What does the future hold for technological development?

The world is evolving so fast that if you are to go into a coma, and wake up in the next forty years, the chances are that you may feel like a well-trained telegraph operator; lost and irrelevant in the scheme of things or feel like a computer.. Well, not the computer you imagined, but this below.

^{[Wikipedia]Source: Human Computers}

These are people that are good in calculations and computations and are usually young women. This is 1949 pictures of NACA, present-day NASA, High Speed "Computer Room". The name computer to refer to them remained accepted until the beginning of the 20th Century.

The employees use electric calculators, slide rules to transcribe raw data sometimes sent from space. If you want to have a feel of what that era feels like I suggest you watch the biography, drama, and history movie Hidden Figures based on the life of a real human computer, Katherine Johnson.

Now, imagine you had been in a coma since 1949 and suddenly woke up today to see the real computer. That would make for a lot of catching up to do, and the skill you had previously acquired would be very obsolete.

By 2030, there is a likelihood of having more than 40% of the jobs automated, according to this publication from the Oxford University economists, Dr Carl Frey and Dr Michael Osborn on the future of employment.

That had always been the fear of most people on automation, if the concern is not hinged on killer robots which would involve a mindless killing robot of the future as depicted in this youtube clip here.

This fear and other predictions all make someone a little scared of what the future may hold.

But since predicting the future is never an exact science, can we at least take a moment and look at the past to see what people then thought of now and the technology they believe we would be enjoying?

Let's roll back the hands of time to 1900 and see what they think 2000 would be like then. A German Chocolate Company known as Hildebrand, in 1900, produced some postcards with what they believe that life would like in 2000.

^{[Wikipedia Public Domain]Source}


This picture is a 1900 postcard from Germany, forgive the low resolution, I hope you would be more understanding seeing the postcard had survived three world wars. The artist working in 1900 decided to paint what he thinks of the year 2000.

This drawing is the police standing behind an x-ray surveillance machine. The policeman watches, pistol in hand, as the two criminals try to break the door (or safe?).

Remember this was before the invention of TV. The TV had its first successful demonstration in 1927. But the Xray was still new as it was more recent (1895) then. Well, we do have police surveillance, but most are done with these shown below:

^{[Wikipedia]Binoculars and Night Vision}

Well, you could argue the artist was not that far off in his prediction, couldn't you?

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^{[Wikipedia Public Domain]Source}

This drawing was a depiction of life in the air. I could score the artist a 10/10 here for being spot on on the air balloon technology.

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^{[Pixabay]Source | [Wikipedia]Source}

But he was able to do that since hot air balloon had been around since 1782.

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^{[Wikipedia Public Domain]Source}

This was a drawing of personal flying machines. Most people even long before the Wright Brother's invention are fascinated with the flying machines.

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^{[Wikipedia]Paramotor in air and Paramotor on ground}

There are many types of personal flying machine that this artist would've been proud to see how true the prediction came to be.

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^{[Wikipedia]Source}

While he envisioned warship to run on rails in 2000, he was a little off as we have ships that run underwater in the sea, in the form of a submarine capable of staying underwater for 90 days.

^{[Pixabay]Source: A submarine approaching a war ship with a landing strip for aircraft}

That is not all; there is a warship with a landing pad for aircraft. The artist would be very much impressed with this if he were to see it.

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^{[Wikipedia]Source}

This painting was a trip/ family vacation to the North Pole.

Well, sorry, our dear future prediction man or woman, we sincerely apologise to relay the news that the North Pole is still as uninhabitable as it was in 1900. It had been 100+ years, and it is as frozen and as unfriendly as it were during when you made that prediction.

It refused to be anything but a frozen patch of ocean.

^{[Wikipedia]Source: NOAA}


You can take a look above, that is the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration(NOAA), Alert Nunavut, Canada. It is not such a cosy place to go for a family outing.

But this is just 82 degrees north. It is the most northerly place that has a semblance of people living there. But they are mainly scientists and military personnel running some projects.

As at 2016, they have a population of 62, which is made up of people working in rotation. It is still not the North Pole as it is situated some 817 kilometres or 508 miles from the North Pole.

Not exactly a location for a family vacation or hangout.

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^{[Wikipedia]Source: Steam powered movable house}

Agreed we now have mobile homes in the form of Recreational Vehicles (RVs) and we do move big things, like this 70,000-pound (31751 kg), large 1.2-million-gallon fuel tank.

^Source

We even move some houses when we feel like it. For instance, this Buchanon Mansion weighing 400 tons was moved in 2009. The irony of it all was that the house was built in 1883 well before the prediction. Well played.

^{[Youtube]Source}

The Buchanan Mansion, a 125-year-old brick house near Tipton that weighs more than 400 tons, started rolling down the road at 8:30 a.m. Monday, August 10, 2009, bound for its new location. The structure, being moved by Jeremy Patterson House Moving, is moving at a pace of three-quarters of a mile per hour, and is expected to reach its destination five miles down the road by nightfall.^Source

But we do not go about moving homes just because we can. But hey, the prediction was accurate as we do move houses now.

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Judging by how well these 100+ years prediction did, do you have fear for what the future holds regarding technological innovation and development? Do you think artificial intelligence in 100 year's time would beat human's intelligence in all ramifications?

Would advances in automation render more than half the world's population jobless? Would we soon hit our limit with technological advances and development?

Please drop your thoughts below.

Thanks for reading.

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^References

• ^{Wikipedia: Germany in the Year 2000}

• ^{The First Xray}

• ^{Wikipedia: Alert, Nunavut Canada}

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