What expectations did the past have for the future? Why did our world today turn out the way it is? Have you ever wondered about these questions? 100 years again, 19th century artist Jean-Marc Côté illustrated a series of images titled “Visions of the Year 2000”. Let’s see how well his predictions fit with our modern society nowadays!
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How we imagined the future 100 years ago |
Present day |
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Super cleaning robots |
Autonomous vacuum cleaners |
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Achievement: 130% |
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Even though the robot is doing all the work, it is still pretty tiring to have to keep an eye on it. Now, with advanced tech companies bringing us automated cleaners, you don’t even have to be in the same room. This machine is so intelligent it even knows how to avoid running into walls or other furniture. |
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How we imagined the future 100 years ago |
Present day |
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Flying omnibuses |
The airplane |
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Achievement: 60% |
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A public transportation vehicle that flies in the air. Although we have planes, hot-air balloons and gliders, the invention of flying sedans or motorbikes is still a pending subject. Maybe in another hundred years, this would be a common sight. |
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How we imagined the future 100 years ago |
Present day |
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Flying firefighters |
Firetruck ladders |
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Achievement: 80% |
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Flying firefighters: These brave men can just leap into the air and put out fires. Despite the fact that mini-rockets are not really a thing now, we still have the common firetruck ladders for a similar effect. |
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How we imagined the future 100 years ago |
Present day |
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The winged messenger |
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Achievement: 120% |
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The stone-age version of cloud computing: Receive your mail from a postman riding on a winged bike. 100 years ago, mail was delivered by horse, train or boat. An exchange of letters often took over 10 days, so it it quite reasonable for people of the past to anticipate something like this. Today, with the popularization of the Internet, emails are an everyday thing, along with web-chats, texts and instant messages. |
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How we imagined the future 100 years ago |
Present day |
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Voice transmission devices that project images |
Facetime |
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Achievement: 150% |
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Communicate with someone afar by sending images instead of sounds. We have gone so much further than that, i.e, through web cams on PCs, laptops, tablets or smartphones. The 2 parties can simultaneously observe one another’s reactions and expressions, too. |
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Imagination is fuel for invention
It is fair to say that human progress come hand in hand with human imagination. One pictures himself flying freely like a bird, and the airplane is invented. One dreams of listening to voices miles away, and the telephone is invented. We never seize to have hopes of a more advanced future, hence the sci-fi movies, novels and animations. Even though some are still quite our of our league, it is never wrong to dream a bit bigger. Let’s start from there. Would the world depicted in sci-fi movies come true one day? It is hard to say, but with our imagination, anything is possible.
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