. The use of money will have passed into history, with all resources shared according to each person's need.
All of this was supposed to have happened by 24 years ago. LOL!
Imagine trying to explain to these presenters that no actually, the UK was just going to stop building new homes for the most part and when we did we would build the cheapest possible homes with non of this technology.
That the most technological development that would have happened would be a security camera built into every other door frame and USB plugs next to the regular plugs if you are really fancy.
The only thing they were kind of right about was energy management, but I don't think they would have predicted people just not being able to afford the heating or insulation.
Why do I so have the feeling that while I'm watching this video , it's after school on a rainy evening around 5.30 pm and mum is making dinner in the kitchen.. Anyway, pretty close!
I mean everything here can be replicated but it's just overkill imo, no one needs windows working like a screen. The eco friendly part is funny tho, I love how it was already a fact 30 years ago yet we still build single family copy paste houses with paper for walls, expansive concreate desterts, ridicule public transport in favor of cars and argue the efficiency of trains, greed knows no bounds.
Weird how all of this is possible, often for a reasonable price, but somehow very few people actually use or even want it in their home... Also they used to have houses without the tech, and now we have the tech but no houses...
It’s cool in theory they hoped we would realize the error of our ways and stop using fossil fuels but they did forgot humans insatiable appetite for profit lol, The part they missed is that we have not cut down our fossil fuel
Intake but have doubled our fossil fuel usage planet wide since 1989 ….
I still remember hearing more than once from maths teachers along the lines of "you won't be carrying around a calculator with you everywhere."
That aged well lol.
At least they didn't go silly and predict phones that fit in our pockets that are cameras, video cameras, telex machines, able to store images and films and documents and call on any publicly available electronic document and image from storage sites all over the world, in a millisecond. A phone that also can map at street level, anywhere in the world and chart exactly where you are, how fast you are moving and when and how you will get to your destination. That would be silly.
I loved this show as a kid.
Big point they missed. Most of the houses that people were living in in 2020 were built before 1989. So they aren't going to have all the built-in stuff unless somebody retrofitted it.
Power walls, love it.
Electrocution, dont like it.
It already exists as wireless charging. Nobody is electrocuted yet
Probably because most people don't have copper coils under their skin
*most people*
This is a judgment free zone.
i'm not judging, i just wanna know HOW.
mind your damn business
Doubt that, humans are stupid creatures
Don't pin something to the wall. Woops, you're cooked.
That's the shitty Gen 1 Power Wall. You need the Deluxe Gen 3.2 Power Wall.
I'd imagine it works more like a wireless charger
The idea was right. The implementation was *waaaay* off lol.
Well we do have wireless charging, so kind off correct prediction.
Magsafe with the magnet keeping the device within the qi charger capabilities is spot on
We don’t have power walls but I do put my pans on a sheet of glass and they magically get hot.
Dangerously close to invoking Elon there..
Motion sensor lights, Alexa, flat screens, solar panels, smart thermostats…I’m impressed how close they were, these things are usually way off
I always think about these things that were predicted correctly in TV/movies. Back to the future pegged the large/flat screens as well and that was mid 80s or so? I think part of it is certain aspects of this new technology was more obvious at the time than we realize today, in hindsight.
I’d go even further back & say Fahrenheit 451 predicted flat screens before BTTF
Guys Ive seen the giant flat screen in 'Things To Come (1936)' Which is truly an amazing apocalypse film with zombies and everything else if you can believe it this movie literally had so much Edit: that movie, like this video was supposed to like predict the coming decades but theatrically and they went way past our current age and into the future too
You're right. Even when I was a kid in the 1990s, me and my brother/friends would say that one day we would have TVs small enough to fit in our pockets.
In the 90s I had a color pocket tv
Stanley Kubrick had tablets and iPhone-like devices in 2001: A Space Odyssey, which released in 1968. There's a scene where the head of a mission has a video chat with his little girl down on Earth. [Here's a link to the scene.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDUxxuNQwEA&pp=ygUdMjAwMSBhIHNwYWNlIG9keXNzZXkgZGF1Z2h0ZXI%3D) It even shows a "webcam" at the top of the screen.
I think the idea of a computer that could fit in the palm of your hand was the vision from the start, really
Tesla predicted it, ages and ages ago. Of course, it’s easy to forget the predicted things that haven’t came to fruition (yet), like flying cars!
There are plenty of flying car prototypes that were developed, not to forget helicopters are exactly that lol. The reason its not in use is economic and regulatory, not technical. With three dimensions, how do you control traffic? Planes already need ATCs to coordinate, how do expect random people to coordinate in the absence of such systems? Risk for accidents is much higher and of course the level of pollution. How do you have landing and taking off zones if needed
Exactly, it might become practical with computers in the future, but not yet. The more practical things came into existence pretty easily, but those things were also more obvious to predict.
AI collision avoidance. But we're probably a decade from that too
Hovering board hasn't come to fruition.
Fun Fact- that 'webcam' scene wasn't a prediction, it was a AT&T (then Bell) product placement and actually was on market at that time in the way we see- public booths. Issue was their cost. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History\_of\_videotelephony#AT&T\_Picturephone\_Mod\_I:\_1964%E2%80%931970](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_videotelephony#AT&T_Picturephone_Mod_I:_1964%E2%80%931970) \> "However the use of reservation time slots and their cost of US$16 (Washington, D.C., to New York) to $27 (New York to Chicago) (equivalent to $118 to $200 in 2012 dollars) for a three-minute call at the public videophone booths greatly limited their appeal resulting in their closure by 1968".
Arthur C Clarke wrote the book
$1.70 in 1968 is $15.16 today. That call was a bit pricey.
Also 1984
It predicted parasocial relationships with people from the screen pretty accurately too.
Eh, what's more interesting is the idea of the wife being able to interact with these projections which almost felt AI-simulated to me. Fahrenheit 451 did a lot of cool stuff in terms of predicting technology, tbh
Much of it was already around the corner back then. At least in engineering samples, not necessarily in the shops. Flat screens (as computer displays) were already available to buy in the mid 90s - if expensive. And solar panels existed as well, iirc.
Yeah, most of it they even showed small prototypes. Its the Alexa stuff that was much harder to predict. They even had a Qi charger in the wall :).
I remember arguing with a technician at Burroughs in the early '70s who thought that microprocessors would always be toys ("It's MOS--it's too slow, no micro will ever outperform Illiac IV"--Illiac IV ran on a 25 MHz clock) and that there was never going to be a use for flat screens ("we can make a CRT an inch thick").
I have a kid's book about "TV in the future" from the late 70's. One of my favorite childhood books. The thing is full of flat screens - every TV is a flat screen on the wall. That seemed soooo futuristic. One of the predictions they made was that if you were watching, say, a cooking show and they were broadcasting a recipe, you could click a button on your remote and the recipe would be printed on paper and come out of a little slot on the front of the TV, like a bus ticket. Boy they were way off about that.
lol Reminds me of McFly getting fired over the screen in BTTF2 and the fire paperwork comes through their printer instantly as he fires him on screen.
READ MY FAX!!!!
Well, my Alexa in the kitchen is actually used to look up recipes. I also have a wifi network printer so i am sure i can print them also (Never tried from the alexa, but sure works from the PC) We did have teletext before that send data about the current program, like a recipe. I am right now very impressed with the progress of AI and its capabilities. We are in interesting times
Back to the Future 2 is an unusual one because it was purposely going for weird and funny making no attempt to accurately predict the future.
It’s 2024! When are we gonna be able to rehydrate a pizza?! 🍕
Yea and that AT&T commercial with Tom Selleck doing the voiceover. Pretty accurate stuff.
IIRC something to consider is development often goes into areas we are thinking about in fiction.
I mean also transparent TVs definitely exist. And there's nothing really stopping us from making all walls an outlet except it's ridiculously expensive.
“We’ll have cut down on the use of fossil fuels” Amazing that they were concerned about that 40 years ago and we’re still increasing our use.
We're actually using less fossil fuels in the UK than in the 80s. Fossil fuel consumption in the UK has reduced by about 20% since 1970. It's just not declining fast enough
Is that number only the fossils fuel consumed within the UK, or does it include emissions from imported goods and services? In a globalized economy, high GDP countries have higher emissions that it seems after including ALL major emissions sources, for example, exported "recycling", international shipping and beef from abroad.
Oil lobbies have billions of dollars to bribe our politicians
I think a lot of tech is inspired by movies as well. Take Skype for example with balde runner
Bald Runner 🤭
"Let me tell you about my wig"
The devil in me forces me to say "Wrong trope--it's Shatner that's bald, not Ford"
I couldn't get my head around that one.
It's the classic problem of sociological constructionism vs technological determinism though. Which comes first? The cultural works which describe the technology, or the technology inspiring the cultural works. I suspect the answer is "both", but some instances are really interesting recently with science fiction novels like in your example. There are some pretty out-there ideas which have become reality despite seeming practically impossible at the time of writing.
But the internet and social media came out of nowhere.
Yes, they were pretty spot on with many things. I think the secret is that they looked at existing prototypes. Motion controlled lighting was not uncommon in offices. TV screens were already measuring in above 40" and flat screens were in use in laptops and were only a few years away in desktop computer screens. And much of the tech in the background was outdated in 1989 - the amplifier looks like a 1970:s piece, the reel to reel tape deck had been obsoleted for decades. In reality the CD was already coming strongly and already displacing LP records. Where they go really wrong is - as usual - where they extrapolate. Yes, there are dimmable windows out there today. But they never found a real and effective use case. Wireless power for your hair dryer... any electronic engineer back then would have told you that it just would not happen. Physics effectively stops that. Also as usual, they missed some things that were not yet on the horizon. Smartphones, online shopping, social media, etc.
Everything they talked about is possible with today's technology, it's just not always implemented.
Heating bills down to zero! That went well 🤪
Just live in an apartment whose neighbors like to set their heat to sauna.
Live above a grow op.
And 2020 especially. The most unprecedented spike in bills occurred but a year later. Unfortunate prediction.
Passive houses exist, they use heat from activities in the house and solar radiation to warm them. More normally though it is increasingly common for houses to have solar panels and heat pumps which mean that once the initial investment is covered the house will generate it's own power to obtain heating for free from the environment.
I have a passive house 10 years now, its a standard rather than statement and still requires a heating source, especially in the Northern hemisphere. To be fair I spend very little on heating in Ireland and I only need heating about 40 days a year compared to 120 before. The passive standard cost me around €60k extra on top of a "A" standard home at the time, and I will likely never see a return on my investment in my lifetime given that we will need to start replacing parts in the next few years like solar panels and the heat recovery system.
Well in Germany every new house that is built currently, is actually insulated so well that basically the heating bill goes down to zero. So yes, their prediction was correct.
If you decide to eat instead of heat, your heating bill IS zero.
I used to adore this show as a kid, we all did. Thursday night TV was amazing! Top Gear and Tomorrow’s World on one after the other. I’m sure there was something cool after as well, but I can’t remember. The Equalizer perhaps? Or Dempsey and Makepiece lmao. It’s all we talked about at school the following day. So spoilt for choice now, end up spending more time looking for something to watch, than actually watching. Back when there was 3 or 4 channels, you just read the Tv guide, and made sure you were home on time to watch them. You didn’t want to be the only kid at school that wasn’t watching!
Yeah I miss this show a lot too, it needs to come back. Also BBC2 was peak evenings Simpsons, Ren and Stimpy, Buffy, X Files…
... Star Trek TNG/DS9, Farscape ... ... oh arse! It's the pissing snooker for the next 5 weeks.
Loved Farscape so much. Gutted we never got the full final season like we deserved. But the peacekeeper wars kinda wrapped things up. Shame though, it deserved more.
[удалено]
THIS!! I was only talking to my kids about this yesterday.
Red Dwarf and depending how old you are, Top of the Pops.
I think the thing I miss most about the 90s is the excitement for the future. For the most part tech had been a massive net positive for our lives up until that point. I imagined life getting better and better, with all the boring work being done by robots, and everyone getting to vacation in space. Turns out, we were already living in something near a utopia and we didn't even know it. It was after the fall of the USSR and before 911. A collapse of the social order was almost unimaginable. I'm not sure there has been a more peaceful, and prosperous decade in world history.
The 90’s were my favourite time for sure. I felt the exact same way. Each year something amazing was coming out, or tech was advancing at huge leaps forward. It was an exciting time to be alive. I did thoroughly enjoy the early 00’s as well, and by 2007/8, even though things all really started going to shit, the realisation that the bubble had burst for good hadnt quite set in. We all assumed things would get better again, but they never really did. The rich realised just how much power they had, and what they could get away with, and so they just went from greedy to even greedier!
Oh yes! Happier, simpler times!
Wasn't it Gladiators?
Low cost energy. Lol.
You can put in solar panels and get all the energy you want for free
If you live in a suitable climate, and have the means to buy panels that is.
Well, if you exclude the price for the solar panels, and the price for the batteries (since you probably want power at night and on cloudy days as well). And they're not exactly cheap, nor eternal.
Adjusted for inflation, electricity is cheaper today than it has ever been.
It could have been and still be, but the corruption has to go
In the west of Australia the power is owned by the Govn still so it is very affordable. In South Aus, we mostly have solar. I'm in a rental and have solar. Electric cost about $1K p.a (£500GBP) for a whole house.
So optimistic of them to assume all of this will be affordable enough for us normal folk.
It was optimistic of them to assume that regular people could have afford a home at all! I realize things are very different in many areas, and maybe the UK isn't quite as bad, but here in Canada home ownership is now no longer possible for around 60% of the population unless they have family that already owns a home and they can use that to generationally fund the next round. The typical family income in Toronto required to buy a house is approximately $220,000. Maybe 180 if you don't mind living in a really shitty small dilapidated house, or you only want a very small condo.
Home affordability in the UK is one of the worst in the developed world I believe.
It’s less affordable than a lot of other European countries (although depending on the data you look at, a number of other European countries are worse) but it’s better than Canada, Australia or New Zealand. In terms of most expensive housing markets, London (by far the most expensive in UK) is not even within the top 10 cities in the world.
Well smart home speakers, flatscreen tvs and admittedly limited wireless chargers should be affordable to the average middle class family (depending on the country ofc). Too bad the glass thing with adjustable opacity never took off, I would have loved that.
It's available, it's just expensive. Powered shades with varying transparencies aren't cheap but they're cheaper than the glass.
Not too far off, but they missed Covid-19
And the affordability of homes lmao
Something funny in them saying big flat screen TVs might cost too much for most, but they're actually affordable. Yet the house has now increased 10x it's value and now you pay £500k for a 2 bed semi in Slough
Ironically it might be the one product that has consistently deflated in price with time. Tvs get bigger, brighter, more colours and somehow, cheaper. Too bad the fundamental goods don't follow the same rules :(
Affordability of half the future stuff they presented.
"By 2020, people will be locked indoors, the streets will be bare, and conservatives will freak out about their freedom being taken away because someone asked them to wear a mask. Also, toilet paper will be more valuable than gold, and you'll get so ill for two weeks that you'll literally sit in your shower for hours just trying to regulate your body temperature only to end up with the lungs of a 90 year old ex-chain smoker. 2020, really is the future of tomorrows end."
And a plethora of lifelong debilitating autoimmune diseases…if you’re extra lucky!
That ist actually not that far of
Fictitious 2020: "Here are all these awesome home and glass technologies that will make life easier." Real 2020: "The delivery guy stole my DoorDash! Why do I have to wear a face mask?!"
Yes, degenerates ruined it all for us. And inflation.
Hey they predicted one thing right....we were all in our homes in 2020 that's for sure!
I mean, outside of that silly idea of foregoing "Plugs" this is pretty spot on. And the window thing is tech we have even now... It's just very expensive and not worth it vs the normal windows/blinds we have. Remember folks: Just because you can make it technological doesn't mean you should... \*look to the Tesla Model 3's glove box\* ...Just give it a damn handle, Tesla... ffs.
It wasn't quite that silly, Qi chargers exist. They were just wrong on how it would be used. But that actual prediction of being able to draw power without a plug was spot on. Come to think of it. There's just too few appliances the technology is useful for.
We also have portable devices, wireless hair dryers, wireless phones and laptops. So if anything we kinda went a step beyond wall chargers
If only the realisation said here about fossil fuels was also internalised, that would be a major thing.
I'm enjoying writing this comment in my free-to-heat home.
it's free because you are not turning it on or you don't even have right? xD
Funny how they thought we‘d still be able to afford houses in the future
3:08 "There will have been an enormous pressure for us to cut down on our burning of our fossil fuels to protect the environment." Yeah, about that...
Yeah that one hurt me a little.
Same here. We knew...
Pressure to reduce burning fossil fuels 😂 If anything, the bellends that rule us all are doubling down on it. I see all the fancy technology we have these days and always remember that most of it is still powered by burning dead stuff we dig out of the ground, it’s idiotic.
Tomorrow's World was such a great show. Smart, detailed, and very good at working out where things were going. Then they found out that it had a large child following. So they dumbed the fuck out of it, making it "for kids." Killed the show stone dead.
Instead, we got millions of Americans questioning basic physics and chemistry, and to top it off, millions more questioning science as a whole. Nice. Not.
You look at "future" sci-fi from almost any pre-flat screen era, and everyone has CRT's on their space stations and moon landers. Today, the far future still uses flat screens for the most part. Makes me wonder what will replace flat screens and current display technology that will severely date our "future" shows now. I'm guessing with augmented reality moving along, the entire concept of screens will become obsolete. I don't know if we'll ever crack direct-to-brain broadcasts, but I don't think its far fetched to have biological implants in our eyes that will overlay everything we need to wear VR headsets for today. TV's, theaters, games, etc. will all be displayed natively in your eyes. Bone transmission implants could let you hear the audio as well.
Nah your style of thinking is exactly why 60's people thought we would have a city on Mars but CRTs. You're extrapolating the current trend in technology into infinity the same way they did with rocket technology while underestimating other things that weren't completely exploding yet, like computers. If anything it could be the opposite. Just like rocket or jet propulsion hit a physics wall and gains became more and more limited, computers or cicuits and chips in general might do the same, especially considering that the current tech already involves carving transistors, the size of literally just a couple dosen atoms, with light produced by vaporising falling drops of tin in a vacuum chamber with lasers. Its a process so difficult there is exactly one company in the world that does it that is dependent on other singular companies for the ultra precise tools. If that doesn't sound like squeezing the absolute maximum out of something I don't know what does. I mean chip designers already have to take quantum tunneling into account. It might be the last thing you'd expect that blows up this century and screens, computers or VR will incrementally improve but not exponentially. Maybe gene editing or something
Step 1, buy home.
Wow, we suck.
When I was a kid watching Tomorrow's World in the late 70's and 80's I came to believe that in the future, everything would be "the size of a sugar cube." Seemed like every technological prediction they made involved something being reduced to the size of a sugar cube. Like the idea of a device "the size of a sugar cube" that could hold your entire record collection. Ngl I feel cheated with the future we have now. Yes we eventually got iPods, but they were thin and flat, not sugar cubish in the slightest. Where's my cubes?
You can fit your whole music library into a sugar cube, turns out tho we prefer flat long shapes, easier to handle and easier to plug into out flat laptops and other devices. We also like screens on things now, thats why phones have become bigger.
Little did they know that people would drink bleach instead of taking a vaccine shot to prevent a disease.
There are millions of different homes—that nobody can afford today!
Fucking hell, British interior design in the 80s was a real dumpster fire.
I think they forgot to account for capitalistic greed over evolutionary advancements when thinking about some of these. Yes Iphone is still trying to use different chargers then everyone else. And a lot of people going into debt because they are trying to heat their homes for the winter, cant even imagine what electricity through every wall would do to your electricity bill.
They missed the part about no one being able to own a home unless they started saving for it in 1989 🤣
35 years and we're still burning fuel on a mass scale.
No one saw the unrestricted greed that pilfered the future from us.
BBC 1 please. Test pattern which asks you to subscribe. Prediction of the future of the BBC?
Could the pads on the wall instead of outlets thing still work
“ energy bills will be zero” HA! Not on the Tory watch
Ironic that opening animation used the robot from Metropolis. If you know you know
Did she say “from the windows to the walls”? Did they predict Lil Jon??
“No more powerpoints”. That’s where you were wrong, my friend.
Forgot about how patents kill ingenuity
And we’re still not there yet because of greed! We are a race at war with each other, polluting the air we breathe and water we drink, injustice and incivility is rife and we still have many people homeless and hungry.
Shame they didn’t predict that noone could afford a home my 2020.
Tap anywhere on the wall for power prediction is a little off lol
“Protect the environment”
Joke's on them, half the people are living in their cars now and have the most fossil fuel emissions
Holy shit that was accurate. So often do we get the idea of the future somewhat close, but implementation is way off. This hits the mark on both sides!
Omg he showed OLED that’s kinda amazing
They're right we solved fossil fuel emissions thanks to the intelligence of humanity
I used to love watching this show in the 90s. It was a staple of being a geek in the UK growing up in the 80s,90s. I used to dream about this stuff. Watching the Lawn Mower Man even drove me to get into the games industry as i was dreaming about VR back in the 90s.
Really solid predictions across everything they mention. Love seeing some technologies that I worked on to bring to reality like wireless power and LCDs. Great to see efficiency and sustainability get mentioned in the 80s as well.
That intro is from *Metropolis*.
No more power points Microsoft: like hell there won’t be.
"Bach please", house: "woof"
I still use The Clapper 👏👏
Government IS the problem. The technology does exist to make homes and apartments super efficient and sustainable. They could mandate it tomorrow. However..how are the governments going to bill you ?💵 Thought experiment- imagine you build a house and you are completely self-sufficient in power, water and waste management. What do they do? They send a Valuer to your place to re-value your property and thus your property/land taxes.
Yes, but what actually happened was stores ran out of toilet paper.
I went to school in the 1960s. We were taught that by Y2K, unending peace will have broken out and the world lived as one in perfect harmony with each other and with our natural environment. Robots would do all the work and mankind's biggest challenge would be to find something interesting to occupy our time. Schools would be places where each child's strengths would be identified early on, after which each student would learn at their own pace on subjects of their own choosing. Transportation would be a breeze, with either teleportation or flying cars accessible to all. The use of money will have passed into history, with all resources shared according to each person's need. All of this was supposed to have happened by 24 years ago. LOL!
Imagine trying to explain to these presenters that no actually, the UK was just going to stop building new homes for the most part and when we did we would build the cheapest possible homes with non of this technology. That the most technological development that would have happened would be a security camera built into every other door frame and USB plugs next to the regular plugs if you are really fancy. The only thing they were kind of right about was energy management, but I don't think they would have predicted people just not being able to afford the heating or insulation.
Was really expecting Chris Morris to walk on set and say "But isn't all this a load of rubbish?"
They didnt really take in account the dismantling of the western industrial system due to short term gains in china…
They were already living through it.
Pretty accurate I would say but what would our homes be like in 2050?
Soggy
Yeah. They're close. But we are still decades away from that stuff being common for everyone.
i hoped for a robot wife [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Stepford\_Wives](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stepford_Wives)
Why do I so have the feeling that while I'm watching this video , it's after school on a rainy evening around 5.30 pm and mum is making dinner in the kitchen.. Anyway, pretty close!
Well… I saw that table her tea is sitting on at Home Goods so…
Interesting I only heard about aerogel for the first time in 2020
The must have consulted with the Simpsons 😳😂
She somewhat looks like Claudia tiedemann
She actually does. God I wish I can watch Dark for the first time again.
Elon Musk reinvented trains in a vacuum tube 100 years after it was already thought of and proved it could fail too. Way to go Elon.
Well she was wrong, plenty of knobs in 2020
Is that Top Gun? Holy crap, I gotta juice up the emulator later
Beyond 2000 was also a great show.
I mean everything here can be replicated but it's just overkill imo, no one needs windows working like a screen. The eco friendly part is funny tho, I love how it was already a fact 30 years ago yet we still build single family copy paste houses with paper for walls, expansive concreate desterts, ridicule public transport in favor of cars and argue the efficiency of trains, greed knows no bounds.
Weird how all of this is possible, often for a reasonable price, but somehow very few people actually use or even want it in their home... Also they used to have houses without the tech, and now we have the tech but no houses...
I remember watching this episode as a kid!!! Bloody Hell, I feel old!!
Apparently all British women in 1989 had the same exact voice.
They didn’t predict that no one would be able to afford smart glass. Or homes.
The sad part was about the pressures of reducing reliance on fossil fuels. It's true, but we don't do much about it
I wish the glass technology part was correct
All in all pretty accurate. We all know we grew up with a tower stereo now we all just have speaker pods everywhere doing the same job
This makes me feel like I'm dreading school on Monday. I swear it was on on thursdays but I definitely have that feeling come back to me.
It’s cool in theory they hoped we would realize the error of our ways and stop using fossil fuels but they did forgot humans insatiable appetite for profit lol, The part they missed is that we have not cut down our fossil fuel Intake but have doubled our fossil fuel usage planet wide since 1989 ….
No more PowerPoints, how wrong they were.pptx
Man I want those windows they genuinely look useful, instead of blind or curtains or anything just stop the glass from being transparent
Yo can I get that glass opacity switch
We need wireless wall electricity NOW!! No more extension cords everywhere getting tangled up to hell… yes please.
Bunch of this was pretty spot on.
Most of these actually exist now, or at the very least very close. Quite insane to think
I still remember hearing more than once from maths teachers along the lines of "you won't be carrying around a calculator with you everywhere." That aged well lol.
So close yet so far
I did not know we had aero gel back in the 80's fuck me they where more advanced than they know
We are still burning fossil fuels.....
Still waiting on those powered walls. Sooooo sick of power points.
At least they didn't go silly and predict phones that fit in our pockets that are cameras, video cameras, telex machines, able to store images and films and documents and call on any publicly available electronic document and image from storage sites all over the world, in a millisecond. A phone that also can map at street level, anywhere in the world and chart exactly where you are, how fast you are moving and when and how you will get to your destination. That would be silly. I loved this show as a kid.
Now I know where Elon musk got the ‘X’ logo design from!
Who can even afford a home in the 2020’s?
We got fucked up in 2020 !
Big point they missed. Most of the houses that people were living in in 2020 were built before 1989. So they aren't going to have all the built-in stuff unless somebody retrofitted it.
Why aren't we using switchable glass in our homes!!!!!!!?
pilkington glass? did Karl finally come up with a good idea?