Domestic Life In The Past Future

One of my favourite books as a child was a pictorial history of the automobile. As much as a I loved looking at the old cars, the most amazing section was the one devoted to the future of the automobile. The book was originally written in the early 70s, so by the mid 80s, you could see how some of the predictions for the future had mapped out correctedly and some were way off the mark.

In a similar mode, the two videos available from 1999AD (via Retro Thing, from Paleo-Future), are revealing as much for how well it predicts some aspects of the way internet technology would impact home life as for how wrong it is about apsects of today’s domestic politics.

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The kitchen of the future video is equally telling and, in terms of current questions about health and diet, not a little provocative.

I’ve mentioned before how prescient Harvey Cox’s book, The Secular City, was in relation to the impact of new communication networks on social patterns. Perhaps there is a viable research methodology in looking at past futurist predictions and seeing how they did and did not accurately predict trends and developments?

[tags] 1999AD, Futurism [/tags]