Imagine what life will be like in 2123. Scary and kind of awesome, probably. Now, get into a make-believe time machine and travel back to 1923. Pretend it is the Roaring 20’s, and you just finished the Charlestown and are now preparing to take a sip of a homemade glass of whiskey because of Prohibition. Your mission; peer into the future to imagine what 2023 would be like with the perspective of some doing it 100 years ago.
It really happened. Scientists and sociologists gave predictions for 2023 back in 1923, and it was pretty crazy what they thought the future held.
Paul Fairie is a researcher and instructor at the University of Calgary, and he provides this info by digging through newspaper clippings of experts from 1923.
Here’s what he told NPR.
“Since last summer, I’ve been sharing themed collections of clippings on Twitter, and I thought it might be fun to look at what people were thinking about 2023, but 100 years ago. Digging through archives is a fun hobby — it’s weirdly relaxing to read about what people were thinking decades ago.”
Here are some highlights.
One person predicted we would have found the cure for cancer, tuberculosis, infantile paralysis (known as polio), and leprosy. Ambitious wishes, no doubt, and we have been able to knock out polio and leprosy.
Here’s an interesting one; “beauty contests will be unnecessary as there will be so many beautiful people that it will be almost impossible to select winners.” Umm. Well… Have you been to a DMV lately? I guess we can say that prediction did not come to fruition.
Another person predicted it would become stylish to blacken your teeth.
Some people predicted individuals would live to 150 or 200.
A mathematician and electrical engineer named Charles Steinmetz predicted that people would spend much fewer hours working. He said, “the time is coming when there will be no long drudgery and that people will toil not more than four hours a day, owing to the work of electricity.”
Other experts predicted the population of the United States would be 300 million (we’re at 335) and Canada would hit 100 million (they have 38 million).
Aviation pioneer Glenn Curtiss predicted that “gasoline as a motive power will have been replaced by radio and that the skies will be filled with myriad craft sailing over well-defined routes.”
A predictor in Pittsburgh said, “watch-size radio telephones will keep everybody in communication with the ends of the earth.” Not sure if his name was Nostradamus, but that’s pretty accurate.
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