Terrible Predictions About The Future From 2005

The first 100 people to use code KNOWLEDGEHUSK at the link below will get 60% off of Incogni: incogni.com/knowledgehusk
We often hear about new fancy tech, but I like looking back at what could’ve been. But this stuff stretches the line between “science fiction” and, well, just fantasy.
Not really, but that sounded good in my head.
Today I’m going back through an article written like 18 years ago, and making fun of the tech predictions inside of it. IS it fair? Probably not. Is it funny? Probably not.
You decide.
Technology, science, consumer electronics, predictions, tech predictions

[@knowledgehusk]

The first 100 people to use code KNOWLEDGEHUSK at the link below will get 60% off of Incogni: incogni.com/knowledgehusk

[@Alec_Reaper]

If I use the code INFORMATIONHUSK, will I get 61% off Incogni?

[@jayl5032]

I don't want incogni, I want Cyber-Eyes. GIVE US THE ROBOT EYES, YOU COWARD.

[@christiandauz3742]

What if present day technology existed back in the 1970s?

[@giladpellaeon1691]

First "the past's vision of the future" media I've seen that I've been an adult for both the past and the future. I was in my early 20's working in a bookstore when that issue came out and likely stocked copies of it in the magazine section. Makes me feel a bit old.

[@rocko7711]

🎄

[@theonebman7581]

I love how everyone was so freaking hyped for 2020

[@BrandonBDN]

Everyone thought it would be a 1970 but it ended up being a 2000

[@MemoirsofaBasketcase]

@@southcoastinventors6583What’s the point of getting an education when the AGI teaching you could also do any work you learn to do, but better & faster.

[@Paul-A01]

Im still hyped.

[@MemoirsofaBasketcase]

@@southcoastinventors6583 Aww salty much because I pointed out the lack of logic behind your fantasies?

[@Gala-yp8nx]

Womp womp.

[@PeterMcleod117]

so we cured blindness... then we ran out of funds and everyone we cured went blind again. honestly that's almost more depressing than never having cured blindness in the first place.

[@gearandalthefirst7027]

"capitalism drives innovation" until the money runs out, now go have fun dumpster diving for breakfast.

[@InnuendoXP]

Most depressing case like this was where there was a 'medical trial' for implants to help a particular motor neurological condition. For at least one of the participants, it stopped the symptoms to the degree where she could work a job again and live a completely normal life. Then the trial ended, the company stopped supporting it, and they were forced to give them back.

[@danieladamczyk4024]

@@InnuendoXP AMERICA

[@paradoxicaloutcome1007]

@@gearandalthefirst7027 This. Capitalism drives innovation until said innovation doesn't make a profit, at which point it is either neglected or outright prevented

[@hagoryopi2101]

​@@paradoxicaloutcome1007all economic systems care about profit. Even the government cares about profit, you just can't legally stop paying them like you can a private business. The only difference between capitalism and other systems is that, instead of you deciding for yourself what is "profit," the majority does, or the government does. And history supports my point when I say that they are not nearly as empathetic when it comes to the designation of what is or isn't "profit" as small minorities and individuals are. You may consider your personal happiness and satisfaction to be profitable by its own merits, someone else may consider making 100 wells in Africa to be profitable for its own sake; but arguing that point to the majority or the government is going to be impossible. Don't take that freedom for granted.

[@connerforbis1466]

I can't wait for 2040 to be pretty much exactly the same as today, just with higher numbered iPhones.

[@MrGoodeats]

low iq spotted

[@exosproudmamabear558]

Sounds about right

[@miguelsalas4852]

Damn, ain't you Nostradamus's son?

[@Buugipopuu]

If 2040 comes round and we're not clubbing each other to death for canned food, I'll count that as a win.

[@kamikeserpentail3778]

With how much LLMs have changed things in like a year, I wouldn't count on it. We might not end up fulfilling all of our technological goals as we move along, but no one will argue that smart phones haven't changed the world significantly in about that much time.

[@bosstowndynamics5488]

The most horrifying part of the bionic eyes thing was that some of the participants wound up being taken to court to force them to get surgery to remove their implants

[@kaitlyn__L]

Yikes

[@lego007guym8]

Hey, Militech does that in Cyberpunk!

[@ZgermanGuy.]

Dystopian novels were Not an instruction manual

[@SnapshotOfASoul]

I'd go on the run rather than have brain surgery again to remove an implant that is part of my brain. I'd hole up somewhere instead. Fuck that shit.

[@tomlxyz]

Now imagine some artificial organ that's vital to live gets taken away again

[@cnlbenmc]

I suspect the 2008 financial meltdown might have thrown a wrench into some of these.

[@thenutella8846]

Yeah, but the economic parameters for that kind of society was a closing window long before 2008. Cost of living was rising while the value of our money was diminishing along with our wages being stagnant was an increasing trend from the 80's onward with a few very brief economic upturns. 2008 definitely made things worse for the middle and lower class, but none of us can be as affluent as the predictions were in the days of our parents or grandparents. And a population that doesn't have expendable wealth is a population that will never grow into that futuristic wealthy society. I mean, we actually have so many of the technological means of making some of that happen right now, but no one is going to renovate entire cities to make sure every house is a smart house with a robot butler and everyone with disabilities gets a robot exoskeleton with artificial organs, etc. It was a big expectation considering how our society actually works.

[@wildfire9280]

@@thenutella8846 If it ever did happen, it’d have to be something like American Arcadia but nationwide and still all for entertainment.

[@quinnroberts3158]

And colleges/universities becoming hives of social justice and wokeism over the 2010s decade rather than focusing on actual learning and science.

[@bchristian85]

Given how much changed between 1950 and 2000, it wasn't unreasonable to expect that back then. It's the natural progression of the pace of advancements we had in the mid 20th century. And the thing is, we do have some of it. We'll have AI robots by 2050, but we probably won't have robotic body parts. Flying cars are impractical. It will never be like people envisioned though as long as the middle class keeps shrinking, and on a planet with limited resources it's going to be hard to get back to how things were in the 20th century.@@thenutella8846

[@connormclernon26]

The bionic eyes is a tragedy. I really wish they’d kept up with it.

[@krazykris9396]

I hope someday another company can start redeveloping the technology.

[@johnbash-on-ger]

@@zogwort1522 Or the side eye or stink-eye.

[@user-wr8bs8vx9r]

It made me think of the Black Mirror episode where they install an implant in kids, for the parents to be able to track them. Then the company ends and X years later the implant still is in them.

[@JimTheCurator]

​@@johnbash-on-geror the stink-fist

[@wildfire9280]

@@zogwort1522 What made the outcome predictable?

[@Holammer]

Best predictions I ever read was from an issue of 'Illustrated Vetenskap' (science illustrated) where a Swedish scientist and futurist talking about the interconnected economic future, rise of tourism and global computer networks. The magazine was from 1981, so it felt like reading ancient prophecy come true.

[@G_FRE]

Oooh

[@Yuhyuhmuhmuh]

It sounds as crazy as other predictions in 1981 but it actually came true

[@video-luver769]

​@@YuhyuhmuhmuhFunnily enough, that was, in many ways, probably the easiest future to predict. The nitty-gritty of the World Wide Web was impossible to guess, but a lot of the other interconnected future was already starting to a degree even by 1981. It was kind of a safe bet that there would one day be some kind of global network connecting all kinds of disparate topics and technologies together, mainly because ARPANET had already been a thing since the '70s, at least.

[@hebedite4865]

to be fair researchers did have access to the precursor to the internet (ARPAnet was invented in 1969) at that time so he likely was working based off of how quickly that project was expanding, it originally was only in the US, seeing as it was a US government funded project, but in 1981 it had expanded to include 2 international networks as well (one in the UK and one in Norway) he likely had colleagues who had access to ARPAnet seeing as it was available in Norway. The history of computing and the internet is so fascinating to me haha

[@Holammer]

@@hebedite4865 Correct and computers at work places had been networked for a long time. It was just matter of imagining this scaled up. Not to mention Bulletin Board Systems that functioned like a primitive internet via modems. Computer magazines in the early 80's used to have a page or two with numbers to them and a description of what sort of activity was to be had there.

[@anaguma90]

When I was a kid in the 90s the post-2000 future felt like some wild distant sci fi world. Now we're here and stuff is just kind of the same but now we have smartphones.

[@anilin6353]

Don't forget mass government surveillance.

[@InnuendoXP]

​@@anilin6353Not even government surveillance, mass popular surveillance. We've built the panopticon & the judge is social media. No, if we're mugged or attacked out on the street nobody is coming to help & the police still don't care. But you still have a chance of a brief 15 second snapshot of your life being shared & ripped to shreds by tens of millions of strangers.

[@scienceface8884]

​@southcoastinventors6583 depends on where you live, but from a street level perspective, it's a pretty close description. If a time traveler from 30 years ago popped in for half an hour, the main difference they'd notice was everyone having interconnected computers in all of their pockets and thin televisions.

[@johner3364]

@@scienceface8884 They'd also notice how fucking sad and dreary everything is.

[@fullmetaltheorist]

Social media is cool. But I wish technology was much more advanced.

[@baron_von_brunk]

The original Transformers Movie was made in 1986 and took place in 2005, in a timeline which earth is comically futuristic compared to now. I tried showing this to some friends in 2006 or so, and they all sardonically laughed at how the movie was set around our current time, yet in reality we had no space travel nor hoverboards. My rebuttal: the Transformers continuity takes place in an alternate timeline in which aliens are confirmed to exist (i.e. Autobots and Decepticons) and that they made contact with earth and humans in the 1980s. Since humans formed an alliance with the friendly Autobots, this means that the robot aliens shared their technology with us in the '80s, and therefore by 2005 mankind would also have access to space travel, laser guns, flying cars, hoverboards, et cetera.

[@WillmobilePlus]

Soundwave is still a tape deck, though...

[@baron_von_brunk]

@@southcoastinventors6583 In Season 3 of the Transformers it's implied that he became a notorious crime lord named Old Snake.

[@Senior_Partner]

Old Snake is Cobra Commander

[@jerrys.9895]

As an avid PopSci and PopMech reader in the 90's and 00's, it's important to remember that extrapolating the applications of fringe and cutting edge technology was *always* the point. If you picked up a single magazine and expected realism, you were probably going to be let down. But, at the time, there were very few futurist publications, and almost no one was seriously dissecting the science being done by the companies and research facilities of the time. Imagine trying to envision a web-connected world when we hadn't even gotten wifi pinned down. I think the PopSci writing was exceptional, specifically because it tended towards imagining what current science could do for us if only one or two other connected technologies could be unlocked in the meantime. The importance of what they were doing really shouldn't be understated, because it got a LOT of young people interested in STEM and brought us alternative technologies that weren't even considered at the time.

[@walpoleandworcester]

It’s so weird thinking about 2005. I still remember KZbin being around then and Ben 10 and My Gym Partner’s a Monkey coming out as well.

[@csabaszabo6859]

right, those shows were the part of our daily life and now they just history

[@EGRJ]

I owned a magazine from 1999 (Yahoo! Internet Life Dec '99, Pg 190) that speculated we'd be wearing kinedynamic pants that would charge our devices with movement. Imagine updating the firmware on your jeans. Or selling ad space on your clothes. Or networked speakers in your sneakers. It's funny how they keep imagining a bunch of different devices, and we just use our phones. Also, they didn't really use the word "kinedynamic". They used "piezoelectric". I just made that up because I couldn't remember what they actually used.

[@shawnjavery]

Piezoelectric is a minerology term to refer to a material that generates electrical energy from kinetic energy. The things you learn from an under graduate degree in geology.

[@thepwrtank18]

"charge our devices with movement" "updating the firmware on your jeans" what is this, Kickstarter?

[@giladpellaeon1691]

Selling ad space on your clothes? Nah, we all just pay to wear ads on our clothing, like for you favorite sports team, band or movie franchise.

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@southcoastinventors6583IIRC there’s some “power harvesting” weather station chips which get charged by the vibrations of people walking on the pavement. It has to have a super low power consumption for the data logger, mostly be asleep when not sampling or logging, and not sample too frequently. But it works! Technically. (I believe in practice it’s usually a backup to a solar cell, but it totally could work without one.)

[@jaspervanheycop9722]

"It's funny how they keep imagining a bunch of different devices, and we just use our phones." Or how futurists keep reinventing the train (I stole this from Trashfuture, it's their running gag): So Elon you want to put people in cars going along a guided track underground? You know what that sounds like?

[@JaelaOrdo]

Love these terrible future prediction videos, a fascinating and oftentimes hilarious subject.

[@kingcosworth2643]

One of the human races worst skills, is thinking for themselves, next in line is predicting the future, we are absolutely terrible at it, and I'm afraid 'climate change' falls into the category of future predictions, which is why every prediction from 50 years ago has being grossly inaccurate. We will absolutely be affecting the atmosphere, that change being catastrophic to our existence, yeah not so much.

[@JmKrokY]

Same

[@Two-Checks]

"The year 2020 was as far away as you could possibly imagine." Until it wasn't.

[@Cailus3542]

Until we wished it had stayed far away.

[@TheCagamerda]

Until a bat soup comes along and breaks the global economy

[@TheLastBeanBender]

@@Cailus3542 at least it wasn't 2014 damn that year

[@RJS2003]

@@TheLastBeanBender 2017 was definitely my worst. The further I get from it the better. At least it had good video games.

[@SpiralSine6]

For me it’s 2025. Black Ops 2 was the first media I really absorbed that was “in the future, but not so far that it’s Star Trek levels of space exploration”. Lo and behold, it’s only about 13 months away.

[@KrabKing48]

You see the real dystopian future was the one when the world is ruled by corporations where money has replaced religion and sponsorships and unskippable ads are forced into every social media video 😎

[@KrabKing48]

@@zogwort1522 yea, it's called being a minimum wage resident of Chicago

[@derrickjohnson4952]

Is always funny how people in the past make inventions more complicated than what we get “oh I bet you have cybernetic eyes that let you find an image on the internet, has a gps, let you read books on the side.” And it’s like “uh my phone does all that without jamming a machine in my eye socket.”

[@mightyx5441]

wait a minute that just described a VR headset kinda

[@derrickjohnson4952]

@@mightyx5441 Right but it doesn’t require it to be surgery attached to you that’s the crazy part. Just like today people think the future is us placing the sci fi gadgets INSIDE us even though we make tech to just make it an item without hooking ourselves to it.

[@lephtovermeet]

From around the 80s to the early 2000s the future seemed so limitless. It was like, anything you could imagine we'd soon have. By 2012 or so that seems wholly abandoned - instead we have social media, echo chambers, divided societies, and entrenched oligarchs exploiting us all first industrial revolution style.

[@librarianseth5572]

I was so excited for space hotels and mammoth zoos as a kid. There were color illustrations in the magazine articles, how could those possibly mislead me?

[@jenkinsjrjenkins]

MAMMOTH ZOOS YES they advertised them SO MUCH as future tech!! as a kid I was 100% convinced it'd like already happened on the dl but ig NOT

[@Mrcharrio]

This reminds me of shows like Beyond 2000 where they showcases tech that was supposed to be the future but very little of it was ever heard of again.

[@WillmobilePlus]

Beyond 2000, Beyond Tomorrow, NextStep, Invention, and Cnet TV was a lot of fun with those "visions of the future". Honestly wish the actual future was a better mix of the reality with the projection.

[@Bellett64]

I remember seeing mobile phones on Beyond 2000. It was literally a chunky briefcase with a phone receiver on top, connected by a curly cord like on a landline. Another highlight that came true was ESP stability control for cars. The reporter had to try to chuck this S-class Benz sideways on a skidpan and it just wouldn't spin. That''s how I remember it anyway. The only other invention I recall was the Mazda-funded suitcase car. Yeah nah that didn't survive the shark tank that was the 80s.

[@uydagcusdgfughfgsfggsifg753]

Now this is a Husk I can get behind! I remember finding The People’s Almanac #2 among the used books we were decorating our haunted house with as a kid, and the predictions in there were so funny. I think they also had a section dedicated to evaluating past predictions about the (at the time) present day (1978?)

[@FigmentJedi]

I heard Universal got an exclusive contract with Robocoaster for the "Robot arm on a track" tech, which resulted in Disney canning an Incredibles based Robocoaster attraction where you were being tossed around by the Omnidroid.

[@stellviahohenheim]

And you believe that?

[@dysphoria-chan]

I had the same sentiment as you, I grew up along the 2000s. These future predictions and wonderful gadgets made me imagine a world where every corner had clean tech. I was fascinated with a future that had optimism for the internet, obsessed with the color chrome, personal devices like PDAs, MP3 or even game consoles, cyber-space or clean cities full of screens. I also remember how futurists had a fixation with Japan, since they were developing consumer electronics that were divergent from the West (like feature phones). Even if not everything that it was on that retrofuturism became truth, we can't deny that if someone from the 2000s travels to our time, they will be amazed to see that every future gadget they used to imagine is now in the palm on our hand. Future really become one where screens and digital worlds are everywhere. Now that I think about it, I haven't seen much futurism in recent years, at least not since the late 2000s. Last time I see a future prediction was a Microsoft's 2009 video about 2019 that was almost certain. Maybe it's because the 80s became nostalgic, or that the 2010s weren't as futuristic as every media though (or because we already live in a cyberpunk-like scenario and suffer the consequences of corporations and A.I.). I think it's an example of how we stop imagining the future to take refuge in the past, it's sad.

[@Darth_Insidious]

Nobody wants to live in the future anymore. Things have only been getting worse and the future has become too terrifying to comprehend.

[@theonebman7581]

Simple. Inbetween being flooded with climate change, WW3, terrorism, cybersecurity, migration, the worldwide crisis of democracy, AI, overcorporatization, extinction events, population crisis We stopped being hopeful for the future; what could possibly be good in the future when everything we're told about it is so awful every single time? The last time I ever heard anything even remotely positive about the future was around middle school (early 2010s), not counting tragically-aged KZbin videos around 2017; everything they say about the future now is a wasteland; a horror movie; a reality you want to fight against, and they tell you to fight against, but then they tell you there's nothing you or anyone could ever do about it, that the cards are already on the table, and you can just spectate as the world dies. We chose the past to set our dreams in, because the future stopped being liveable; or at least what they started telling us about it

[@leonfa259]

Even as a techno optimist, our world has grown into a dystopian corporate hellhole. Ads everywhere, large parts of the population addicted, surveillance that's worse than 1984, a few megacorps that own everything we consume, people that stop talking to each other and all the increased productivity lands in the hands of a few.

[@leonfa259]

@@zogwort1522 No offense, honest question: Are you serious or is it meant as satire?

[@wildfire9280]

@@theonebman7581 We don’t really have much of a “population crisis”. A resource allocation crisis is the more accurate description.

[@hafuketo9458]

I find the failed ideas of old to be even more interesting than the successful ones. Especially when it is an idea that keeps being brought back just to fail again and again.

[@CubicApocalypse128]

...especially if the tech only "fails" because no one could figure out how to make it turn a quarterly profit

[@daniel_rossy_explica]

I stopped dreaming about the future about the time I finished highschool (2004). I was suddenly unaware of what even the present was, so I couldn't imagine any future whatsoever. It turned out that everything kept the same pace and we reached a very similar point in the year 2020 (pandemic and lockdown notwithstanding). I am still single, with no kids or a car, living with my mother in the same house. My future will come whenever I move out, but that doesn't seem any more likely than it did 10 years ago.

[@G_FRE]

2020 was the end of any perception of pop culture for me. It's weird

[@RJS2003]

Still single? Still living with mom? Who are you and why are you living my life?

[@daniel_rossy_explica]

@@RJS2003 Maybe I am your evil twin.

[@G_FRE]

@@daniel_rossy_explica I think we're triplets. Just moved back in with my mom. I feel bad so I'm making sure her house is extra clean every day lmao

[@daniel_rossy_explica]

@@G_FRE You at least moved *back*. I've never lived alone in my life. And a few days ago I realized that I haven't met anyone new in a long time.

[@BinglesP]

The Nintendo 3DS kind of does that whole "holographic TV" thing, multiple screen panels and all. I'm surprised you didn't mention it.

[@doltBmB]

Holovizio does the full nine yards.

[@vytah]

It does not, it has only one image-displaying panel and a parallax barrier that tries to make each eye see only half of the pixels, similar to a lenticular display. It's far from holographic, as your head needs to be in a correct spot to see the 3D effect.

[@malikmalak4631]

There is a giant screen in Japan and China that immitates the 3D concept from Back to the Future. There's a lot of tech that was developed and died in the US but is implemented and thriving throughout Eastern Asia; like QR codes to pay, futuristic home devices, ect.

[@malikmalak4631]

Point being, if humanity share technology as a collective, we would be far more advanced than we are.

[@kaitlyn__L]

If you mean the “3D” billboards, they’ve been used in NYC and London too and they’re still just normal screens with clever perspective tricks. They look very cool, don’t get me wrong, but yeah. There’s a reason they have things “running over the building” or something instead of coming out right into the crowd.

[@jaspervanheycop9722]

"QR codes to pay" ...That isn't a thing in the US? Here in Europe we can place orders with a QR code on your table in restaurants (it's so ubiquitous that there's actually backlash against it) and pay with our smartphones by swiping it along a servers PDA. Hell we've been able to just take whatever snacks we want from a vending machine wall since the 60's, and with a bankcard or phoneswipe for two decades now. And that's from the Benelux to the Baltic States! How backwards are you!?

[@malikmalak4631]

@@kaitlyn__L hmm, sci-fi is real science taken to the extreme

[@malikmalak4631]

@@jaspervanheycop9722 now you can. They've been doing that in east Asia for over a decade

[@BonJoviBeatlesLedZep]

They got a lot more right than i was expecting. We don't have space hotels but we absolutely have space tourism. We do have smart homes and while big OLED screens are still exorbitantly expensive, small ones aren't. A Galaxy A33 is 300 bucks and even cheaper in emerging markets. Their idea of a smart home is unrealistic, but it is pretty cheap to have a smart home now.

[@dxp96]

the whole smart home gimmick died out so quickly, its just too impractical and expensive. Only people i know with a fully smart home are my cousin and her family, everything from the sink to the heated driveway.

[@tk-5268]

This just seems ridiculous no offense lmao​@@dxp96

[@petersmythe6462]

One thing I think the bionic eye thing doesn't really address is the enormous difference between types of light out there, and what, if any, use if would be to see them. There just aren't a lot of gamma rays out there. Meanwhile, radio waves are common thanks in large part to human technology, but accurate vision using them is very much a question of scaling the detector up.

[@lomiification]

Accurate vision using radio waves is also a matter of the long wavelength

[@shaider1982]

I also like Pop Sci and Pop Mech. In retrospect, their covers are click-bait's grandpa.

[@enkephalin07]

"Still exists and still does things" is the best description for that company I can't remember the name of.

[@jaspervanheycop9722]

The big problem with the rollercoaster thing (beyond it just being very... unpleasant as you talked about) is that a rollercoaster is already an extremely expensive project for a theme park, tacking on VR (which no, unlike what you claim, isn't going to be a thing people see as a value add anyway) and robotics is going to make the price soar. And for what gain? Stuff you barely notice as you're twirling around at 100 kph and >2G's? I can see the OLED wallpaper being a thing though, if you axe the house idea, it could be a very cool home theathre idea. Or hell maybe even smallscale local cinemas? Pop-up drive-ins?

[@scienceface8884]

We had a lot of predictions about cybernetics and stem cells that did not take into account the FDA approval process. And tiny flexible electrical components that would have to go through a washing machine or stand up to the brutality of the outside of your house year-round. Really basic things that flew over the heads of magazine writers.

[@shawnleeguku]

I remember seeing a documentary about the form-fitting space suits. The designer said she wanted it to be sexy as well as functional, and I thought that was pretty cool.

[@johnstanczyk4030]

This reminds me of my father reading a Popular Mechanics article in the 1960s about how the Earth was going to experience a global ice age.

[@kaitlyn__L]

For what it’s worth, we would be in a glaciation period were it not for all the extra greenhouse effect. (They do take ages though.) The global temperature increase would be even worse otherwise, albeit currently marginally.

[@johnstanczyk4030]

@@kaitlyn__L That is what I said but it still makes every time that he say that there is no man-made climate change that much more annoying. 🤷‍♂️ Maybe we will all be excited for our remote-controlled rollercoasters while our kids try to tell us that the robots are rising up.

[@MalachiWhite-tw7hl]

Were they predicting our extinction within 5 years like now? Never ends.

[@Bae_Dreary]

I remember when I was in elementary school around 2005 my dad telling me about screens you painted on the walls and paper thin tvs that bent. More than likely inspired by this I thought it sounded so cool! Now 15+ years later my dad STILL brings up the paintable displays as fact and as if they’ve always existed. It’s still real to some people lol

[@generalmarkmilleyisbenedic8895]

To be real he should probably get checked for dementia

[@Svistov]

He knows something that we don't

[@shaider1982]

The feet inspired by a gecko's feet was featured bt Veritasium almost a year ago. It has selective adhesion and thus can be used to climb walls: it can support a weight one way but can easily be removes to position you feet and/or hands.

[@Phos9]

Mechanical counter pressure suits have been a concept since the 60s. Basically every space idea was thought up in the 60s and everything since has just been making them real

[@Hamdad]

The first conceptual spin gravity space station was designed by a Soviet engineer in the 1930s.

[@darkwise8628]

While there is no outright space hotel, the ISS has on occasion allowed commercially paying astronauts to stay for some limited time. For example Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa and his assistant visited the ISS in December of 2021 for 12 days.

[@notreallydaedalus]

And S.R. Hadden lived out his last days on Mir.

[@jameswatts8582]

Space hotels isn’t quite that far off presently! We have two serious, funded proposals for space hotels currently, as well as an expansion to the international space station to include a section for tourism. No, it won’t be for the average Joe, but it will exist

[@blackaddam9033]

I remember Time magazine complied a bunch of predictions 20 years ago. I remember Ben Stiller wrote an article trying to predict the future of comedy.

[@evilemperorzurg9615]

Is it just me or has the rate of technological growth slowed to a trickle since the early 2010s? I remember growing up it felt like a major innovation was made every couple years or so and it felt like it’s been that way for decades. I can’t think of a technology changing dramatically since 2013. Optimization of course but nothing on the scale of difference between 2013 and 2003 or 2003 and 1993.

[@bosstowndynamics5488]

Tom Scott has described this as a sigmoid curve of technological development - when a new technology comes in there's an initial slow adoption phase, followed by a rapid explosive improvement phase, then a tapering off as most of the major improvements and uses have been found and there's just fiddling around the edges after that. The most obvious example is smart phones - there was a slow growth phase for years before the iPhone, then explosive growth and improvement, and now we've got fairly slow incremental improvements. A lot of those explosive growth effects happened to a lot of technologies between 1990 and 2010, and then there wasn't really that much in the pipeline from 2010-2020 or so, at least in the consumer space. What's happening now though is we're seeing that exponential phase start up with AI, including a lot of the sorts of nonsense predictions and uses that these 2005 technologies had, so we might see some significant changes in the next 5-10 years (or it'll plateau a lot faster than optimists think, who knows? Technology is famously hard to predict).

[@scienceface8884]

Sounds like you're talking about the explosion of computers at the time. Law of diminishing returns. The difference between the ps1 and ps2 can be seen at a glance. When you can count the pores on your character's face, the next system being 4 times as powerful doesn't seem to make as much of a difference.

[@ergwertgesrthehwehwejwe]

What about AI though

[@evilemperorzurg9615]

@@ergwertgesrthehwehwejwe that’s the one big exception. It’s still in its infancy and so far it’s usefulness has been limited. It still has the potential to be as revolutionary as the internet, the telephone, airplane, or television but it hasn’t reached it yet.

[@kaitlyn__L]

For a lot of things like computers and phones, maybe. But bandwidth and bandwidth-intensive applications were nowhere near the level they are now, in 2010.

[@defcon4215]

All these predictions were made before the 2008 financial crisis let’s see

[@MightyMurloc]

In a post computer world, we're accelerating immensely fast, but I still think these Futurists really low ball their dates

[@izot1061]

I remember reading a lot of these in my school library in elementary school in early 2010's Lots where old issues that already had wrong predictions, but still it made me hope that the stuff was just a bit further away than predicted, it set my expectations pretty high for the future. I am happy that nowadays it feels like the world is progressing just slightly closer to what I used to think the pace would be.

[@ProgressOnly]

I remember a NatGeo Kids article about the future and the one that stuck out to me was a projection keyboard for your desk. Literally a stick shooting a green light keyboard on whatever surface you had and it tracked your typing

[@SteveMacSticky]

They have been made. Problem is they are not good at their function and also don't have high accuracy. Still being sold, mostly as the stuff on Wish

[@losfogo7149]

You reminded me that my fav childhood book is the 2008 guinnes world records. It had a shitton of technology stuff that was going to be "big" in the future. In 2023 we all would be driving automated cars and have personal robots, plus many others, i think i will go back and re-read it

[@Outshinedsg]

In all fairness, some of these ideas probably will actually happen, just not on the timeframe that Popular Science was expecting. We don't have space hotels yet but space tourism is definitely a thing and Mars and/or Moon colonization will probably happen this century. Holographic 3D TVs aren't a thing, but we have VR, which is kinda better. Bionic eyes aren't really a thing, but bionic limbs definitely are and other forms of organ replacement are extremely likely as medical tech evolves. The one that actually seems the most farfetched to me is the robocoaster. From an economic standpoint, new thrill rides have an extremely short shelf life. People experienced things like the Star Wars hotel once, then there was no reason to go again. We've seen several projects like this waste a huge up front investment only for the public to lose interest very quickly once the novelty wears off (and high ticket prices only allow a few people to go).

[@Hamdad]

I mean I have a 3D projector that works with 144hz shutterglasses that I like quite a bit. It doesn't replace my Index but a wall sized window into a game world is neat.

[@leonfa259]

We have 3D TVs and movies and the whole AR/VR stuff. Different tech and expansive but real and existing. Also we have walls that are a tv screen, not very practical but existing. And while we don't have space hotels yet we at least have reusable rockets.

[@TheHammy2211]

I remember the last time I went to Disney, Raytheon actually had a motion simulator-type deal that wasn't all that far off from the idea of the robocoaster. Honestly, I think the major thing holding that back is the insistence on putting it on a track on top of everything else.

[@TheJamesM]

I don't know, I don't really believe that every idea has its turn. Some things seem like a good or cool idea superficially but don't actually hold together when you examine them, and some others hit up against hard physical or economic limitations. The space hotel in particular is something I think will probably never happen, and if it does it's a lot more distant than your estimate. The sheer expense (both monetarily and environmentally) of getting every single kilogram into space is prohibitive, and the experience would not be especially comfortable. Of course it's many people's dream to go to space - it would be an incredible experience - but I think that's more-or-less covered by the kind of space tourism we have already. Perhaps the flights will get longer and travel further out, but I don't think there's anything to be gained by building a permanent establishment exclusively for leisure. At the very most, maybe a space station could include capacity for one or two tourists to visit (which would of course still be an extremely exclusive experience). I don't mean to nay-say progress - a lot has changed, and will continue to change. I do think it can be very hard to predict future developments, though, and our predictions tend to bias towards big flashy ideas that spark the imagination, when the really important developments tend to be things that more subtly integrate themselves into everyday life. Science fiction likes to imagine holographic screens floating in space because that's visually interesting, but instead smartphones serve the purpose of ubiquitous information and computing in a more practical way. Flying cars are a striking image, but high speed transit has a better chance if getting people where they're going quickly and safely. Etc., etc.

[@Outshinedsg]

@@TheJamesM I'm being a little liberal in my definition of a space "hotel". Mars colonization seems highly likely to occur within this century, so it isn't unrealistic to think that a "hotel" or some other kind of communal lodging might be established on Mars if tourist trips to Mars eventually become a thing.

[@Professorkek]

6:26 holy shit thats some Deus Ex shit right there. Imagine your ability to see being at the discretion of a company.

[@Xer0sama]

I'm completely down for you finding more old predictions for the future and roasting them. The House of Tomorrow was always one of my favorite Merrie Melodies.

[@certs743]

Pop Science had some wild articles in the 90s and 2000s. I remember them saying the F22 was going to have a dark cockpit with everything being computer screens and they were also talking about fighters having adaptive optical camo. Basically turn the entire skin of the aircraft into a computer monitor and project the sky onto the airplane.

[@CryptoTonight9393]

Duuuuuude no way, I was obsessed with popsci mag when I was 8 to 15 years old in the early 2000's. I had stacks and stacks of them. When I would spend summer at my great grandmothers house she had copies going back to the 70's. Looking at those old copies opened my eyes to just how much of it was pie in the sky never going to happen stuff.

[@nddragoon]

this video made me feel so seen. I'm glad i wasn't the only kid reading magazines like that and thinking we'd be in star trek by now

[@fshoaps]

2004/2005/2006 has to be some of the most interesting, and odd set of years ever.

[@vitriolicAmaranth]

The funniest thing is that by 2015 there was way better glasses-free 3D than "a bunch of transparent displays with low Z-resolution" and it only required the technical bandwidth of two images per frame

[@Filthy_Cubes]

Awesome video. Now I wanna see your predictions for 2030 or 2033. Make them now and then a follow up video in idk 7 or 10 years. You got this!

[@geetoasty]

Actually, a car that goes to 760 mph is real, its called the ThrustSSC, and it literally generates sonic booms on the ground. Of course its not for consumer use lol

[@MattiasKSe]

Hahah yeeah... Brings me back. Here in Sweden we have "Illustrerad vetenskap" (Illustrated science). Seems to be pretty much the same kind of papier. Remember fondly growing up on the toilet reading predictions like these in the late 90's... Hell yeah the future is awsome! 25 years later, and I still dont own a flying car or have cool robot parts.

[@ErroneousPower]

The future has been kind to us. I’m glad a lot of tech didn’t come to light as of yet. VR is getting there with its tech but has someways to go. Great video btw ❤

[@hashbrown777]

The 3D display is actually basically around, except instead of a bajillion displays, its a single display moving very fast, basically like those LED waggling-stick clocks but 2Ddisplay-to-3Dillusion instead of 1Dstrip-to-2Ddisplay

[@NightmareEadin]

The skyhotel thin suit interface thing sounds way too similar to the Warhammer 40k Black Carapace

[@ascii_9727]

Wait, what does he mean by saying his holograms video aged poorly? Are you telling me there's been an unexpected breakthrough? :o

[@kylethecreator]

KZbin has not been showing me your videos lately untill this video. After checking your page its kinda interesting seeing the vews of your last 4 videos all be ones that did not get recommended to me. I have seen a drop in my views recently too. Notifications have been turned on now.

[@TheAtariSan]

In Japan, they have a corner of a building with a holographic 3D display, kinda feel like an upgraded time square. They even had an ad about Attack on Titan.

[@peterroberts4415]

The fastest cars is the Koenigsegg Jesko Absolut which goes 330mph, so that's not too far off

[@loszhor]

And fell old that 2005 is now ancient history enough to see our own predictions fail!

[@naivepotatoking]

I'll always remember reading a science magazine in elementary saying we'd have an elevator to the moon by 2016

[@cyberfutur5000]

When I was a kid my dad had this book from the 60s or 70s about the year 2000, that was wild! They even had a part about the future of whaling, other than it being mostly illegal... I really need to ask him, if he still owns it...

[@jenkinsjrjenkins]

That whole android eye situation honestly sounds like it should've been illegal? Like the government should've sponsored that company instead of letting them go bankrupt and abandoning people who had miraculously been able to regain their sight???

[@kaitlyn__L]

Don’t you know, that would be socialism. Can’t have the government owning things. 🙃

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@zogwort1522 they obviously mean the government stepping in to enforce your own ownership over what has been your own cybernetic eye for over a decade.

[@jaspervanheycop9722]

@@zogwort1522 What you think companies should just be able to reclaim implants? There's like 5 different fictional Dystopias built around that concept. If it's in your body it shouldn't be claimable or obsoletable by anyone other than you. Also yes the state should "own your eyes" over a company de facto doing such. I know someone trapped in pretty much that exact situation. They've a rare eyecondition that causes them to slowly loose their peripheral vision, and the medicine to slow it down is locked behind a corporate insurance, forcing them to kowtow to the company's every demand. It's morally reprehensible.

[@blurthelines8596]

​@@zogwort1522When your car needs maintenance, it's still yours, not the mechanics.

[@Dumb-Comment]

I dont know why but i find that a company ran out of money and everyone they cured went blind again just made me so happy

[@CryptoTonight9393]

One of the things I loved the most about those old popsci mags were the ads in the back. Stuff like the money printing magic trick, the hover chair kit that used old vacuum motors, laser mic kit, also crazy stuff like mind control kitsch that were a "Frequency tuned rod" with a crystal at the end taped to a Nike helmet lol.

[@SharpEdgeSoda]

I'd love a podcast where every episode talks about a vintage issue of Popular Science. Some spin offs to Popular Mechanics, which I heard is even more out there.

[@penguin10916]

The Nintendo 3DS uses the technology described with the holographic TV but with fewer layers. Also, Linus Tech Tips got to explore holographic displays that are exactly the holographic TV, but with modern tech and the end results are impressive but will probably never be adapted in the consumer market.

[@vytah]

3DS has only one layer of pixels, the 3D effect is achieved with a parallax barrier, which in effect tries to achieve a stereoscopic effect like with 3D glasses or lenticular displays. And as with a lenticular display, you need to be perfectly in front of the image to see it as intended. A true holographic display looks correct from any direction.

[@BlueScreenCorp]

In 2005 most tvs were 240p so 240x400 so a holographic tv with 100px z would not have been that weird

[@anonimosu7425]

the thing with infrared vision and thermal vision is it’s been a military technology for a long time, 40s for infrared, 60s for thermal.

[@Aerex12]

That is wild. I have that exact issue of popular science. Got it years ago at the airport.

[@seanmanear9860]

You know, Disney's GotG Cosmic Rewind is PRETTY close to that first coaster. It doesn't have the armature, but it does rotate, and there are screens all around.

[@hughie522]

Flying cars, jet packs, a world not destroyed by our wanton consumption - all fantasy :P.

[@NoMoneyHubby]

When I was a kid I went to MGM Studios in Florida in 2002 and went to the big arcade area that they have and they had an attraction that was "build and ride your own roller coaster" and you could design the roller coaster on a touch screen outside the ride and then go in and it was this big moving pod with a giant 180 degree screen and it would kind of create an IR roller coaster experience where the Pod would flip and do whatever the screen was doing... i remember it was really fun

[@Square1production]

I did the Harvey Birdman glance at the calendar when he said "All the way upto... 2020"

[@rockco-iv8es]

That last one just sounds like a mechanical pressure space suit, which has existed for quite a while, being first used on a space flight in the 60s.

[@Willandacamera]

Remember magazines? I also read a lot of PopSci when I was a kid and I distinctly remember this issue. Now I want to look back on some more mid 00s futurism.

[@ncrvako]

I liked and still like from the focus magazine the concept of a floating city design that was like an iceberg : few floors above the sea level or the ocean for a plant park and solar energy field, the rest down on subwater levels to be either on the usage of living,entertainment, working, with some lower levels for the maintenance or the production of the city or trade skill.

[@frypanini]

The main problem I have with the Space Hotel idea is that I read Roald Dahl's "Charlie & The Great Glass Elevator". While some watered down version of a space hotel may happen eventually, I feel it's probably at least 30 years away.

[@Jerrycourtney]

Maybe the real _journey from 2005 to 2020_ is all the friends we made along the way.

[@The_Arcadian]

Space diabetus 😂 I don’t know why that sounds so funny but it does

[@historyboy05]

my birth year was a stupid time, glad I was yet to gain sentience. amazing video as always

[@PhattyBolger]

lol. Didn't even read the title yet, and knew you were a child from that flag. Literally guessed 2005.

[@Notllamalord]

@@PhattyBolgeryou’re 7 at best

[@PhattyBolger]

@@Notllamalord lol, sure. People critical of identity politics are always children. Not 99% of the entire world- the 1% being Western urban middle-class kids addicted to TikTok.

[@davidfl4]

I remember these-they were so fun!! Kinda sad we didn’t get holographic tv

[@SonicBoone56]

Popular Science and completely misrepresenting researchers goes hand in hand.

[@uss_liberty_incident]

I feel this video pretty hard. Good coverage.

[@Gadalac]

Hello mr husk. I enjoyed your video. I'd like to recommend you turn on denoising on your render settings in blender

[@LKOnyx]

I'm still waiting for my Bionic Eyes from Cyberpunk 2077 so I can start using the EMP mod on people I don't like. Seeing as we'll get Johnny Silverhand's gun before that happens though, I guess I'll settle for that

[@WillmobilePlus]

The only book on this that really nailed most of what came about in "the futures" was the book "Future Stuff". I still have the copy I got in like 1989/90 and it was reasonably accurate +/- a little here and there.

[@phillipotey9736]

What's crazy is the 3D tv is exactly how the 3DS worked.

[@vytah]

No, it's not. 3DS uses a parallax barrier, so that each eye sees only half of the pixels of a single screen, similar to a lenticular display. For the stereoscopic effect to kick in, your head needs to be in a correct spot. Also, if it worked like those holographic displays, then the maximum perceivable depth would be equal to the thickness of the screen. The screen is like millimetres thick, but the stereoscopic effect gives you a much bigger perceived depth.

[@Detson404]

The computer revolution gave us a distorted view of the future. We knew what could be done with computers, since every computer can do what any other computer can do, just, slower and less efficient, so it was easy to extrapolate. It was about miniaturizing and democratizing the technology.

[@Firemanharv]

My grandpa used to get Popular Science on a subscription and I used to leaf through them when I went over there. It was always pretty interesting and I liked seeing all the wild things in there. My favorite thing I read about was a digital camera with an mp3 player in it. I thought that would be really handy. My guy Steve Jobs hooked me up with that though 😂

[@dinoblacklane1640]

Man I've never been this quick on a video before

[@chowrites6179]

Oh there were so many predictions I heard as a kid that I WISH were a reality, like underwater cities, jet packs, mini helicopters for everyday travel, etc. sadly, my dad said it best, "It probably won't happen unless you do your best to help make it a reality" and although he's right, Im not the brightest bulb out there lol

[@felixw19]

Old Popular Science magazines will give you content for years to come

[@Jamie-nx2cg]

Best creator here. Great video!