A prediction of what the world would look line in 2000, made in 1900

"A man or woman unable to walk ten miles at a stretch will be regarded as a weakling."

yea, dont we all wish

some of them were pretty accurate like the wireless phone networks and car predictions.

This is total BS..

Heres why.

"He will live fifty years instead of thirty-five as at present"

In 1900 the average live span was a good bit longer than 35

..Also the bit about traffic no longer beign a problem

i DONT thinkthat was a major concern...considering the lack of "traffic"..anywere in the world

"telescopes of one-hundred-mile vision"

Come on this is just dumb..the earlist of telescopes were used to view the night sky..

100 mile vision...jesus christ.

i can't even read all those.

Sam F wrote:

This is total BS..

Heres why.

"He will live fifty years instead of thirty-five as at present"

In 1900 the average live span was a good bit longer than 35

Yeah. I'm pretty sure the average caveman lifespan is predicted to have been in the 30-35 range. Has to be longer than that for 1900.

Predictions tend to get better long after an event has occured.

Harry Kooter wrote:

Yeah. I'm pretty sure the average caveman lifespan is predicted to have been in the 30-35 range. Has to be longer than that for 1900.

Maybe for people who live past the age of 5... a lot of children would die very young. I don't know what the number is, but 30-35 sounds reasonable, depending how it was done. The median may even be lower.

Anyone see the film Idiocracy???

sfsadfd wrote:

Maybe for people who live past the age of 5... a lot of children would die very young. I don't know what the number is, but 30-35 sounds reasonable, depending how it was done. The median may even be lower.

the original text stated that a MAN would live to his 50's instead of 35...now that pretty much suggests that men living to there 50's was a rare event...and something that was going to be more common in the future..

the whole thing is a farce

If I had the time to go to an actual library (you know, a brick and mortar building, not just the internet), I'd like to look up the Dec 1900 edition of LHJ to see if this article appeared as stated.

I suspect (but can't prove it) that it's a hoax because many of the items have such a strong coincidental connection to contemporary conveniences we enjoy...

#1 - immigration issues from hispanic countries

#3 - interest in sports and exercise

#6 - proliferation of cars

#7 - proliferation of airplanes and air travel (prior to the Wright brothers?)

#9 - faxes, email, and internet

#10 - video technology

#12-#13 - organic foods

etc, etc, etc

The smoking gun of a forgery is usually that it's hard for the actual author to overcome his/her own contemporary context.

Or maybe this list of 29 items is an edited list of a longer list of items so it appears to be a forgery. I'd be curious to see.

mcgurk wrote:

Anyone see the film Idiocracy???

As a matter of fact i did like that film...there are of course undertones of the eugenics movement...

but it was funny

this is obviously fake. suburbs, nor the word "suburb" did not exist in 1900.

The 1913 online Webster's dictionary lists "suburb" and cites Chaucer using it.

http://machaut.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/WEBSTER.sh?WORD=suburb