...a consumer's guide to over 250 useful and time- and energy-saving products and services which will affect the way Americans work and play by the year 2000. They are at present on the drawing board, in production, or already being test marketed. Included are not only serious inventions like voice-activated computers and lenses to help the blind see, but also fun stuff like kiss moisturizers and bikinis which will change color with one's mood. The book gives the odds on availability, estimated time of arrival, price, and explains how each invention works.
Normally I wouldn't post about a book before actually obtaining and reading it, but this just sounds utterly hilarious and I couldn't resist calling it out. I mean, the cover has a WALKING TV ON IT. Yes, with legs. Wow. And I can't wait to read the "estimated times of arrival", that sort of thing is always interesting!
EDIT: Oh, and the book was originally published in 1989.
8 comments:
The future they keep promising us still hasn't arrived. I want my flying car!
Yeah, I can hardly wait until that far-future year 2000 arrives!
Considering that Amazon vendors have used copies on sale for a penny plus $3.99 S&H, I went ahead and ordered one.
Mark Plus wrote:
Yeah, I can hardly wait until that far-future year 2000 arrives!
Seriously! Silver jumpsuits, round aperture doors, and walking TVs, here we come! Er, there we went?
And I ordered a cheap copy too last night. Am looking forward to it, especially to seeing what they predicted as having "one hundred percent probability" of "arriving" by 2000.
check this out Annie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGoi1MSGu64
"The Distant Future, The Year 2000"
xx
More ridicule of the paleo-future:
The Future Soon
Also an animated version.
I want my flying car!
Oooh! I want a teleportation device! (What? Andre Delambre? Seth Brundle? La la la, I can't hear you).
Oh, and lawn-mowing robots.
Great stuff.
Looking back a few more decades,
Donald Fagen's 1980 "I.G.Y"
is so tongue-in-cheek utopian.
I believe it represents a 1957
vision of the techno-utopia that 1976 would be. A few of the lyrics below, I really like the last lines.
On that train all graphite and glitter
Undersea by rail
Ninety minutes from New York to Paris
Well, by seventy-six we'll be A.O.K...
Here at home we'll play in the city
Powered by the sun
Perfect weather for a streamlined world
There'll be spandex jackets, one for everyone...
A just machine to make big decisions
Programmed by fellows with compassion and vision
We'll be clean when their work is done
We'll be eternally free, yes, and eternally young
L. M.
Tera, there really are lawn-mowing robots. They're getting pretty affordable too.
But if anybody starts selling teleportation devices, I think I'll let someone else try it first...
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