This living room has many electronic gadgets which are either in use already or are being developed for people to buy in the 1980s.
1. Giant-size TV. Based on the designs already available, this one has a super-bright screen for daylight viewing and stereo sound system.
2. Electronic video movie camera, requires no film, just a spool of tape. Within ten years video cameras like this could be replaced by 3-D holographic recorders.
3. Flat screen TV. No longer a bulky box, TV has shrunk to a thickness of less than five centimetres. This one is used to order shopping via a computerised shopping centre a few kilometres away. The system takes orders and indicates if any items are not in stock.
4. Video disc player used for recording off the TV and for replaying favourite films.
5. Domestic robot rolls in with drinks. One robot, the Quasar, is already on sale in the USA. Reports indicate that it may be little more than a toy however, so it will be a few years before 'Star Wars' robots tramp through our homes.
6. Mail slot. By 1990, most mail will be sent in electronic form. Posting a letter will consist of placing it in front of a copier in your home or at the post office. The electronic read-out will be flashed up to a satellite, to be beamed to its destination. Like many other electronic ideas, the savings in time and energy could be enormous.
The picture [above] takes you into the living room of a house of the future. The basics will probably be similar - windows, furniture, carpet and TV. There will be one big change though - the number of electronic gadgets in use.
The same computer revolution which has resulted in calculators and digital watches could, through the 1980s and '90s, revolutionise people's living habits.
Television is changing from a box to stare at into a useful two-way tool. Electronic newspapers are already available - pushing the button on a handset lets you read 'pages' of news, weather, puzzles and quizzes.
TV-telephones should be a practical reality by the mid 1980s. Xerox copying over the telephone already exists. Combining the two could result in millions of office workers being able to work at home if they wish. There is little need to work in a central office if a computer can store records, copiers can send information from place to place and people can talk on TV-telephones.
Many people may prefer to carry on working in an office with others, but for those who are happy at home, the savings in travelling time would be useful. Even better would be the money saved on transport costs to and from work.
See also:
Future Cities: Homes and Living into the 21st Century (1979)
Closer Than We Think! Robot Housemaid (1959)
Closer Than We Think! Lunar Mailbag (1960)
Online Shopping (1967)
1999 A.D. (1967)
The Electronic Newspaper (1978)
Startling Changes in Housing in Year 2000 (Chicago Tribune, 1961)
Monsanto House of the Future (1957-1967)
Picturephone as the perpetual technology of the future
Frigidaire Kitchen of the Future (1957)
wahl,cool,i like this blog,because i'm a robot,ha ha.i'll be back.
ReplyDelete--nightingale
great imagination...!
ReplyDeletehttp://entrepreneurialship.blogspot.com/
Lots of good predictions there.
ReplyDeleteAnd, of course, because it is the Future, we will all wear jumpsuits with racing stripes.
Apparently voyeurism is common in the future (#2), and soccer players of the future are stoned hippies (go to the full-size image and look at the TV screen).
ReplyDeleteIn the future, all soccer players will be white.
ReplyDeleteWhere is my robot waiter?
ReplyDeleteAnd why would one WANT to see the person they are speaking with on the phone? How could you make annoyed faces or roll your eyes?
I like how they always say things like "...and you'll be able to work from home!".
ReplyDeleteYears ago, I had an MRI and they showed me how they could electronically send the image to a specialist to analyze the image remotely. I said how cool I thought it was and they said, "Yeah, cool, until they start sending them to India to be analyzed for a fraction of the cost."
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteIn the real living room of 2007, the guy would wear old jeans and a wifebeater shirt, have empty beer cans, porn DVD's and the remains of a pizza stacked on his coffee table, and watch Texas Hold'm on his big screen wall TV.
ReplyDeletePretty impressive predictions! I love the specificity of "flat screen tvs."
ReplyDeleteWow that article of the future living room wasn't far off the mark!!
ReplyDeleteNice blog
would you like to exchange links?
steven-movieworld.blogspot.com/
It's interesting that sending electronic mail involved scanning a hard copy letter!
ReplyDeleteBut overall the author was surprisingly close to the mark.
Now excuse me, my drinks robot's just arrived with another martini.
Disco re-revisited
ReplyDeletegreat post! I love the concept home Microsoft came up with too!
ReplyDeletecheck out my post and please leave comments!
http://frozeninframes.blogspot.com/2007/08/doesnt-matter.html
Great! What a powerful imagination do you have? I won't be surprised when time comes wherein people would be able to transmute to other places due to the high technology we have right now?
ReplyDeletehope you'll visit my blog. i'll be expecting a comment also okay.
This is a fantastic resource. I need to check back to your blog on a regular basis!
ReplyDeleteWhen I was in high school in the early 1970's the big career direction the guidance counsellors kept pushing was the recreation & leisure industry because they said in the future computers would be doing most of our work so that the 4-day work week would become a reality for everyone which means they'd all need to fill up all that spare time with leisure activities. HA! It boggles the mind how they never in a million years ever thought that computers would create/generate so much more work for us that we'd be working 80 hours a week. Thank god I ignored those guidance dudes.
ReplyDeleteThey think we will live in a Epcot Center future
ReplyDeleteI assume there's a flying car in the garage?
ReplyDeleteWow, so strange. I've seen this picture before in the early or mid 90s in an elementary school textbook. I think it was a science textbook and it must have been talking about future technologies. The second I saw the picture I recognised it immediately. It seems so weird now that a school would be passing this off as something you could learn from!
ReplyDeleteDig the headphones on the one dude. They didn't predict earbuds.
ReplyDeleteBut it appears that they also predicted gay marriage, so it's all good.
Drinks robot! Bring me another Gin and Betelgeuse!