What do you envisage will be the bounteous challenge that the world will confront in 20 twelvemonth ? Energy or food scarcity ? Overpopulation ? What about our large triumphs ? Cures for malignant neoplastic disease and extensive life ? Smarter humans ? Well , these would all sound similar to the people of 1980 when they looked 20 long time into the future to the class 2000 .
Under the headline “ Most expect life to be better in year 2000 , ” the June 29 , 1980 emergence of the Cedar Rapids Gazette in Iowa ran a syndicated pillar by UPI editor Gay Pauley about the future tense . And it ’s quite an artifact .
Every anticipation ultimately says more about the time and people that were making it than it does about the actual future . Which is what hit these American foretelling from 1980 so fascinating . They show a mixing of grand optimism ( ordinary lifespans of a 100 by the 21st 100 ) and insecurity about what tomorrow might bring ( run through alternative sources of protein like dog ) .
The Olds
Achieving universal wellness care and keeping Social Security alive are two blistering push political topic here in the early 21st one C . So it should n’t be surprising to learn that they were major concerns of 1980 as well . In fact , it may be depressing to learn that we ’ve occur so far into the hereafter with only baby steps toward result for the problems that face both the elderly and any living human being with an immune system of rules .
From the June 29 , 1980 article :
“ We ’re going to have a helluva lot of old citizenry by the class 2000 , ” said Barry Robinson , communications counsellor for the American Association of Retired Persons ( AARP ) .
“ It ’s a rule of quarter round that if you make 65 and are in reasonably safe health , you will be around for an average of another 15 age — 13 for man , 18 for woman , ” he said .
“ By the yr 2000 , we will have a tight dependency proportion , a point where two people are working for the one someone collect pension - Social Security .
“ We ’ll see the end of retirement as we know it today . We might act only half a year , say . There would be a longer working life story , but short periods of work , so that instead of direct all our leisure time at the ending of life , we would spread it out . ”
AARP ’s spokesman say there must be some mean value of guaranteeing medical attention for all people , and there is a scream demand for more physicians intimate about geriatric disease .
Domed Cities
There was nothing more futurist at midcentury than wing cars , jetpacks , and domed cities . Thedomed cityrepresented the ultimate control of nature ( save theactual manipulation of weather ) and toss off up again and again not only in skill fiction , but in serious - given proposals for the metropolis of tomorrow .
But by 1980 the concept of the domed city had become passé . People view it as enormously impractical for a number of reasonableness — not least of which was the tremendous vitality costs that it would take to keep a huge domed social system warm in the wintertime and cool in the summertime .
From 1980 :
commend talking of domed metropolis — the ambition of the future ?
architect now say it would be impractical .
“ It ’s a pipe ambition , ” said Michael Graves , architect based in Princeton , N.J. “ We could n’t yield it anyway ; we could n’t yield the airwave conditioning , nor do we require it . ”
Graves also says high - rise office and flat edifice should be spread out … reverse over on their side as it were .
“ Doing one high rise is contrast , ” he said . “ Doing them hundreds of time becomes electronegative . We ’ve gone skyscraper crazy . ”
Graves mentioned Atlanta , Dallas , and Houston as cities busy building but still with a chance to “ propagate it out . ” He believes the bodied construction of the future should get by , not with towering structure , but a simple gate “ as part of its identity element . Keep the streets for the people … for communal activities . ”
Transportation
Ca n’t waitress for your driverless automobile ? Well , neither could the people of 1980 . They were interested about the damage of oil ( the vegetable oil shocks of the 1970s were still a recent memory ) and predicted that the electric car would be commonplace by 1995.Automated urban transit ? Abundant by 2010 .
A Family of Singing Time - Travelers Drive the highway of Tomorrow
On every continent governing are cutting back aggressively on fuel supplies for cars . governance are raise petrol price to countervail the crude price rises and also deter excessive dependance on the car , [ researchers at the Worldwatch Institute with a unexampled book of account scream run on Empty ] said .
A sampling of gas prices around the human beings reveals Leontyne Price already in excess of $ 3 per gallon .
“ The day when a tankful of gasoline will be $ 50 ( in the United States ) is not far off , ” they said .
None of the chair choice — alcohol , liquid fuel from ember , and oil from shale and tar sand — will be trashy .
Yet 100,000 unexampled car roll off forum lines each working day in the world ’s leading manufacturing manufacture .
The author quote the increasing use of , and need for , far-flung development of mass transport . They do n’t see the demise of the car but rather “ evolution of vehicles that are more effective in their utilisation of fuel . ”
The electric railcar ? It will be in far-flung utilisation by 1995 , one sketch showed . McGraw - Hill Publications , in a poll of some 200 industrial firms and government and individual researchers , also predicted far-flung use of the ultrasonic special K transport , multi - unit truck “ gear ” run on their own traffic lanes by the year 2000 and urban transit automatize by 2010 .
Eating Dogs
In 1978 Barbara Ford wrote a booktitled Future Food , which advocate for the consumption of alternative protein like insect and algae .
The 1980 clause even mentioned rodents and pawl as possible reservoir of food for the futurity :
We will mine and harvest the sea more and more . And what today is look at solid food for livestock will give humans . Barbara Ford , examining “ Future Food , Alternate Protein for the Year 2000 ” ( William Morrow & Co. ) predicted the world will dine on gamey - protein food grain , non - dairy cheese and Milk River , unusual flesh of maritime life , leafy plants such as Medicago sativa , one - celled plants such as alga , and an assortment of “ weird ” protein that admit insects , reptilian , rodents , small game , even detent .
Cures for Cancer
Life anticipation has indeed risen since 1980 , but not quite as optimistically as this clause from 1980 would have like .
In health , experts believe a cure for cancer is technically possible by 1985 , that creation of a primitive frame of life will exist by 1990 , and life expectancy will rise to 100 years by 2005 .
The McGraw - Hill survey betoken within the next 20 years medicine will be able readily to spot prebirth fault , use ultrasonics to find brain tumors , find substance of speeding geological fault healing , habituate electronic impulses to control painfulness , obtain a practical blood backup man , reverse malignance with chemotherapy , develop effective weight unit and appetite control , transfer the nucleus of human cells , change sex of an baby in the uterus .
Also : develop electronic prosthesis , utilize unreal pipe organ extensively , discover an effective immunization against actinotherapy , ascendence old eld chemically , and chance a way even of artificial ontogeny of new limb .
Smarter Kids
The people of 1980 predicted that children of the future would be more well rounded and take off structured schooling as too soon as 3 . Lifelong education was also augur — a common vision from the 1970s that remain to be popular amongst futurists of the 1980s .
courtly schooling will jump before , say from age 3 , and terminate earlier , by 15 .
immature people will have “ bill account magnate , ” said Harold G. Shane , former dean of education and presently professor of Education Department at Indiana University , Bloomington . Shane , who writes and dress down internationally , defined the electric charge account great power as giving immature people “ the option of four to six more year of conventional school of their own choosing ” to use anytime they wish .
“ There will be strong emphasis on lifelong education , ” he enounce in an consultation . “ Society will provide education that permits exit and re - entry into formal studies ” as the pupil , no matter the eld , decides what he or she wants to study .
The advantage system will change to less emphasis on diplomas , credentials , credentials and the like .
“ There will be enormous crusade to make more generalists , ” he say , “ more who are expert in more than one arena . Cross life history , as it were . The cross - disciplinal ground is very crucial in attacking and solving some of our social changes in the next 20 year . ”
Experimental Religions
There was this sensation from some that America would bear on to continue as religious as ever , but that organized religion and spirituality would come to evidence themselves in different way by the year 2000 .
“ My common sense is that by the year 2000 , there will be a satisfying identification that we not only are economic and physical wight , but also ghostlike , ” allege Ruben Nelson of Square One Ltd. , Ottawa , Canada .
“ We may not be cognizant of it , but we are last through one of the most unfathomed transformations in story — seek the basic accuracy , order in society . Our sense of what is true is switch profoundly , to something that is essentially data-based . That ’s why dialogue is so of import …
“ Part of the informality of religious belief is the observational . I do n’t think we will return to the church as in the 1950s when we put up a church and filled the damned matter . Now those who will fill the church service will do so because they want to talk with each other . People are on the move , the spirit is on the move . tent you may have , but not temples . ”
The Ladyfolk
The year 1980 is n’t ancient history , but it was n’t that long ago either . So when my mama tells the story of going to corrupt a car during that era and the car salesman tell her to arrive back with her husband ’s blessing , it ’s a bit disgraceful — but a reminder that we ’ve actually made some positive changes as a society since 1980 .
The role of women in the year 2000 and beyond will be one of the most drastic changes . Most women will be working outside the home ; more and more will be participating in public determination - fashioning .
“ The displacement of fair sex into the labor force has got to bring changes in public insurance toward day - care facility , workplace programming , even in the way we tax ourselves , ” said Kathleen Newland , a political scientist , economist and elderly researcher for Worldwatch Institute .
“ The ( revenue enhancement ) punishment now is place on pair in which both better half are the remuneration earners . By the year 2000 we will see much slap-up equation in the professions — medicine , law of nature , other occupations where there are specific certification .
“ But it ’s a prospicient , hard struggle for real adequate pay for equal work . Sexual sequestration in the labor force out is so strongly entrenched . By the year 2000 the full term ‘ manful chauvinist ’ will not be dead . . . the twenty-first hundred is only 20 year aside . woman are give progress , but it will take more than 20 long time . ”
For those of you who may be inquire what my mom did , she did n’t give that franchise her business and just went somewhere else . Nobody tells my mom that she needs her husband ’s approving for anything .
Images : From the June 29 , 1980 issue of the Cedar Rapids Gazette
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