My prediction, First its houses, If you notice houses are getting more advanced, computers, tv, appliances. Then its cars, then flying cars are going to take over. Then the next stage, flying cars that can go to mars and venus. That is the next stage of flying cars, and the final stage of this is flying houses.
John and Julie Giljam, founders of Cool Amphibious Manufacturers International (CAMI), have asked themselves because they offer the Terra Wind RV. This camper lets you take a vacation on asphalt and the water. The drive on water RV already exist
Similar story. When I was a kid, I had a book published in 1959--shortly after Sputnik--on the future of space flight. Actually, it was a double-book: The future of space flight and the planets. I remember reading about how the US was developing a space plane that would launch atop a rocket and land like an airplane. (X-20 / DynaSoar). How we would build a space station in the 1970s (somewhat like what you see in the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey") and the first trips to the Moon would be sometime in the 1980s or so. I also enjoyed reading about how Venus might be a water-world or a desert. We just don't know because we can't see underneath the clouds (keep in mind, this was before any probes had ever been sent to any planet).
@@patrickmulroney9452 Fax machines go back to 1843, and there were a variety of prototypes throughout the 20th century, until they finally hit the mass market in the 1980s.
Oh I'm sure they envisioned some sort of variable polarizing effect that could be used to screen out too much sun. Or, at least, they SHOULD have envisioned that.
yeah that is the #1 reason has never happened and won't happen for a long time, until the AI Overlord is so advanced that it can eliminate any human error. but then it still won't happen because #2 reason: it's a ridiculous waste of energy to make individual flying devices
@@garryferrington811I am building heavy-duty pyramids that can be folded out over your house to guide the car away from your house. Any buyers out there?
The predictions were so concentrated on transportation but the reality turned out to be concentrated on communication. Today, I will join a Zoom meeting with about 25 people scattered around in several states. I will get there in 3 minutes and get back in 5 seconds. I might not even put on pants. That beats the h*** out of transportation.
that and PEVs are killing public transit. the NYC transit ridership is down by a 3rd and Bostons is down by HALF in the last 3 years. you're right about communication. look at what we are doing right now. i can be in the middle of nowhere, call someone, send mail, send a message, video call them, and post on social media with a device that fits in my pocket.
yeah, but you need both. What good is communication, if you still have to wait one hour and pollution and crazy car traffic, just to go to the grocery store or get back home? You still have to mover around sometimes. good and products still need to be shipped around, by trucks. What if they could be shipped fast by air carriers without pollution? yes, I know people driver crazy and you would have car accidents in the sky. Modern technology brought a curse. SOCIAL MEDIA AND NO PRIVACY.
@@lukeyznaga7627 I'm guessing by your bad English, you're from Europe. The people who have to drive and hour or more to a grocery store are such a tiny percentage here its almost immeasurable. The amount of pollution and "crazy car traffic" those people deal with is zero because they live in the middle of nowhere. Where they are driving to only has a few thousand people living there. American's DO NOT BUY FOOD THE WAY EUROPEANS DO. We keep food on hand. We do not buy groceries every single day or every other day. Most of us buy once a week or once every other week. Those people who drive an hour or more? they buy a months worth of food at a time, or more. Ranchers who live in the middle of no where will lodge a massive order weeks in advance with their grocery store and come pick it up in a large truck with the food on pallets. its thousands of dollars worth at a time. the rest of us have freezers, refrigerators, and pantries, which in America is an entire room of the house dedicated to just stored food. go watch a video on American's shopping at Costco or Sams club. thats how American's buy their food.
@@lukeyznaga7627 Good point. We still need to improve transportation and product delivery. However, reducing the need for transportation and single-product delivery can and has been giving us great benefits.
@@MrSGL21 . That is the result of having to drive to do anything, the other result is food being loaded with preservatives, having little that was fresh.
In the 1950s Ford Motor Company has a building in Dearborn, Michigan called the Rotunda. In that building there was an exhibit called " The city of the Future. " The telepaper would read you the news while your car would drive you to work. And among other things there was a levitating car (actual vehicle) which floated above the ground. It was called the Levicar mark 2 I believe. Unfortunately the vehicle had some problems and in the late 50s the Rotunda burned to the ground.
They had a factory in Lorain OH where rubber and steel and so on would go in one end, and cars would come out the other end. An accurate prediction of the future, at that factory, would've shown robots assembling premade components that were imported from around the world, as the factory and local workforce kept shrinking. I think it was Lorain... may have been Elyria? It was right in that area. I didn't work at it, personally.
As a little kid in early '60s, I remember being disappointed to learn that by the time I got my drivers license, cars would be a thing of the past. Because I really, really wanted to drive a car. Still enjoy it.
@@factChecker01 There are many. There are a couple of books as well. I don't know of one source that would contain all of them or that it's even possible.
One of the things I love about modern architecture from the 1950s is that it laid the groundwork for what would become standard. It may not as spectactular as spires and domes but it was still futuristic in it's own (slightly more subtle) way.
They are cruising down an ultra-futuristic highway in a self driving car but playing a board game. Nobody in 1950 even imagined that we'd spend the next 75 years inventing and becoming consumed by the smartphone
hmm, smartphones as such are a phenomenon of the last 15 years or so only. Many foresaw and worked on computer based communication networks that would also be used by individual persons and consumers. But most of them did not envision the compactness and portability though.
Board games are so impractical in cars, whether a human is required to steer it or not. Every time you hit a pothole or bump, all of the sudden you've got hotels on Boardwalk and Park Place instead of Connecticut Ave🤣
If they had predicted the future American Family in a self driving car a little better, they'd show them not playing a board game together, but all of them would be glued to their cell phones.
Sad, isn't it? But you're quite right. This must be a wonderful age for muggers; no one looks where they're going, no one looks around, they just stare at the little screen in their hand, zombie-like.
@@Seth-b6i So, what's that mugger determined to gain from that 'victim'? That same cell-phone, or the expensive shoes (or the full water bottle)? Less folk today carry cash.
It is pretty interesting looking at those interpretations of self driving cars, you can see the idea of how it would work, when you see those line markings on the roads.
As a young kid, I had the incredible luck to be able to attend the 1962 Worlds Fair in Seattle. The fair was titled "The 21st Century Exhibition," and as the title suggested, it was about what it would be like to live in the 21st Century. Even as a kid, I knew that flying cars were never going to happen, and I knew we would not live in plexiglass domes. The "Radar Range" (microwave oven) was shown, and it did move into the main stream. The "Video Phone" finally got here, but in a form that would have seemed like magic in 1962 (cell phone) and even though we have it, we don't actually seem to use it much. Space was big, and while no one is living on the moon yet, this may come to pass. Of course the internet was not seen, and even in the 1980, while the internet was in use, it was not until the World Wide Web was invented by Tim Berners-Lee, and even then, we could not have envisioned that it would be the dominant technological advance since manned flight.
We don't seem to use video phone much? I beg to differ. We've got Zoom, Teams, Meet, Face Time (is Skype still around?). I'm guessing business use is more prevalent.
@@andrewvelonis5940 The Seattle Worlds Fair had a Monorail that ran from down town to the fair, and it is still in operation. An interesting fact is that many people thought the Space Needle was part of the fair, but it was actually adjacent to the fair and was a private enterprise but it is emblematic of the 21st Century Exposition. The monorail terminal was within walking distance of the Space Needle..
The reason, there are no monorails is that metro wins every time (on almost all fronts). Flying cars will not happen because noise and safety (for anyone around, not just the passengers and the driver).
Dystopianism showed up around Soylent Green/Planet of the Apes era, early 70s. Our view of the future had been Utopian since the 30s. Even 1984 was thought of as Creative Fiction, rather than a dark harbinger. Utopianism had a very long run.
I feel like it was the collective feeling of disappointment and disenchantment with the future after the social struggles of the 60's didn't lead to the great change they strived towards. I think all the bright young minds just went to a dark place.
@@98Zai: The social struggles of the 60s were driven by minds in dark places already. Every "major actor" tended to have some screwed up idea driving them, and they just happened to often be opponents to each other.
@@absalomdraconis Clearly, the Vietnam war started in the 50's. I just mean the collective spirit, or zeitgeist. A generation became disenchanted with the world.
Dystopian world views manifested in fiction long before the ‘70s. A hundred or more novels written by Shelley, Huxley, Wells, Stewart, Verne, Orwell and many, many others were published prior to the 1950s.
Every Wal-mart I've been to lately offers it, and for a while during Covid a number of other places too. I've also been to a drive _through_ convenience store, though I honestly have _no idea_ why that place was designed that way.
I was a child in the 70s and me and my late Mother remembered how when she was walking me to school I enthused to her about how I would live on a space station (the big cylindrical habitat type) when I grew up. The future turned out to be quite different...
As for drive-through grocery stores: no need to go look at a giant screen, just order what you want online go to the store and they will bring it right out to you.
Actual future: two hours in bumper-to-bumper traffic to get to your job. Going to get a quart of milk: drive ten miles, almost get into a collision six times. Yeah, they didn't see that coming.
The 1950s visonaries didn't foresee traffic congestion, jobs and retail moving to the suburbs, dismantling of public transit, women's equality, the transistor shrinking computers, or plastic and fiberglass replacing hunking metal cars.
Very cool and interesting. I love how the 50's "future" cars are still the same design as the big 50's land yachts. They were the most futuristic thing they could conceive and didn't realise that modern was actually smaller and more subtle
I know the Royal Mail experimented with rockets to deliver mail back in the distant past. This was to deliver mail to islands in the Highlands, Shetlands and Orkneys, Islands you could see, some being only a couple of hundred yards away, but unless the weather was very good, you were not going to safely land a boat on them. Mostly this got solved by Bridges and causeways being built or the Islands becoming abandoned over time.
5:02. Well this was predicted truly exactly. There are supermarket where you order online on a screen and then you go to receive your groceries directly on you car...
Futurists in the past seem to think the best ideas for society would naturally come to fruition. In reality it's the most profitable ideas and the most advantageous to those with wealth and power.
It wasn't a "light rail lobby" that killed monorails, the expense of putting every bit of infrastructure in the air made them too expensive. Sure, there are some elevated light rail lines in different cities but these don't need entirely new cars to operate, they can use the cars they already have. I really liked how the car of the future displaying a sin wave still had an analog radio with pushbuttons. I think I already owned that radio in one of the sixties vintage clunkers from my youth.
Monorails other than single-route passenger ones in cities, offer no practical advantages over conventional systems, to justify their capital cost or the difficulty of shifting from one line to another. Heavy freight would also create difficulties. Monorails are an answer to questions we aren't asking.
I luv all the profound retro futuristic artwork. Jane and Judy Jetson with their dog Astro, Elroy was probably grounded, George slaving away at Spacely Space Sprockets > 5:50 😂
George used to come home every day with a sore "button pushing finger." I found myself occcaisionally coming home with sore fingertips after "pounding" on keyboard all day. I figured Hanna-Barbera almost got it right.
The thumbnail shows a spaceship that is very similar to Bergie Beer animated store displays. I saw one at Off The Wall Antiques in LA in 2001. Price was $5k, and they had more than one. I wish I'd bought one!
@@knerduno5942 but they already existed , so a visionair could have predicted that such sort of device could become smaller and cheaper and more advanced
They predicted massive supercomputers. They invented tiny supercomputers. They predicted flying jetcars. They invented Honda hybrid electric cars. They predicted plasma assault rifles. They invented plastic assault rifles.
Most of these ideas had reasonable realistic expectations, but political turmoil, inflation, and outsourcing. Let's not forget that the car, oil, and insurance industry prevented much of future advancements for their own profits. Much of the innovations are restricted due to copyrights from big corporations that prevent smaller or start ups from taking foothold of new technologies
Giant glass domes always seems to be the thing in the drawings. I guess ventilation is all worked out in the imagination. Even back in the 1800s, they had drawings of futuristic high train trestles with their old style trains on top. Great stuff.
Futures are always written in the context of the present. Usually a disruptive technology (or a technical impracticality that cannot be economically overcome) changes this.
Yup. People are good in uprising things they know. But bad in changing approach to the world. As such they expect towers so high that they reach space, what we get are transgender people. It is why classic cyberpunk tend to focus on gang valance, weird drugs and evil corporations. And not actual essence of Cyberpunk what was transhumanism. Something what many SF still refuse to acknowledge.
Notice the self-driving car concept of the the past was centered on a very sensible idea of including guidance systems in the highways. The cars would detect the system embedded in the pavement and would simply follow the line. Today, we think we can program a computer to get a car to follow a road with no guidance system, and we think it can even be made to safely navigate city streets and heavy traffic. This I believe is an error, and is resulting in the failure of self-driving cars. Monorails were not stopped by any “lobby” conspiracy, they were stopped by the inherent weakness of the concept. It is expensive and impractical, with light rail and other conventional rail systems being much more practical urban mass transportation systems.
There was heavy lobbying, but not directly, outright forbidding rail systems. Rather, it was done more subtly. One lobbied change was to prevent planning entire urban rail systems, and instead requiring them to be designed point-to-point following demand. This made them extremely expensive to build and continually chasing past demands that had changed by the time each small section was completed, which is the opposite of how it's done in other countries, where it's the urban rail system that drives demand for the land surrounding planned routes.
@@AlexanderGieg US has overall train problem, not strictly monorail problem. Monorails are dumb in principle, with exception when elevated tracks actually make sense.
The line painting idea works real well until it snows and you can't see the line any more. A buried wire of some sort would be better for places where it snows.
@@donhoverson6348 That’s actually what I was talking about. The early designs all used embedded metallic elements of some sort which could be detected regardless of external visibility. And they were embedded in the center of the lanes, not along the pavement markings, so that cheap detectors on vehicles could find them easily.
That part with the groceries. It exists with some food shelves like Second Harvest. But in that case for example. You still talked to someone on how many families are being picked up for. And as you stop at each stop, they put the food into your car. But you take what they give you. You don't ask for anything. . As for that 50s version of flying cars, I can just imagine having to deal with either Karens and or Kevens for parking spots.
You have to mix the 1950s and today to accomplish at least 80% of what they were trying to do. Take those old cars make them electric and there’s 80% of your retro future right there. We are working on the robots
I grew up in the '60s and I thought the future was going to be fantastic! So did my friends and family. In fact, while there were plenty of ups and downs throughout the first half of the 20th century, I think it's fair to say that Americans generally had hope. I'm not 100% sure what happened to change that, but we sure have lost it. Although I have regained mine. I know enough about the cyclical nature of history to think that we can restore our hope. I can't think of any reason to think that life will ever be perfect, but we can become a hopeful society again. Some aspects of our world actually are fantastic and getting better. Gratitude is helpful for having a better attitude too.
We live like the planet has infinite resources, but we're sucking it dry. Or, should I say, rich people are sucking it dry. Religious fanaticism is on the march - again. It is anti-science and pro control of every aspect of your life, espcially if you're a woman.
Hope is a rare commodity becoming more rare by the day. Every year the scientists issue their increasingly dire warnings about climate change and every year they are ignored. And every year it gets hotter. Mass climate migrations amidst ever worsening storms paint a bleak picture of the future.
@@donhoverson6348 I agree. Yet, hope and hopelessness are choices. Learning and ignorance are choices. Action and inaction are choices. Most people live on auto-pilot though and probably don't realize that. I think it would require a major cultural shift to regain mass hope and that would probably take a few generations in time. I see many potent obstacles to that cultural evolution, but I am not hopeless.
@@Mr22thou I think part of the problem is that human beings do not have a unified vision of the future. The end-times religious people just want to see the world burn thinking they will ascend to their deity in the flames (they are probably pretty stoked about the destructive potential of global warming). There are the corporatists who want to concentrate the wealth and resources of the planet into the hands of fewer and fewer people. There are the non-end times religionists who want to impose a theocracy on all people of the world. There are environmentalists who want everyone to go back to being subsistence farmers. And many many more, each with their own agenda. Each with their own conflicting vision. Personally I would like to see the Star Trek future where reason, compassion and environmental consciousness have achieved a balance, but to those who want to see Jesus riding his steed cutting off the heads of unbelievers with a fiery sword that would be hell. I think that dark times are coming. I don't know if there is light beyond but I do know that my eyes will never see it.
05:34 -- In the future we will sit around wearing a jacket and tie, reading a book while our wife prepares our dinner wearing a dress and heels. I can't wait.
The theme of the 1962 Seattle World's Fair was 'Century 21'. The Seattle Monorail was part of that vision. Now Seattle is expanding The Monorail into the suburbs. Now called 'The Link', the Monorail is part of Seattle's public transportation infrastructure.
I live in San Francisco. Waymo operates here, self-driving cars. They struggle as a taxi service. They are at least 15-20 years away from being a mass consumer purchase.
Akshually, there are actually fewer people than there actually are ... global population numbers are fraudulent e.g. Papua New Guinea - no way there are actually 15 million headhunters in those dark jungles, as just one example ...
Back in grade school in the 60's we used to get the little 10 - 15 page books called "Read" and "Weekly Reader" (to take home) that often had articles about what the future would be like. Many of the illustrations shown here were also used in those publications. My friends and I would spend hours talking about how awesome it was going to be. Little did we know....................
Hey. You have several clips of our Monorail in Seattle, built for the 1964 World's Fair and still in operation today, but you don't mention Seattle in your list of cities with operable monorails.
2:26 They do have self driving taxis already. 4:05 We do have atomic submarines though. 5:08 Very similar we do order online and pick up at the store, the screens are just on your iPhone. 6:20 Air cars would be very impractical because they would be very unsafe if you had a mechanical issue, or ran out of fuel. 8:17 We do have enclosed pool areas, so you can swim in the winter. 👍🏻👍🏻
It’s fascinating to see that the self-driving cars were driving on the dashed lines, not between them. I think the artists were assuming those lines would be used to control the position of the car on the highway, i.e. to match the center of the car with the line
Notice how all the lanes of the future highway that supported self-driving vehicles has dotted markers embedded in the concrete. These are likely for providing some type of control signal that the cars use to maintain their lane and/or for power delivery. How you would change lanes or use the ramps to get onto or off of the highway isn't covered in your slide show. Also, not covered for normal roads. Any one of us with enough money can recreate these awesome car designs. Though, they don't have to be fully automated cars. But as far as self-driving cars go, they can be a huge benefit to people with sleep disorders who otherwise couldn't get around on their own.
Flying cars have two major obstacles. 1. Energy consumption. Car sized vehicle capable of vertical takeoff and flying without wings will consume enormous amount of energy compared to car. 2. Flying is dangerous if pilot is not highly trained. Distances to other flying have to be held long. Flying car traffic jam would be carnage. Flying among buildings is a high risk activity.
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You've been gulled by Elon Musk's lies -- self-driving cars are not just around the corner.
Where is Jixuan?
My prediction, First its houses, If you notice houses are getting more advanced, computers, tv, appliances. Then its cars, then flying cars are going to take over. Then the next stage, flying cars that can go to mars and venus. That is the next stage of flying cars, and the final stage of this is flying houses.
In the future, society will digress and be like the 19th century and nation states will cease to be.
John and Julie Giljam, founders of Cool Amphibious Manufacturers International (CAMI), have
asked themselves because they offer the Terra Wind RV. This camper lets you take a vacation on
asphalt and the water. The drive on water RV already exist
As the saying goes: " The future is not what it used to be. "
Robots, cyborgs, people who were revived & cured after spending a century in cryonic suspension.....
"The future is not what it used to be." And it never was. 😊
@@tjmpls4905 Some people are just gadget lovers. This material is CATNIP to them.
And never will be!!!
@@AlanEmmons-qw6bg Not unless you believe in the multiverse & / or better yet, you've found a " tame wormhole " that leads to it.....
"The future will not only be stranger than we imagine, it will be stranger than we CAN imagine". Arthur C. Clarke.
Which is why we love seeing these retro-future ideas.
Not quite. Clarke said “The Universe…”, not “The future…”
We won't have much of the future as we know it if Brandon continues to destroying the United States.
@@historybuff66 And of course Clarke was a known pedophile living in Sri Lanka.
Real early monorail: Wuppertaler Schwebebahn since 1901!
I had a book called "You will live on the Moon" when I was a kid.
Similar story. When I was a kid, I had a book published in 1959--shortly after Sputnik--on the future of space flight. Actually, it was a double-book: The future of space flight and the planets.
I remember reading about how the US was developing a space plane that would launch atop a rocket and land like an airplane. (X-20 / DynaSoar). How we would build a space station in the 1970s (somewhat like what you see in the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey") and the first trips to the Moon would be sometime in the 1980s or so.
I also enjoyed reading about how Venus might be a water-world or a desert. We just don't know because we can't see underneath the clouds (keep in mind, this was before any probes had ever been sent to any planet).
I remember The Weekly Reader around 1963 telling us we would have atomic powered cars, since oil would eventually run out.
I didn't have that book, but I remember seeing it.
@@petermerchant4439 edgar rice burroughs predicted computer photo by wire 1920
@@patrickmulroney9452 Fax machines go back to 1843, and there were a variety of prototypes throughout the 20th century, until they finally hit the mass market in the 1980s.
Those bubble top houses and cars - spending 10 minutes baking in the Florida sunshine would have shown the impracticality of those.
Or freezing in Cleveland.
And then you discover that Tesla’s have glass roofs…
“Sunroofs” are pretty common options.
Some bubble canopied aircraft are real hotboxes without good airconditioning.
Oh I'm sure they envisioned some sort of variable polarizing effect that could be used to screen out too much sun. Or, at least, they SHOULD have envisioned that.
Don't forget Phoenix and Palm Springs!
Flying cars? People can't be trusted to drive on the ground! Put cars into the sky and it would rain debris and bodies.
yeah that is the #1 reason has never happened and won't happen for a long time, until the AI Overlord is so advanced that it can eliminate any human error. but then it still won't happen because #2 reason: it's a ridiculous waste of energy to make individual flying devices
Just imagine the smashed cars dropping on your house!
@@garryferrington811flying house🤦♂️
@@garryferrington811I am building heavy-duty pyramids that can be folded out over your house to guide the car away from your house. Any buyers out there?
I like the way you guys think - let's do it! Finders keepers, on the debris and bodies.
The predictions were so concentrated on transportation but the reality turned out to be concentrated on communication. Today, I will join a Zoom meeting with about 25 people scattered around in several states. I will get there in 3 minutes and get back in 5 seconds. I might not even put on pants. That beats the h*** out of transportation.
that and PEVs are killing public transit. the NYC transit ridership is down by a 3rd and Bostons is down by HALF in the last 3 years.
you're right about communication. look at what we are doing right now. i can be in the middle of nowhere, call someone, send mail, send a message, video call them, and post on social media with a device that fits in my pocket.
yeah, but you need both. What good is communication, if you still have to wait one hour and pollution and crazy car traffic, just to go to the grocery store or get back home? You still have to mover around sometimes. good and products still need to be shipped around, by trucks. What if they could be shipped fast by air carriers without pollution? yes, I know people driver crazy and you would have car accidents in the sky. Modern technology brought a curse. SOCIAL MEDIA AND NO PRIVACY.
@@lukeyznaga7627 I'm guessing by your bad English, you're from Europe.
The people who have to drive and hour or more to a grocery store are such a tiny percentage here its almost immeasurable. The amount of pollution and "crazy car traffic" those people deal with is zero because they live in the middle of nowhere. Where they are driving to only has a few thousand people living there.
American's DO NOT BUY FOOD THE WAY EUROPEANS DO. We keep food on hand. We do not buy groceries every single day or every other day. Most of us buy once a week or once every other week. Those people who drive an hour or more? they buy a months worth of food at a time, or more. Ranchers who live in the middle of no where will lodge a massive order weeks in advance with their grocery store and come pick it up in a large truck with the food on pallets. its thousands of dollars worth at a time.
the rest of us have freezers, refrigerators, and pantries, which in America is an entire room of the house dedicated to just stored food.
go watch a video on American's shopping at Costco or Sams club. thats how American's buy their food.
@@lukeyznaga7627 Good point. We still need to improve transportation and product delivery. However, reducing the need for transportation and single-product delivery can and has been giving us great benefits.
@@MrSGL21 .
That is the result of having to drive to do anything, the other result is food being loaded with preservatives, having little that was fresh.
In the 1950s Ford Motor Company has a building in Dearborn, Michigan called the Rotunda. In that building there was an exhibit called " The city of the Future. "
The telepaper would read you the news while your car would drive you to work. And among other things there was a levitating car (actual vehicle)
which floated above the ground. It was called the Levicar mark 2 I believe.
Unfortunately the vehicle had some problems and in the late 50s the Rotunda burned to the ground.
They had a factory in Lorain OH where rubber and steel and so on would go in one end, and cars would come out the other end. An accurate prediction of the future, at that factory, would've shown robots assembling premade components that were imported from around the world, as the factory and local workforce kept shrinking. I think it was Lorain... may have been Elyria? It was right in that area. I didn't work at it, personally.
Sounds like Spaceship Earth.
Being in Seattle, I used to love riding the Monorail, but these days I haven't been near either of the endpoints due to safety concerns.
Nine years ago, I used to live in Seattle. My friends say that it has changed a lot.
Because Democrats
As a little kid in early '60s, I remember being disappointed to learn that by the time I got my drivers license, cars would be a thing of the past. Because I really, really wanted to drive a car. Still enjoy it.
Me too. Refused to bother to get my DL in 1970 as a kid for the same reason ... luckily it didn't happen.
Funny how things happen. I think we are still going to be driving for a while and I suspect we are going to be pumping gas for a while too.
@@robertlevasseur6843 I keep hoping for nuclear energy to take off as fossil fuels are quite harmful but i'm honestly thinking about just giving up.
Good luck Sebastian with the new channel. "The future ain't what it used to be," Yogi Berra
Quote of the day.
"It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future." -YB
So many great YB quotes.
@@stringlarson1247 I love that quote. I am going to search for a web site of his quotes.
@@factChecker01 There are many. There are a couple of books as well.
I don't know of one source that would contain all of them or that it's even possible.
One of the things I love about modern architecture from the 1950s is that it laid the groundwork for what would become standard. It may not as spectactular as spires and domes but it was still futuristic in it's own (slightly more subtle) way.
The "Googie" and space age design were my favorites.
A time of optimism and fascination with technology.
They are cruising down an ultra-futuristic highway in a self driving car but playing a board game. Nobody in 1950 even imagined that we'd spend the next 75 years inventing and becoming consumed by the smartphone
hmm, smartphones as such are a phenomenon of the last 15 years or so only. Many foresaw and worked on computer based communication networks that would also be used by individual persons and consumers. But most of them did not envision the compactness and portability though.
Board games are so impractical in cars, whether a human is required to steer it or not. Every time you hit a pothole or bump, all of the sudden you've got hotels on Boardwalk and Park Place instead of Connecticut Ave🤣
@@GizzyDillespee A shake - up in the real estate market !! That was too easy.
I noticed that the men were still wearing business suits and the women skirts with tucked waists. They didn't imagine us in casual sweats and jeans.
@@kitchentabletalks they aren’t 100 pounds overweight also…
If they had predicted the future American Family in a self driving car a little better, they'd show them not playing a board game together, but all of them would be glued to their cell phones.
Sad, isn't it? But you're quite right. This must be a wonderful age for muggers; no one looks where they're going, no one looks around, they just stare at the little screen in their hand, zombie-like.
@@Seth-b6i So, what's that mugger determined to gain from that 'victim'? That same cell-phone, or the expensive shoes (or the full water bottle)? Less folk today carry cash.
Neat video with good narration. Thanks!
It’s basically the past but with smart phones and every body crazy😂
It is pretty interesting looking at those interpretations of self driving cars, you can see the idea of how it would work, when you see those line markings on the roads.
Great vid! I love retrofuturism
As a young kid, I had the incredible luck to be able to attend the 1962 Worlds Fair in Seattle. The fair was titled "The 21st Century Exhibition," and as the title suggested, it was about what it would be like to live in the 21st Century. Even as a kid, I knew that flying cars were never going to happen, and I knew we would not live in plexiglass domes. The "Radar Range" (microwave oven) was shown, and it did move into the main stream. The "Video Phone" finally got here, but in a form that would have seemed like magic in 1962 (cell phone) and even though we have it, we don't actually seem to use it much. Space was big, and while no one is living on the moon yet, this may come to pass. Of course the internet was not seen, and even in the 1980, while the internet was in use, it was not until the World Wide Web was invented by Tim Berners-Lee, and even then, we could not have envisioned that it would be the dominant technological advance since manned flight.
I went to the NY World's Fair. I rode the monorail. What year was it? I think it was '63, though I could be off a bit.
We don't seem to use video phone much? I beg to differ. We've got Zoom, Teams, Meet, Face Time (is Skype still around?). I'm guessing business use is more prevalent.
@@andrewvelonis5940 The Seattle Worlds Fair had a Monorail that ran from down town to the fair, and it is still in operation. An interesting fact is that many people thought the Space Needle was part of the fair, but it was actually adjacent to the fair and was a private enterprise but it is emblematic of the 21st Century Exposition. The monorail terminal was within walking distance of the Space Needle..
@@shenmisheshou7002 The German town of Wuppertal has a suspended monorail that’s been in continuous service since 1901.
This is an excellent documentary on cultural history. I am surprised it doesn't have more views. Well done!👍
Instead, YT over loads us boring, mass-produced, 'dance' videos. On-line, it seems that money talks
The reason, there are no monorails is that metro wins every time (on almost all fronts). Flying cars will not happen because noise and safety (for anyone around, not just the passengers and the driver).
i hope we go back to a classic design with these retrofuturism designs and it truly becomes a preffered design
Excellent, fun video!
Dystopianism showed up around Soylent Green/Planet of the Apes era, early 70s. Our view of the future had been Utopian since the 30s. Even 1984 was thought of as Creative Fiction, rather than a dark harbinger. Utopianism had a very long run.
I feel like it was the collective feeling of disappointment and disenchantment with the future after the social struggles of the 60's didn't lead to the great change they strived towards. I think all the bright young minds just went to a dark place.
@@98Zai: The social struggles of the 60s were driven by minds in dark places already. Every "major actor" tended to have some screwed up idea driving them, and they just happened to often be opponents to each other.
@@absalomdraconis Clearly, the Vietnam war started in the 50's. I just mean the collective spirit, or zeitgeist. A generation became disenchanted with the world.
Dystopian world views manifested in fiction long before the ‘70s. A hundred or more novels written by Shelley, Huxley, Wells, Stewart, Verne, Orwell and many, many others were published prior to the 1950s.
No debating any of these accurate description of American history in ‘50s and ‘60’s. So what’s after dystopia? What’s after technology?
Wonderful and simply anazing !It's a great idea as well!😊
People in the 50s: The future looks bright; things will become amazing!
People now: The future is bleak, we're all utterly fucked.
The pilot of the 'Hoppicopter' at 8:57 seems to be stuck with 1950's fashion. Tailored suit and a hat to fly of to his office of the future.
yes, the 50s' futurists were obssessed with technology; not so much with social changes.
Interesting. "Futures past" make for fascinating study.
Interestingly enough there is a development with a cab that balances on a single train rail.
5:06 Some places do offer 'to your boot' deliveries, although you have to order before fronting up.
Every Wal-mart I've been to lately offers it, and for a while during Covid a number of other places too. I've also been to a drive _through_ convenience store, though I honestly have _no idea_ why that place was designed that way.
I was a child in the 70s and me and my late Mother remembered how when she was walking me to school I enthused to her about how I would live on a space station (the big cylindrical habitat type) when I grew up. The future turned out to be quite different...
I imagined highspeed trains. 🚄
As for drive-through grocery stores: no need to go look at a giant screen, just order what you want online go to the store and they will bring it right out to you.
My country has a monorail train system now…it’s awesome. America should start investing in monorail s. They’re very convenient, fast, and reliable!
The old artwork is beautiful. There is a rock band named after this subject: 'We Were Promised Jetpacks'.
[meme around 2015] 'Hey dude, where's my hoverboard?
Cheers from the Pacific West Coast of Canada.
Actual future: two hours in bumper-to-bumper traffic to get to your job. Going to get a quart of milk: drive ten miles, almost get into a collision six times. Yeah, they didn't see that coming.
Actual future, humans will not work to live. Food is delivered to your door.
That is more a US problem, because US stuck in the past.
The 1950s visonaries didn't foresee traffic congestion, jobs and retail moving to the suburbs, dismantling of public transit, women's equality, the transistor shrinking computers, or plastic and fiberglass replacing hunking metal cars.
Very cool and interesting. I love how the 50's "future" cars are still the same design as the big 50's land yachts. They were the most futuristic thing they could conceive and didn't realise that modern was actually smaller and more subtle
Future.
Future never changes.
Futurism: the impractical age.
I know the Royal Mail experimented with rockets to deliver mail back in the distant past. This was to deliver mail to islands in the Highlands, Shetlands and Orkneys, Islands you could see, some being only a couple of hundred yards away, but unless the weather was very good, you were not going to safely land a boat on them. Mostly this got solved by Bridges and causeways being built or the Islands becoming abandoned over time.
Very glad to see you back SeB !!!
5:02. Well this was predicted truly exactly. There are supermarket where you order online on a screen and then you go to receive your groceries directly on you car...
8:13 There are people who built a big greenhouse to contain their house. It's still experimental but it seems very energy efficient!!
An issue of Boys' Life Magazine had a time travel story with RV's and cops on steroids in the future.
So spot on?
Futurists in the past seem to think the best ideas for society would naturally come to fruition. In reality it's the most profitable ideas and the most advantageous to those with wealth and power.
It wasn't a "light rail lobby" that killed monorails, the expense of putting every bit of infrastructure in the air made them too expensive. Sure, there are some elevated light rail lines in different cities but these don't need entirely new cars to operate, they can use the cars they already have.
I really liked how the car of the future displaying a sin wave still had an analog radio with pushbuttons. I think I already owned that radio in one of the sixties vintage clunkers from my youth.
Monorails other than single-route passenger ones in cities, offer no practical advantages over conventional systems, to justify their capital cost or the difficulty of shifting from one line to another. Heavy freight would also create difficulties. Monorails are an answer to questions we aren't asking.
Similar to period movies with modern hair and makeup.
I luv all the profound retro futuristic artwork.
Jane and Judy Jetson with their dog Astro, Elroy was probably grounded, George slaving away at Spacely Space Sprockets > 5:50 😂
And Rosie the Robot at home handling the housework 😁
George used to come home every day with a sore "button pushing finger." I found myself occcaisionally coming home with sore fingertips after "pounding" on keyboard all day. I figured Hanna-Barbera almost got it right.
I love seeing these retro-future ideas. I think will happen most likely. Well, thanks for sharing
As a boy, I invented 'flying shoes' but my mother told me to stop throwing my shoes. It was the end of an era.
The thumbnail shows a spaceship that is very similar to Bergie Beer animated store displays. I saw one at Off The Wall Antiques in LA in 2001. Price was $5k, and they had more than one. I wish I'd bought one!
Really interesting video! Thank you for gathering all this exciting materials!
Wow! I recognised that voice right away !
Who is it? Is it someone German?
@@dimik3855 Yes.
They are in Germany.
His Wife is the Best!
Lucky Guy!
He is also good friends with "THE aNGRy aSTRoNoT
What they didn't see was the internet and the computers in our pockets.
That came in the late 60s. In the 50s , computers were giant multi million dollar behemoths.
@@knerduno5942 but they already existed , so a visionair could have predicted that such sort of device could become smaller and cheaper and more advanced
@@Blackadder75 Yes. But I have never seen that in any prediction of the future from the 50s or 60s.
the 60s did predict home desktop computers, working, shopping.
They predicted massive supercomputers. They invented tiny supercomputers.
They predicted flying jetcars. They invented Honda hybrid electric cars.
They predicted plasma assault rifles. They invented plastic assault rifles.
Most of these ideas had reasonable realistic expectations, but political turmoil, inflation, and outsourcing.
Let's not forget that the car, oil, and insurance industry prevented much of future advancements for their own profits.
Much of the innovations are restricted due to copyrights from big corporations that prevent smaller or start ups from taking foothold of new technologies
I keep seeing a meme that first started that we were promised flying cars by 2020, then spotted a Subway wrapper that reafs "do not eat this wrapper".
Giant glass domes always seems to be the thing in the drawings. I guess ventilation is all worked out in the imagination. Even back in the 1800s, they had drawings of futuristic high train trestles with their old style trains on top. Great stuff.
Watched from Old Harbour Jamaica and see you in the future.
Aaaah... War never changes (c)
0:48 This train system was seen very similar in The Black Panther in the scene of the hidden city of Wakanda.
The Detroit People Mover IS NOT a monorail. It has a standard gauge track.
Ppl were so ridiculous in predictions of the future including flying cars , and honest politicians. 😂
Thank you for an interesting and cool video. 👍🏼 Very well made and I like your voice.
Futures are always written in the context of the present. Usually a disruptive technology (or a technical impracticality that cannot be economically overcome) changes this.
Yup. People are good in uprising things they know. But bad in changing approach to the world.
As such they expect towers so high that they reach space, what we get are transgender people.
It is why classic cyberpunk tend to focus on gang valance, weird drugs and evil corporations. And not actual essence of Cyberpunk what was transhumanism. Something what many SF still refuse to acknowledge.
It's amazing to hear Sebastian talking about the future when we usually hear him talking about the late Roman Empire!
Is this Maionarius? I thought I recognized the voice.
The more we imagine how the future will be, the further it is from reality.
Notice the self-driving car concept of the the past was centered on a very sensible idea of including guidance systems in the highways. The cars would detect the system embedded in the pavement and would simply follow the line. Today, we think we can program a computer to get a car to follow a road with no guidance system, and we think it can even be made to safely navigate city streets and heavy traffic. This I believe is an error, and is resulting in the failure of self-driving cars.
Monorails were not stopped by any “lobby” conspiracy, they were stopped by the inherent weakness of the concept. It is expensive and impractical, with light rail and other conventional rail systems being much more practical urban mass transportation systems.
There was heavy lobbying, but not directly, outright forbidding rail systems. Rather, it was done more subtly. One lobbied change was to prevent planning entire urban rail systems, and instead requiring them to be designed point-to-point following demand. This made them extremely expensive to build and continually chasing past demands that had changed by the time each small section was completed, which is the opposite of how it's done in other countries, where it's the urban rail system that drives demand for the land surrounding planned routes.
@@AlexanderGieg US has overall train problem, not strictly monorail problem. Monorails are dumb in principle, with exception when elevated tracks actually make sense.
The line painting idea works real well until it snows and you can't see the line any more. A buried wire of some sort would be better for places where it snows.
@@donhoverson6348 That’s actually what I was talking about. The early designs all used embedded metallic elements of some sort which could be detected regardless of external visibility. And they were embedded in the center of the lanes, not along the pavement markings, so that cheap detectors on vehicles could find them easily.
When I was a kid, my favorite book was You'll Own Nothing, And Like It
Is that you, Klaus Schwab?
Ah but are you ready for ze bug puree.
That part with the groceries. It exists with some food shelves like Second Harvest. But in that case for example. You still talked to someone on how many families are being picked up for. And as you stop at each stop, they put the food into your car. But you take what they give you. You don't ask for anything.
.
As for that 50s version of flying cars, I can just imagine having to deal with either Karens and or Kevens for parking spots.
I❤the illustrations
You have to mix the 1950s and today to accomplish at least 80% of what they were trying to do. Take those old cars make them electric and there’s 80% of your retro future right there.
We are working on the robots
Excellent. Memories... Love This. Thank You
The nuclear powered car 3:35 and train 3:56 look like they were straight from the Thunderbirds TV series.
Thank you creating this channel. I love the history of the future.
The future that never was, is the same one that never is.
It's funny how Americans could mostly imagine future centered around personal cars.
*Correction. Seattle has a monorail
I grew up in the '60s and I thought the future was going to be fantastic! So did my friends and family. In fact, while there were plenty of ups and downs throughout the first half of the 20th century, I think it's fair to say that Americans generally had hope. I'm not 100% sure what happened to change that, but we sure have lost it. Although I have regained mine. I know enough about the cyclical nature of history to think that we can restore our hope. I can't think of any reason to think that life will ever be perfect, but we can become a hopeful society again. Some aspects of our world actually are fantastic and getting better. Gratitude is helpful for having a better attitude too.
We live like the planet has infinite resources, but we're sucking it dry. Or, should I say, rich people are sucking it dry. Religious fanaticism is on the march - again. It is anti-science and pro control of every aspect of your life, espcially if you're a woman.
Hope is a rare commodity becoming more rare by the day. Every year the scientists issue their increasingly dire warnings about climate change and every year they are ignored. And every year it gets hotter. Mass climate migrations amidst ever worsening storms paint a bleak picture of the future.
@@donhoverson6348 I agree. Yet, hope and hopelessness are choices. Learning and ignorance are choices. Action and inaction are choices. Most people live on auto-pilot though and probably don't realize that. I think it would require a major cultural shift to regain mass hope and that would probably take a few generations in time. I see many potent obstacles to that cultural evolution, but I am not hopeless.
@@Mr22thou I think part of the problem is that human beings do not have a unified vision of the future. The end-times religious people just want to see the world burn thinking they will ascend to their deity in the flames (they are probably pretty stoked about the destructive potential of global warming). There are the corporatists who want to concentrate the wealth and resources of the planet into the hands of fewer and fewer people. There are the non-end times religionists who want to impose a theocracy on all people of the world. There are environmentalists who want everyone to go back to being subsistence farmers. And many many more, each with their own agenda. Each with their own conflicting vision. Personally I would like to see the Star Trek future where reason, compassion and environmental consciousness have achieved a balance, but to those who want to see Jesus riding his steed cutting off the heads of unbelievers with a fiery sword that would be hell. I think that dark times are coming. I don't know if there is light beyond but I do know that my eyes will never see it.
05:34 -- In the future we will sit around wearing a jacket and tie, reading a book while our wife prepares our dinner wearing a dress and heels. I can't wait.
There was a drive thru supermarket I saw somewhere in Europe, Sweden maybe.
The theme of the 1962 Seattle World's Fair was 'Century 21'. The Seattle Monorail was part of that vision. Now Seattle is expanding The Monorail into the suburbs. Now called 'The Link', the Monorail is part of Seattle's public transportation infrastructure.
I noticed in the flying cars, no seatbelts.
@patrickmccartney2418 My best guess would be because the artists were not aviators!
You would be dead anyway.
I love this! I grew up in the 60's, so this is like Nostalgia to me!
Is this also connected with the late Rome channel?
I live in San Francisco. Waymo operates here, self-driving cars. They struggle as a taxi service. They are at least 15-20 years away from being a mass consumer purchase.
there is rv that can also be use as boat.
3 vintage cartoons to watch: "Cars of the Future", "Television of the Future" and Houses of the Future".
All the visions of the future imagine fewer people than there actually are.
And all white, too.
Akshually, there are actually fewer people than there actually are ... global population numbers are fraudulent e.g. Papua New Guinea - no way there are actually 15 million headhunters in those dark jungles, as just one example ...
Holy crap! With all the train wrecks in recent years can you imagine a nuclear train??
The monorail was more of a Shelbyville idea.
Back in grade school in the 60's we used to get the little 10 - 15 page books called "Read" and "Weekly Reader" (to take home) that often had articles about what the future would be like. Many of the illustrations shown here were also used in those publications. My friends and I would spend hours talking about how awesome it was going to be. Little did we know....................
You could have mention the Star Trek communicator (1960's, but whatever). That one essentially came to pass.
Well beyond what was envisioned back then!
Even in 1985, "Back to the Future" didn't envision cell phones for 2015. Faxes and large screen TV were their communication.
"Could have mention"
And 3D Printing is a step towards the Replicator. Even 3D printing of food is being developed for space travel.
That house within the dome is a real good idea. Could be smaller as well. I'm imagining a version with tinted glass at the bottom for privacy ..
@FranckLarsen The tinted glass may have to go all the way up these days. If you don't want drones peeking in that is!
It would be a heating and cooling nightmare without their own nuclear power plant.
@@johnp139 Have the dome glass double as built-in solar panels?
Hey. You have several clips of our Monorail in Seattle, built for the 1964 World's Fair and still in operation today, but you don't mention Seattle in your list of cities with operable monorails.
2:26 They do have self driving taxis already.
4:05 We do have atomic submarines though.
5:08 Very similar we do order online and pick up at the store, the screens are just on your iPhone.
6:20 Air cars would be very impractical because they would be very unsafe if you had a mechanical issue, or ran out of fuel.
8:17 We do have enclosed pool areas, so you can swim in the winter.
👍🏻👍🏻
0:08 The Bradbury Building in downtown LA is still there but they took out those twisting pillars out front.
I don't know about you guys, but I loved the RV/boat. That is definitely something I would use. Hell, I'd live in it.
It’s fascinating to see that the self-driving cars were driving on the dashed lines, not between them. I think the artists were assuming those lines would be used to control the position of the car on the highway, i.e. to match the center of the car with the line
A channel on the future, awesome. I'll join next week....
Notice how all the lanes of the future highway that supported self-driving vehicles has dotted markers embedded in the concrete. These are likely for providing some type of control signal that the cars use to maintain their lane and/or for power delivery. How you would change lanes or use the ramps to get onto or off of the highway isn't covered in your slide show. Also, not covered for normal roads. Any one of us with enough money can recreate these awesome car designs. Though, they don't have to be fully automated cars. But as far as self-driving cars go, they can be a huge benefit to people with sleep disorders who otherwise couldn't get around on their own.
I just wish they would bring this aesthetic back.
I despise modern day architecture and car designs.
Big cars are back, when we desperately need to reduce carbon emissions.
/havng seen the look of Tesla designs, I agree
I have an affinity for the old Googie architecture, but much prefer modern car design over the '50s fascination of making cars resemble aircraft.
Flying cars have two major obstacles.
1. Energy consumption. Car sized vehicle capable of vertical takeoff and flying without wings will consume enormous amount of energy compared to car.
2. Flying is dangerous if pilot is not highly trained. Distances to other flying have to be held long. Flying car traffic jam would be carnage. Flying among buildings is a high risk activity.
We had the technology for that, too.