Betty MacDonald Fan Club. Join fans of the beloved writer Betty MacDonald (1907-58). The original Betty MacDonald Fan Club and literary Society. Welcome to Betty MacDonald Fan Club and Betty MacDonald Society - the official Betty MacDonald Fan Club Website with members in 40 countries.
Betty MacDonald, the author of The Egg and I and the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle Series is beloved all over the world. Don't miss Wolfgang Hampel's Betty MacDonald biography and his very witty interviews on CD and DVD!
Thursday, January 2, 2020
23 Hilarious Predictions About the Year 2020 That Are Way Off
These predictions about the year 2020 are so wrong, it's comical.
It's hard to imagine that we're almost living in the year 2020. Though we've seen plenty of impressive technological advances,
like artificial intelligence and phones that unlock by scanning our
faces, it's not quite the world of flying cars and robot butlers people
once imagined we'd be living in by now. In fact, decades ago,
predictions about the futuristic and revolutionary changes
we'd see in this far-off sounding year were quite lofty. Want a good
laugh? Here are 23 predictions about the year 2020 that at some point in
time, people really expected to happen. Unfortunately, they haven't… at
least not yet!
1
Human feet will become just one big toe.
ShutterstockSo, what's going to happen to our feet—or, more specifically, our toes—in 2020? In a lecture at the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1911, a surgeon by the name of Richard Clement Lucas
made a curious prediction: that the "useless outer toes" will become
used less and less, so that "man might become a one-toed race." "This
Little Piggy" would get a whole lot shorter!
2
We'll have ape chauffeurs.
Shutterstock/Onyx9In 1994, the RAND Corporation, a global think tank that's contributed
to the space program and the development of the internet, said they
expected us to have animal employees by the year 2020. "The RAND panel mentioned that by the year 2020 it may be possible to
breed intelligent species of animals, such as apes, that will be
capable of performing manual labor," Glenn T. Seaborg wrote of the corporation's prediction in his book Scientist Speaks Out.
"During the 21st century, those houses that don't have a robot in the
broom closet could have a live-in ape to do the cleaning and gardening
chores. Also, the use of well-trained apes as family chauffeurs might
decrease the number of automobile accidents." Yikes, who's gonna tell
them?
3
We'll live in flying houses.
ShutterstockInventor, science writer, and futurist Arthur C. Clarke—who co-wrote the screenplay for 2001: A Space Odyssey—believed that the boring houses of 1966 would be radically different by the time we reached the 21st century, according to Inverse. Evidently, the houses of the future would have nothing keeping them on the ground and they would be able to move to anywhere on earth on a whim. Oh, and it wouldn't just be one home that would be able to relocate
without the owner even needing to get out of bed and put on pants.
"Whole communities may migrate south in the winter, or move to new lands
whenever they feel the need for a change of scenery," Clarke promised. Up 2, anyone?
4
And our houses will be cleaned by hoses.
ShutterstockThe New York Times' longtime science editor Waldemar Kaempffert,
who worked for the paper from the 1920s through the 1950s, had lots of
opinions about how different the world would be by the 21st century. In a
1950 Popular Mechanics article, titled "Miracles You'll See in the Next 50 Years," he predicted that by the 21st century, all you'll have to do to get your house clean is "simply turn the hose on everything." That's because Kaempffert imagined furniture would be made of
synthetic fabric or waterproof plastic. "After the water has run down a
drain in the middle of the floor (later concealed by a rug of synthetic
fiber)," all you'd have to do is "turn on a blast of hot air" to dry
everything. What about not-so-resilient material, you ask? Just "throw
soiled 'linen' into the incarcerator!"
5
We'll eat candy made of underwear.
ShutterstockIn the same Popular Mechanics article, Kaempffert predicted
that all food would be delivered to our homes in the form of frozen
bricks by the 21st century. "Cooking as an art is only a memory in the
minds of old people," he wrote. "A few die-hards still broil a chicken
or roast a leg of lamb, but the experts have developed ways of
deep-freezing partially baked cuts of meat." And, thanks to advances in
culinary technology, Kaempffert predicted it would even be possible to
take ordinary objects like old table linens and "rayon underwear" and
bring them to "chemical factories to be converted into candy." No
thanks!
6
We'll have personal helicopters.
ShutterstockForget jetpacks and flying cars. Popular Mechanics was pretty sure back in 1951 that every family in 21st century would have at least one helicopter in their garage. "This simple, practical, foolproof personal helicopter coupe is big
enough to carry two people and small enough to land on your lawn," they
explained. "It has no carburetor to ice up, no ignition system to fall
apart or misfire: instead, quiet, efficient ramjets keep the rotors
moving, burning any kind of fuel from dime-a-gallon stove oil or
kerosene up to aviation gasoline." Yes, but then, we'd imagine, your teenage son
would ask to borrow the chopper, and you'd wake up the next day to
discover your helicopter stuck in a tree. It's always something!
7
C, X, and Q will not be part of the alphabet.
ShutterstockWhen you're curious about the future of language, you probably should ask someone other than an engineer about it. And yet, that's what Ladies' Home Journal did in 1900, asking John Elfreth Watkins Jr., the curator of mechanical technology at the Smithsonian Institution, for his educated guesses about the 21st century. The man of science had no love for what he considered extraneous
letters, and he boldly predicted that by the 2000s, "there will be no C,
X, or Q in our everyday alphabet. They will be abandoned because
unnecessary." Instead, Watkins wrote, we'd be spelling mostly by sound
and would only communicate with "condensed words expressing condensed
ideas." So, in 2020, we may say to our friends, "Me happy good, hi!"
8
We will have both telepathy and teleportation.
ShutterstockMichael J. O'Farrell, founder of The Mobile Institute, has been an expert in the technology industry since 1985. But even the experts can make mistakes. In the 2014 book Shift 2020, O'Farrell predicted that 2020 would be the dawn of the "nanomobility era." "In the pending nanomobility era, I predict telepathy and
teleportation will become possible by the year 2020—with both
commonplace by 2040," he said. Well, we'll believe it when we see it.
9
All roads will become tubes.
ShutterstockIf you're sick of asphalt roads and all the potholes that come with them, then you'll wish Popular Mechanics
was right about this prediction for the 21st century. In a 1957
article, the magazine predicted that every road and street in America
will be "replaced by a network of pneumatic tubes," and your car would
only need enough power to get from your home to the nearest tube. Then,
by the calculations of a Honeywell engineer, "they will be pneumatically
powered to any desired destination."
10
Nobody will work and everybody will be rich.
ShutterstockIn 1966, Time
magazine reported that the 21st century would be a pretty awesome
economic era for just about everybody. In an essay called "The
Futurists," they predicted that "machines will be producing so much that
everyone in the U.S. will, in effect, be independently wealthy."
Without even lifting a finger, the average non-working family could
expect to earn an average salary of between $30,000 and $40,000,
according to Time. That's in 1966 dollars, mind you; in 2020, that'd be about $300,000—for doing nothing. We wish!
11
Mail will be sent via rocket.
ShutterstockAs out there as it sounds, mail delivery via missile was successfully attempted in 1959. That year, a Navy submarine—the U.S.S. Barbero—sent 3,000 letters, all addressed to political figures like President Dwight D. Eisenhower,
using only a rocket. The nuclear warhead was taken out and replaced
with mail containers, and the missile was launched towards the Naval
Auxiliary Air Station. The mail was successfully delivered, and Postmaster General Arthur E. Summerfield
was so excited by the "historic significance" of mail delivery via
instruments of war that he predicted it would become commonplace by the
next century. "Mail will be delivered within hours from New York to
California, to Britain, to India, or Australia by guided missiles," he said. "We stand on the threshold of rocket mail." Though we never got rocket mail, we did get something better: email.
12
We'll finally make it to Mars.
ShutterstockWe've been dreaming of putting humans on Mars for as long as we've
known the red planet existed. However, it's only recently that the
venture has started to feel even remotely realistic. And yet, in 1997, Wired magazine's Peter Schwartz and Peter Leyden picked the year 2020 as the time when "humans arrive on Mars." They also had some specific ideas about how it would go down exactly:
"The four astronauts touch down and beam their images back to the 11
billion people sharing in the moment. The expedition is a joint effort
supported by virtually all nations on the planet, the culmination of a
decade and a half of intense focus on a common goal." Ah, sounds nice,
doesn't it? In the go-go '90s, we had every reason to believe them. But we're not
so optimistic now that Mars tourism is in our immediate future. Even NASA projects that the earliest we could get a human on the surface of Mars is 2030, and that's only if we're really, really lucky.
13
Women will all be built like wrestlers.
ShutterstockIn 1950, Associated Press writer Dorothy Roe revealed some shocking predictions of what life on earth would be like in the 21st century, according to Smithsonian
magazine. Among her more head-scratching forecasts were that the women
of tomorrow would be "more than six feet tall" and would "wear a size 11
shoe, have shoulders like a wrestler, and muscles like a truck driver."
Their proportions, Roe wrote, would be perfectly "Amazonian," all
evidently thanks to science providing "a balanced ration of vitamins,
proteins, and minerals that will produce maximum bodily efficiency."
14
We'll wear antenna hats and disposable socks.
ShutterstockFor a 1939 issue of British Vogue, product designer Gilbert Rhode
was asked what he believed people in the 21st century would be
wearing—and he had lots of thoughts. He imagined that, by 2020, we would
have banished buttons, pockets, collars, and ties, and that men would
revolt against shaving. "His hat will be an antenna, snatching radio out
of the ether. His socks—disposable. His suit minus tie, collar, and
buttons," Rhode declared. He almost described a modern-day hipster living in Brooklyn, but we suspect even the antenna hat might be pushing it a little too far.
15
Everything—even baby cradles—will be made out of steel.
ShutterstockThomas Edison played a role in some of the greatest inventions of all time, from light bulbs to movie cameras. But that doesn't mean he only had good ideas. Take his vision of the future of steel, for instance: During a 1911 interview with Miami Metropolis, he predicted that "the house of the next century will be furnished from basement to attic with steel." And according to Edison, the steel obsession wouldn't end there. "The
baby of the 21st century will be rocked in a steel cradle," he said.
"His father will sit in a steel chair at a steel dining table, and his
mother's boudoir will be sumptuously equipped with steel furnishings."
Sounds like the opposite of comfy.
16
We'll be able to vote electronically from home.
ShutterstockIn the aforementioned 1997 Wired article, Schwartz and
Leyden predicted that Americans would be able to partake in "e-voting,"
voting in the presidential election from the comfort of their own home.
They actually predicated we'd be able to e-vote as early as 2008, but at
this point, even the possibility of e-voting in the 2020 election seems
a little far-fetched.
17
Everyone will stop drinking coffee and tea.
ShutterstockIn 1937, Nikola Tesla predicted
that "within a century, coffee, tea, and tobacco will be no longer in
vogue." "The abolition of stimulants will not come about forcibly," he
wrote. "It will simply be no longer fashionable to poison the system
with harmful ingredients." He's hopefully right about tobacco, but the coffee and tea? Not just yet.
18
There will be "blood banks" for teeth.
ShutterstockWe already have blood blanks, where life-saving plasma can be donated
and used to help patients who need emergency blood. So, what's next,
you might be wondering? Well, in a 1947 issue of Mechanix Illustrated magazine, journalist Lester David promised that in the future, we'd have "tooth banks," too. "Picture the possibilities," David wrote in the story, aptly titled,
"How About Tooth Banks?" "Into the junk pile will go all artificial
dentures, all bridges, plates, partial plates. All men and women of
whatever age will be able to have human teeth imbedded inside their gums
until the day they die."
19
Everyone will be a vegetarian.
ShutterstockIn 1913, Gustav Bischoff,
former president of the American Meat Packers Association, predicted
that humans' diets would consist of mostly vegetables as the years went
on. Because of a shortage of meat, he told The New York Times, even the wealthiest people in the future would be vegetarians.
20
But also, eating will no longer be necessary.
ShutterstockThis prediction comes from just 15 years ago and it was made by futurist and computer scientist Ray Kurzweil. He wrote in his 2005 book The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology
that by the 2020s, there will be "nanobots" capable of entering the
bloodstream to "feed" cells and extract waste. As a result, they'll
render the mode of food consumption as we know it obsolete. A bold
prediction for just 15 years into the future, don't you think?
21
We'll have robots as therapists.
Shuttestock/Andrey_PopovRobots are the typical prediction for the future—and technically, we do sort of have robots now. But global trends expert Ariane Van de Ven had some bigger ideas for 2020. She explained in the aforementioned book Shift 2020 that she believed "there will be more robots used as therapists, companions, assistants, and even friends to help people in their everyday," according to The Next Web. Yeah… not quite.
22
Vacuums will be nuclear-powered.
ShutterstockAlex Lewyt, former president of Lewyt Vacuum Company, obviously wanted the world to be excited about vacuum cleaners. But when he predicted in 1955 that "nuclear-powered vacuum cleaners" would become a reality in the future, he maybe wasn't making the most
convincing sales pitch. If the choice were between having dirty floors
or plugging in a mini-Chernobyl-waiting-to-happen, we'd probably stick
with the crumbs and dust bunnies.
23
There will be no need for futurists to predict the future.
ShutterstockIn the 1900s and earlier in the 2000s, many futurists made their predictions as to how 2020 would look. But Dave Evans,
the chief futurist for Cisco Visual Networking, actually predicted that
he'd be out of a job by this time because, he forecasted, everyone
would be able to predict the future themselves. "By 2020, predicting the future will be commonplace for the average person," he told Mashablein
2012. "We are amassing unprecedented amounts of data… New image and
video analysis algorithms and tools will unlock this rich source of
data, creating unprecedented insight. Cloud-based tools will allow
anyone to mine this data and perform what-if analysis, even using it to
predict the future."
We have a very special Betty MacDonald fan club surprise for you.
Tell
us your favourite satirical text of Wolfgang Hampel's book Satire ist mein Lieblingstier,
please and you'll get several fascinating Betty MacDonald fan club items
for free. Wolfgang Hampel's very successful book is available in many countries around the world. ( see links below )
Don't miss this unique Betty MacDonald fan club offer, please.
Wolfgang Hampel's very witty book 'Satire ist mein Lieblingstier' ( Satire is my favourite animal ) is No 1 Buecher de TOP List.
Wolfgang
Hampels sehr witziges Buch ' Satire ist mein Lieblingstier' ( Satire is
my favourite animal ) ist No 1 Buecher de TOP Liste.
Ich habe dieses Buch gekauft, weil Krimi-Königin Ingrid Noll Wolfgang ... sehr, daß wir die monatliche literarische Veranstaltung Vita Magica von Wolfgang Hampel bald einmal besuchen können.
Satire ist mein Lieblingstier
- Satirische Gedichte: Mit Informationen über die Kultveranstaltung
"Vita Magica" der Akademie für Ältere in Heidelberg | Wolfgang ...
Satire ist mein Lieblingstier
- Satirische Gedichte. Mit Informationen über die Kultveranstaltung
Vita Magica der Akademie für Ältere in Heidelberg. Satire ist mein ...
Jul 17, 2018 - Bücher bei Weltbild.de: Jetzt Satire ist mein Lieblingstier - Satirische Gedichte von Wolfgang Hampel versandkostenfrei bestellen bei ...
Aug 1, 2018 - Betty MacDonald fan club - and Vita Magica founder Wolfgang Hampel's new book ' Satire ist mein Lieblingstier ' ( Satire is my favourite ...
Betty MacDonald Fan Club, founded by Wolfgang Hampel, has members in 40 countries.
Wolfgang Hampel, author of Betty MacDonald biography interviewed Betty MacDonald's family and friends. His Interviews have been published on CD and DVD by Betty MacDonald Fan Club. If you are interested in the Betty MacDonald Biography or the Betty MacDonald Interviews send us a mail, please.
Several original Interviews with Betty MacDonald are available.
We are also organizing international Betty MacDonald Fan Club Events for example, Betty MacDonald Fan Club Eurovision Song Contest Meetings in Oslo and Düsseldorf, Royal Wedding Betty MacDonald Fan Club Event in Stockholm and Betty MacDonald Fan Club Fifa Worldcup Conferences in South Africa and Germany.
Betty MacDonald Fan Club Honour Members are Monica Sone, author of Nisei Daughter and described as Kimi in Betty MacDonald's The Plague and I, Betty MacDonald's nephew, artist and writer Darsie Beck, Betty MacDonald fans and beloved authors and artists Gwen Grant, Letizia Mancino, Perry Woodfin, Traci Tyne Hilton, Tatjana Geßler, music producer Bernd Kunze, musician Thomas Bödigheimer, translater Mary Holmes and Mr. Tigerli.
