With computers and robots doing most of your work, you're going to have more leisure time in the future. You'll want to enjoy this extra time - and here computers and robots will again come to your aid.
Suppose you feel like a vacation. Planning it is easy. On the viewscreen of your home videophone computer, you watch video guides that show any place in the world - or out of it. Eventually you choose your destination - the Space Islands. These are a group of huge space colonies that are resorts for people from Earth, the Moonbase and other space colonies. They have different climates in order to attract all kinds of tourists, and you choose a colony that is like several South Sea islands inside. However, unlike the real South Sea islands, you can play weightless games there and experience other such delights that only the Space Islands can offer.
Getting from your home to the colony is a long and complicated journey, but your computer arranges all the various stages of the trip, books your seats, reserves your hotel rooms . . . and pays your bills.
Then it's off on a whole variety of robot transports as exciting as the vacation itself - beltways, autotaxis, high-speed monorail trains, underground vacuum bullet trains, mammoth jets, space shuttles and finally a spacecruiser out of the colony.
You're there at last, and a wonderful vacation lies before you. There's only one problem - no one speaks English. The Space Islands are designed to suit all the people on Earth, and so their languages vary. You've chosen one in which Spanish is spoken. You can't speak Spanish, so you hire a portable computer that translates instantly from one language to another.
See also:
Language of the Future (1982)
Man and the Moon filmstrip (1970s)
The Future of Real Estate (1953)
Year 2000 Time Capsule (1958)
Connections: AT&T's Vision of the Future (Part 1, 1993)
Vision (Clip 1, 1993)
Is that an iPod Nano I see on the black fellow...
ReplyDeleteexperience other such delights that only the Space Islands can offer
ReplyDeleteOh, please. Like the Space Islands will be the only place you'll find robot hookers.
Ah, back when robot workers meant that I'd be paid the same amount of money for next to no work, rather than putting me out of a job so the owner and shareholders could hog more money to themselves. I hope they have a good time on the Space Islands...
ReplyDeleteThis book chapter doesn't suggest a date for vacations in luxury space colonies, but it looks to me like how some "futurists" in 1980 imagined life in that far off, mysterious year 2010.
ReplyDeleteSounds like someone watched too many episodes of the Jetsons.
ReplyDelete--Bonnach
That's great!
ReplyDeleteI better start learning Spanish
I see what's going on here. Child kidnappings will be more common in the future. The picture depicts a very tanned Jerry Harrison trying to distract a nanny with his gazillion megabyte iPod while his accomplice makes off with the nanny's charge.
ReplyDeleteGood to see jheri curl is still popular in the paleo-future.
ReplyDeleteApparently it doesn't get dark and avoiding sand in your face isn't important on the Space Islands because the car in the background doesn't have headlights or a windshield.
ReplyDelete