And to finish her year,
Today's post picks up an article written 104 years ago, looking forward to what we might have expected in 2015. Quoting here because in 1915 - as in 2015 - how we get around and indeed the dirt and pollution caused by current methods were very much to the fore:
The November 25, 1915 edition of Dalkeith Advertiser reported on an article printed in 'Harper's Magazine' written by Mr Alan Sullivan, when he reflected on what the world would be like in 100 years (2015). According to Sullivan, he "sees broad and spotless streets, to which the horse is a stranger, and whose smooth surface is unscarred by the universal pneumatic tyre. Synthetic rubber has arrived. The city traffic is entirely electrical, Trucks and motors speed swiftly, without odour or noise; they are charged with power at the great central station. The air is notably pure and stainless. Coal is not used as fuel; there are no ashes to haul away. Buildings are no longer over-decorated, Line, proportion, and form are the dominating factors. These structures are full of light and air, and heated electrically. It is now many years since a new heating element was discovered many times more efficient than its predecessor.
"According to Mr Sullivan, there will be portable wireless telephone instruments, and electric trains running at two hundred miles an hour on a single rail. The people them selves will have larger heads and feebler legs and arms. Life will be more colourless and scientific; emotion will be regarded as crude and prehistoric, and the laughter of children more rare.
On this final day of the decade, which of these projections do members feel have come fully true, which partially, and which have been way off the mark. Which concerns for 1915 are the same as the concerns we have as we head forwards into 2020?
One of the advantages of making predictions 100 years into the future is that the predictor can guarantee not to be around to take the criticism when the date finally arrives
We must also take into account that, as we have discussed on another thread just lately, the past is a foreign country where they do things differently.
All that said, he is fairly spot on with many of them, but we have to see them in the light of how a 1915 observer would see them:
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broad and spotless streets, to which the horse is a stranger" in 1915 the streets woul have been covered by that stuff that falls out of the back of horses. Those days have generally gone so in his terms that prediction had come true. There were no plastic sweet wrappers, plastic cups and, to an extent, fag ends in his day (many smokers used pipes, and the butts of untipped cigarettes are completely biodegradable and will vanish after a spot ot two of rain
..."and whose smooth surface is unscarred by the universal pneumatic tyre. Synthetic rubber has arrived." True again by 1915 standards. Most vehicles with tyres used solid tyres, and they could make an absolute mess of road surfaces, especially when on heavy wagons.
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"The city traffic is entirely electrical, Trucks and motors speed swiftly, without odour or noise; they are charged with power at the great central station." Electricity was already being used on the strees for trams and he presumably envisaged an evolution of that technology, although the sentence is a little anbiguous because he doesn't say how it would be delivered. Is he thinking that battery technology will do it? If so we are getting there. If he saw all these vehicles running on the same principle as trams or trolleybuses then that, of course, didn't catch on.
In addition, of course, he didn't foresee the vast increases in personal travel by car that started shortly after the prediction was made, nor realistically could he.
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The air is notably pure and stainless." In 1915 terms he is correct. To them, pollution was what they could see (or perhaps not see through), and what they could smell. Older readers may recall going past North Somerset Junction on a summer's evening and experiencing the honk of the bone yard/ glue factory that was thereabouts at the time . Things like that have gone, to be replaced by pollution we can's necessarily see.
..."Coal is not used as fuel; there are no ashes to haul away. Buildings are no longer over-decorated, Line, proportion, and form are the dominating factors. These structures are full of light and air, and heated electrically. " All by and large correct, although there are of course mixed views over modern architecture (as, in truth, there always have been)
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"there will be portable wireless telephone instruments" - yup
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and electric trains running at two hundred miles an hour on a single rail." Well it could be done, and systems such as MAGLEV are in use in other parts of the world. But the problem with monorails is that the necessary train design means that each line has to be either totally self-contained, or expensive to engineer and operate with points and junctions.
...The people them selves will have larger heads and feebler legs and arms. Life will be more colourless and scientific; emotion will be regarded as crude and prehistoric, and the laughter of children more rare." - Well we've finally found the digo's kidneys - he should have stopped while he was ahead...
People's bonces are much the same size as they ever were, although the feebler arms and legs suggestion may be partially true as fewer people are involved in strenuous physical work, and people walk nowehere near as much as they did back then. The emotions prediction has turned out to be pure nonsense.
And the laughter of children is now rare? Well he might just have a point - they spend most of their time with their noses in their phones and Ipads or whatever, their parents won't let the little darlings out to play either because the Mail and the Express have convinced them there's a paedopile around every corner...
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