Thomas Edison's Predictions for 2011 from 1911

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Moog
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07 Feb 2011, 7:14 pm

http://www.paleofuture.com/blog/2011/1/ ... -1911.html

Quote:

But the traveler of the future, says a writer in Answers, will largely scorn such earth crawling. He will fly through the air, swifter than any swallow, at a speed of two hundred miles an hour, in colossal machines, which will enable him to breakfast in London, transact business in Paris and eat his luncheon in Cheapside.

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Books of the coming century will all be printed leaves of nickel, so light to hold that the reader can enjoy a small library in a single volume. A book two inches thick will contain forty thousand pages, the equivalent of a hundred volumes; six inches in aggregate thickness, it would suffice for all the contents of the Encyclopedia Britannica. And each volume would weigh less than a pound.

He got the gold wrong.

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CosmicRuss
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07 Feb 2011, 7:44 pm

Moog wrote:

He got the gold wrong.

Indeed. Virgin Gold was rebranded Absolute80s. :lol:

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naturalplastic
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08 Feb 2011, 10:16 pm

For a hundred years ago those predictions arent too bad.
Mostly on target if off bullseye.
Air travel,and the death of steam were dead on.

Take the word "steel" and subsitute the word "plastic" and his predictions about stuff in our houses would be fairly accurate. His "nickel leaved book" amounts to a kind of a non-electronic e-reader or Kindle! Not exactly a hit but not exactly a miss.

But that stuff about gold was daffy even by the science of his own time.
Apparently he was still stuck in the medeaval alchemist notion of making base metals into gold.
They knew even then that Gold was not a compound but an element as are the base metals like iron. He should have known that it takes more than just mixing chemicals to turn one element into another.

Last edited by naturalplastic on 09 Feb 2011, 4:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Descartes
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08 Feb 2011, 10:54 pm

I read through some of the other predictions for the late 20th/early 21st century on that website. It's amazing how people in the 1890s believed that, by the year 2000, we'd all be using flying machines while still wearing Victorian clothing. :roll:

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CockneyRebel
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08 Feb 2011, 11:24 pm

I've read his 1922 prediction that we will be doing all of our reading on screen. He wasn't too far off, there. Look what most of us do on WP for most of the day. We do our reading on screen.

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Moog
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09 Feb 2011, 6:02 am

naturalplastic wrote:

For a hundred years ago those predictions arent too bad.
Mostly on target if off bullseye.
Air travel,and the death of steam were dead on.

Take the word "steel" and subsitute the word "plastic" and his predictions about stuff in our houses would be fairly accurate. His "nickel leaved book" amounts to a kind of a non-electronic cross between an e-book and an Ipod! Not exactly a hit but not exactly a miss.

But that stuff about gold was daffy even by the science of his own time.
Apparently he was still stuck in the medeaval alchemist notion of making base metals into gold.
They knew even then that Gold was not a compound but an element as are the base metals like iron. He should have known that it takes more than just mixing chemicals to turn one element into another.

Daffy is right.

I take alchemy as a metaphor for 'spiritual' transformation.

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auntblabby
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09 Feb 2011, 6:40 am

i believe jules verne had a slightly better score of ballpark predictions. read his "paris in the 20th century" sometime.

Asp-Z
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09 Feb 2011, 11:53 am

Tesla predicted video calling from around the same time period. And, of course, the phone itself.

MidlifeAspie
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09 Feb 2011, 12:10 pm

Quote:

Sounds like my Kindle.

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Janissy
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09 Feb 2011, 12:57 pm

Moog wrote:

Quote:

And to think, 5 years ago this would have been counted as a total miss. But now it sounds an awful lot like a Kindle/e-reader in purpose if not in actual design.

sluice
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09 Feb 2011, 2:07 pm

I want my cold fusion. Tesla may have been the brightest mind ever known.

Asp-Z
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09 Feb 2011, 2:49 pm

sluice wrote:

I want my cold fusion. Tesla may have been the brightest mind ever known.

Not only that, but he is awesome.

Moog
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09 Feb 2011, 6:16 pm

Asp-Z wrote:

sluice wrote:

I want my cold fusion. Tesla may have been the brightest mind ever known.

Not only that, but he is awesome.

He was a natty dresser.

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bigboff
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10 Feb 2011, 6:09 am

well yes i totally agree, but i would mlike to mention 2012 here as welll
the main thing people forge tis that its not the end of the world,
the actual quote is ' the end of the world as we know it'
and that isnt a huge, thing
this links bakc to the deaht iof steam, that was the end of the world as they knew it when we changed and also nso was the industrila revolution
if anything cosmic hapenes all it will be is the pole will shift and compases will be reversed thats all

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10 Feb 2011, 6:22 am

bigboff wrote:

well yes i totally agree, but i would like to mention 2012 here as welll
the main thing people forget is that it's not the end of the world,
the actual quote is ' the end of the world as we know it'
and that isnt a huge thing
this links back to the death of steam, that was the end of the world as they knew it when we changed and also so was the industrial revolution
if anything cosmic happens all it will be is the pole will shift and compases will be reversed thats all

great song and great point. but pole shifting will make life pretty uncomfortable for a while, until humanity can get it together again.

Moog
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10 Feb 2011, 6:44 am

Someone clue me in about pole shifting? What's that mean, that the current poles will move? Like the earth will tilt in different places?

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