2010: How Your Grandparents Saw the Present
Posted By Ric Vatner on February 25, 2010
Sometimes it’s hard to believe but it’s true – we are the future.
Do you remember when the blockbuster and now, cult movie; 2001: A Space Odyssey, came out in 1968? Maybe not, especially if you weren’t born or were very young, but those who do will tell you 2001 seemed so far away that they never really considered that one day they would be living there.
Well here we are in 2010 and even writing it, it somehow still looks futuristic.
I came across an interesting blog post today about a book written in 1972 titled: 2010: Living in the Future written by Geoffrey Hoyle (the son of the famous astronomer, Fred Hoyle, with whom he co-authored a number of books)
The post was by Daniel Sinker who teaches journalism at Columbia College Chicago. It’s interesting because he has recreated the book so readers can see what their parents and grandparents were told to expect about life today.
It is also interesting in an unintended way because of the juxtaposition of the content and the medium. The blog is on Tumblr, one of the 21st century’s Web 2 phenomenon social media web sites.
A quick look at the way we live (according to our grandparents)
I’ve no argument with the fact that I am still making beds, it was a nice thought.
But I wonder what he was smoking when he wrote “Your home is very carefully planned”
Kids have been creating havoc at home since the year dot and he forgot to mention what drugs they (sorry, we) are feeding to the kids to make this particular prediction come true.
There are many other predictions that you will recognize today probably by another name, e.g. Vision Phone aka Skype / Internet / Intranet, which makes the book prophetic enough to be worth some consideration again. In fact enough people thought so to start up a Facebook group to find the writer (Geoffrey Hoyle) and ask him about his visions. Maybe they wanted to know why he didn’t think of Facebook and invite them to be shareholders?
Your Chance to be a Fly on the Wall
I think you will find it interesting to read about yourself from the prospective of being able to listen in on someone postulating what you are going to be like today (in 2010) when you were a baby or possibly before you were born.
Even weirder, if you read the book back then or in the early ‘80s did you get a déjà vu feeling as you read about “you” in the future and do you now get a reverse déjà vu when you read it again?
My problem with the whole genre of “going back to the future” literature is that it tends to concentrate on the hardware i.e. what will we be using, the flying cars, computers, wrist phones paraphernalia of life but it never looks at the software, the morals, ethics, compassion and humanity aspects. The “How do we change or evolve as human beings” perspective.
The Decline of the West – Mark 1
I recently finished reading a great little history book called Medieval Cities by Henri Pirenne written in 1925. It describes the rise and fall of cities, mainly in Europe, but in doing so it really addresses the economic structure of the world economy from the period of the Roman Empire to the 14th century.
It was an eye opener to read about the economic decline of the West which was all over by the beginning of the 5th century and how that led to centuries of stagnation during which time the cities were practically emptied of dwellers other than people working in or for the church.
Most interesting to read was, how money lost its value because there was practically nothing to buy and in any case, people had lost faith in the state that backed the currency.
Pirenne talked about how the great land owners took to melting their gold coins down to create beautiful relics which they donated to the church to buy favors in heaven. You only had to read the news during the depths of the financial crisis and for many things haven’t changed much yet, to see that favors in heaven is once again looking more enticing than what’s ahead on earth for many of the disadvantaged or disassociated.
It was hard not to relate the situation described in the book to the economic problems we were facing at the time (the GFC was in full swing while I was reading it) and realize how similar some of the problems were to those our ancestors faced.
If the banking crisis had got worse instead of being held at the last hurdle by some swift and possibly temporary financial strategies, our own money system could have collapsed and I don’t believe I am being alarmist in saying that.
So, to end this post but not the topic, because I intend to return to it again either here or on my philosophy blog “Shadow in the Flame”, I would like to ask you what do you foresee in the next 50 or 100 years?
Not from a technological point of view but rather how do you feel man will evolve “sociologically” over the next 50 to 100 years? Will all the problems we face today; economic, global warming, population and environmental, change us for the better or worse or not at all? Will we still be here in a hundred years?
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