Isaac Asimov Predicts in 1964 What the World Will Look Like in 2014

Images by the Rochester Institute of Technology via Wikimedia Commons

When New York City held the World Fair in 1964, Isaac Asimova prolific science fiction author and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, has the opportunity to wonder if the world looks like 50 years. write New York TimesAsimov imagined a world you might recognize in part today.

• “Gadgets continue to ease humanity in boring work. “Automobiles,” kitchen units for heating water and converting coffee are devised.
• “Communications can be visual sounds and can be used not only to hear the person making the call, but also to see the person making the call, to study documents and photos from books and read passages. Synchronous satellites, hovering into space, allow us to directly distance ourselves to any part of the Earth, including the weather stations in Minami Ward.”

• “[M]EN continues to withdraw from nature to create a better environment. By 2014, electroluminescent panels are commonly used. The ceiling and walls shine softly, and in a variety of colors that change with the touch of a push button. ”
• “Robots are not common or very good in 2014, but they do exist.”
• “The 2014 appliance doesn’t have an electric cord, of course, because it has a long life battery running on a wireless isotopes.”

• “[H]Iggyway… The more advanced section of the world passed its peak in 2014. The emphasis is on transport with the least contact with the surface. Of course, there are aircraft, but even on ground trips, they will run more and more into the air, a foot or two from the ground. ”
• “[V]Ehicles with “Robot Brain” can be set to a specific destination. It goes there without interference from the slow reflectiveness of the human driver. ”
• “[W]All screens will be replaced with the regular set. However, transparent cubes are now available to allow for 3D viewing. ”
• “[T]His world population will reach 6,500,000,000, and the US population will reach 350,000,000. ” And later he warns that if population growth is not checked, “all Earths will become a single choked Manhattan by 2450 A.D. and society will collapse. Long ago!“As a result, there is a global propaganda drive that supports birth control in a rational and humane way, and by 2014 it will undoubtedly have serious effects.” [See our Walt Dis­ney Fam­i­ly Plan­ning car­toon from ear­li­er this week.]
• “There are “farms” that catch up with the very difficulties of normal agriculture and turn into more efficient microorganisms. Processed yeast and algae products are available in a variety of flavors. ”
• “In the world of Advertising 2014, there are very few everyday tasks that can’t be done with any machine than humans. Therefore, humanity is primarily a race of bidding for machines. Schools must be directed in this direction. … All high school students will be binary lithometrically proficient in the fundamentals of computer technology and trained as mentioned in computers.”
• “[M]Public will suffer severely from boring illness. Boring diseases spread more widely each year and become more prone to intensity. This will have serious mental, emotional and sociological consequences, and I think psychiatry is far from the most important medical specialist in 2014. ”
• “[T]He will be the brightest single word in the vocabulary work! ” In our “enforced leisure society.”

Isaac Asimov was not the only person in the 60s to peer into the future in a rather visionary way. From the contemporaries below, we can find predictions for several more marks.

Sci-fi writer Arthur C. Clark predicts the future in 1964

Marshall McLehan predicts that electronic media will replace books and create drastic changes in our daily lives (1960).

Walter Cronkite imagines a 21st century home… Back in 1967

The Internet was imagined in 1969

Note: An earlier version of this post was published on our site in 2014.

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