The World of 2011 From the World of 1911

[IainC]

Link

Surprisingly accurate. The only major miss is air travel.

[Ironwood]

A University Education will be free to every man and woman.

 

[DraconianOne]

My favourites:

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

There will be no C, X or Q in our everyday alphabet

Pneumatic tubes instead of store wagons will deliver packages and bundles

[Khaldun]

It's not from 1911. It appeared in the Ladies Home Journal in December 1900.

I've taught the article in my class on the history of futurism for years, it appears in a couple of anthologies, it's well-known by folks who study predictions & futurism--it's a bit odd how it's suddenly been "discovered" by the MSM via a republication in the Saturday Evening Post and spewed all over the Internet as if it it had been unearthed from King Tut's Tomb. More importantly, at least some of what Watkins predicts in the article were ideas in common circulation among people looking ahead in 1900: faster, better transportation; bigger, healthier people; more efficiency (to the point of getting rid of redundant letters in the alphabet); forms of automation following the trend of industrial production; the control of nature.  The one thing he comes up with that I don't recall anyone else saying then is the idea about the remote transmission of photography, for which he definitely gets +1 prophecy points.

[Nebu]

My favorite: Everyone will walk 10 miles.  Gymnastics will begin in the nursery ... exercise will be compulsory in schools.  They got the exercise part right, but not for the reason that they were thinking.  

Let's not forget the free University education.  Ok, the intelligent parts of the world have this.

[Yegolev]

I suppose the prediction should have been "University education funded via taxes" or something similar.  Still a miss.

[Khaldun]

The 10-miles walking, exercise thing is tied into eugenics at the turn of the century. There was a common perception that the overly educated new middle-classes were doing too much "brain work", e.g., being accountants, clerks, managers, etc., sitting most of the day. The fear wasn't that they'd get fat but that they'd waste away into spindly, pale absinthe-drinkers. There was a big medical panic about "neurasthenia", basically a male version of hysteria, in which men would turn into melancholy, pallid, overly emotional poetic types and just sit around inside sighing and reading and masturbating. The eugenics piece tied this whole fear to a belief in "race hygiene", that if Anglo-Saxon WASP men turned into effeminate intellectuals, all the "vigorous" races would overwhelm them.  This is where the Boy Scouts came from, actually, along with a bunch of other stuff. (Teddy Roosevelt's hyper-manly devotion to 'vigor' was all about this kind of thing, and he took himself as the best example, since he went from being bookish and sickly to being a he-man hunter and warrior and president.)  So Watkins was being upbeat about Boy Scout-style attempts to reverse neurasthenia and other modern ills, just like he was upbeat about technological advance in other respects (including transportation). It was a pretty common belief among a lot of the chattering classes in 1900.

[Ironwood]

See also :  HG Wells.

[Khaldun]

Yeah, Eloi-Morlocks is another example.

[Ironwood]

Also Martians.

[Yegolev]

[Murgos]

...in which men would turn into melancholy, pallid, overly emotional poetic types and just sit around inside sighing and reading and masturbating.

This part is true though.  He just missed the 'morbidly obese' & 'living in our parents basement covered in a fine layer of cheeto dust' part.

[HaemishM]

He obviously didn't play MMOG's.

[ghost]

No mosquitoes or flies.   

[Sky]

Blame the hippies at the EPA.

[Khaldun]

Another durable futurist trope, at least into the 1970s, actually--climate control + control of nature sufficient to eliminate all dangerous or annoying organisms. Pops up in all sorts of places (Disney's futuristic community that he was busy imagining just before he died was supposed to have no mosquitos or flies despite being in Florida, because it would be mostly under a dome or some other protective covering). Watkins was a pretty early example, but just think about it--this is the point where there are already giant swamp-draining projects underway in Panama because two years before Watkins wrote this piece malaria was linked to mosquitos for the first time, and early National Park managers were already talking about they could precisely stage-manage populations of animals in Yellowstone.

[Sheepherder]

At that point they had also developed a number of effective insecticides, but weren't aware of biomagnification.

[Baldrake]

"He will live 50 years instead of 35 as at present."

I thought that was a bit suspect, and found this page with life expectancy data in the US. In 1900, a newborn white male had a life expectancy of 48.

A newborn non-white male could only expect to live to 32. Holy crap. No wonder people were getting married at 14 back then.

Interestingly, in those days it was all about getting through childhood. If you made it to 10, then life expectancy for white males jumped from 48 to 60.

[Mosesandstick]

My guess is that since they are age "0" figures they include infant mortality. Any baby who survives initially would've on average lived to over 32, the expectancy at 10 years of age was +40, making it around 50 years old.

[Teleku]

Interestingly, in those days it was all about getting through childhood. If you made it to 10, then life expectancy for white males jumped from 48 to 60.

So, if you didn't make it to age 10, then your life expectancy was still age 48?

[Der Helm]

So, if you didn't make it to age 10, then your life expectancy was still age 48?

No. It was just much more likely you would die between the age of 0 and 10 than between 10 and 48.

[Azazel]

A University Education will be free to every man and woman.

 

We used to have that, here in Australia (you still had to qualify for the courses). It got taken away. 

[Ironwood]

I'm shocked.

[angry.bob]

"He will live 50 years instead of 35 as at present."

I thought that was a bit suspect, and found this page with life expectancy data in the US. In 1900, a newborn white male had a life expectancy of 48.

A newborn non-white male could only expect to live to 32. Holy crap. No wonder people were getting married at 14 back then.

Life without antibiotics and a lot of other drugs we take for granted sucked. "You got a deep cut from a rusty nail? Well, if you don't die from Tetanus within the week we'll see ifyour leg is too infected to save". I hate big pharma as much as anyone, but I'm really glad that a 15 minute drive to a doctor takes care of something that would have taken a month of fear and luck to fix in 1911.

[Ironwood]

I'm not sure anyone educated or who has watched any kind of medical show on TV takes them for granted.

Hell, my biggest fear these days is strains getting resistant.  I've no idea what we'll do then.

Apart from die in very large numbers.

[Khaldun]

You really gotta remember the life expectancy thing is about dying in the first three years, as per above. If you made it past 3, you had fair odds in 1650 of making it to 50-55, as long as the bubonic plague wasn't around. Infant mortality was the big thing keeping human populations just barely above replacement until about 1750 in Europe, a bit later elsewhere, and it didn't get better because of antibiotics. It was really just more and better food (improvements in agricultural yield + spike in global trade) and better sanitation and water in urban areas. But by 1900, improvements in clinical medicine were starting to push up the upper end of lifespan, too--antibiotics were starting to go into use, but the huge thing was the impact of germ theory on medical hygiene. 75 years earlier, a surgeon might saw off a wounded limb and then think nothing of going and delivering a baby with the blood from the previous operation on his hands.

[Merusk]

I'm not sure anyone educated or who has watched any kind of medical show on TV takes them for granted.

Hell, my biggest fear these days is strains getting resistant.  I've no idea what we'll do then.

Apart from die in very large numbers.

Already happening and it's terrifying. Don't investigate it.

You really gotta remember the life expectancy thing is about dying in the first three years, as per above. If you made it past 3, you had fair odds in 1650 of making it to 50-55, as long as the bubonic plague wasn't around. Infant mortality was the big thing keeping human populations just barely above replacement until about 1750 in Europe, a bit later elsewhere, and it didn't get better because of antibiotics. It was really just more and better food (improvements in agricultural yield + spike in global trade) and better sanitation and water in urban areas. But by 1900, improvements in clinical medicine were starting to push up the upper end of lifespan, too--antibiotics were starting to go into use, but the huge thing was the impact of germ theory on medical hygiene. 75 years earlier, a surgeon might saw off a wounded limb and then think nothing of going and delivering a baby with the blood from the previous operation on his hands.

Think nothing of?  I recall watching a documentary where it was outline that keeping blood and puss and gore on your scrubs was a mark of a GOOD and Experienced surgeon.  You didn't ask for the guy with the clean whites, you wanted the guy with the blood-caked grungy lab coat.   Lister himself did this as late as 1871, after had published his paper about antiseptic surgery, if you can believe WIKI

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Lister,_1st_Baron_Lister

[Baldrake]

Interestingly, in those days it was all about getting through childhood. If you made it to 10, then life expectancy for white males jumped from 48 to 60.

So, if you didn't make it to age 10, then your life expectancy was still age 48?

I can see that liberal arts degree is serving you well. 

[Sky]

Another durable futurist trope, at least into the 1970s, actually--climate control + control of nature sufficient to eliminate all dangerous or annoying organisms.

OHNOES TEH HUMANS!

And sanitation, for fuck's sake. Took humanity long enough to stop shitting in the goddamned streets and rivers.

[Yegolev]

Interestingly, in those days it was all about getting through childhood. If you made it to 10, then life expectancy for white males jumped from 48 to 60.

So, if you didn't make it to age 10, then your life expectancy was still age 48?

I can see that liberal arts degree is serving you well. 

Oh, that got me.  Good show.

[Sheepherder]

Life without antibiotics and a lot of other drugs we take for granted sucked. "You got a deep cut from a rusty nail? Well, if you don't die from Tetanus within the week we'll see ifyour leg is too infected to save".

The rusty nail bit is sort of a red herring.  Tetanus thrives on porous surfaces in anaerobic environments, so a splinter off of a buried wooden stake is also fairly likely to have some pretty serious colonies.

Took humanity long enough to stop shitting in the goddamned streets and rivers.

Actually, we as a species haven't fully grasped that one yet.  Even those of us who live in parts of the world where germ theory, sanitation, and the hydrological cycle are well understood.

[naum]

Took humanity long enough to stop shitting in the goddamned streets and rivers.

Actually, we as a species haven't fully grasped that one yet.  Even those of us who live in parts of the world where germ theory, sanitation, and the hydrological cycle are well understood.

http://gizmodo.com/5878612/drone-pilot-discovers-river-of-meat-blood

[Yegolev]

I submit that the importance was grasped by some in that case.

[Merusk]

I submit that the parties responsible ALSO grasped and determined after consulting the profit vs. liability chart it was worth taking a run and paying the minor fine later.

Assuming the picture isn't later tossed out in court for being illegally obtained.   

[IainC]

I submit that the parties responsible ALSO grasped and determined after consulting the profit vs. liability chart it was worth taking a run and paying the minor fine later.

Assuming the picture isn't later tossed out in court for being illegally obtained.   

The picture isn't the evidence, the investigation by the EPA (based on reasonable suspicion) is the evidence.