Home Entertainment of the Future (1981)

This image from the book Tomorrow's Home (World of Tomorrow) by Neil Ardley illustrates the home entertainment system of tomorrow.

This section's most interesting prediction may be that, "the magazines, books, records, tapes and television sets we now have will begin to disappear. But in their place the computer will offer us a greater range of entertainment."

The two page spread's text appears below in its entirety.

Look at this play of the future - a performance of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar by famous actors in your very own living room! Even more amazing, you play the title role yourself. The play has just reached the point where Caesar is killed.

All this could come about with developments in holographic video - a system that uses laser beams to produce images that have depth just as in real life. Once perfected, it will produce a show that takes place not on a screen but in real space - even around you. You could walk in and out of the action, and view it from any direction - the ultimate in realism. In this case, the computer that operates the system has been instructed to omit the role of Julius Caesar so as to allow you to take part. Although the images look so real, you could walk through them, so you suffer no harm from your killers' knives.

Such developments may lie far in the future, but there's no doubt that the computer is going to affect home entertainment soon. The magazines, books, records, tapes and television sets we now have will begin to disappear. But in their place the computer will offer us a greater range of entertainment.

The home computer will be linked to a radio dish on your roof. A satellite or radio mast feeds it with many television channels; on the viewscreen of the computer, you can sit and watch the news or sport in several other countries as well as your own. The radio dish or telephone wires also link your home to computer complexes that feed it with all kinds of recorded entertainment - films, television shows you have missed, video magazines and news. Music comes through the computer too, playing whatever you want and whenever with a quality far beyond today's records and tapes. If you want to read something on your own, a portable screen linked to the computer displays any story of your choice.

See also:
Movie Trends of the 21st Century (1982)
Living Room of the Future (1979)
Thinks We'll Do Our Reading on Screen (1923)
Learning in 1999 A.D. (1967)
Tomorrow's TV-Phone (1956)
Closer Than We Think: Headphone TV (1960)

New Worlds To Radically Alter (1981)

The 1981 book Out into Space (World of Tomorrow) by Neil Ardley features this image of Venus, "bombarded with containers of plants that will begin to change its atmosphere into oxygen, which people can breathe."

An excerpt from the children's book appears below.

Plans have been proposed to change Mars and Venus, the nearest planets, into worlds like Earth - even though Venus is so hot that lead melts there, and Mars is so cold that its air freezes in winter and falls as snow. To alter whole worlds, we would employ the tiniest of living things - minute plans called algae. Special new kinds of algae would be bred to be resistant to the conditions on Venus and Mars. Huge quantities would then be sent to the planets. On Venus the algae would convert the atmosphere of carbon dioxide into oxygen. Water could come from ice-bearing comets diverted to Venus. The temperature would fall until it was cool enough for people to land and begin making a new home there. On Mars the temperature would need to be raised by using the planets to darken and warm the white ice caps. The ice would melt and moisten the soil, releasing oxygen into the thin atmosphere. As the air thickened, it would get even warmer.

See also:
Space Colony Pirates (1981)
Mars and Beyond (1957)
The Future of Real Estate (1953)
Vacations of the Future (1981)
Space Spiders (1979)

Robot Farms (1982)

The 1982 book Our Future Needs (World of Tomorrow) contains this two-page spread of robot farms of the future. No, they don't grow robots. The robots just work on the farms. But combine the idea of robot farms and the robot rebellion we looked at a few months back and you've got a hilariously horrifying combination.


Look at this fruit farm of the future. There are at least three things that make it different from a farm of today. The first, of course, is that robots are picking the oranges. The second is that the orange trees are not growing in any soil. Now look at the landscape to spot the third difference. The farm is situated in an arid region where little rain falls from the sky. Today, such regions are virtually uninhabited and useless. These three difference show how robot farms of the future will be able to produce more food for the world's people than farming can today.

See also:
Superfarm of the Year 2020 (1979)
Delicious Waste Liquids of the Future (1982)
The Population Bomb: Scenario 1 (1970)
The Population Bomb: Scenario 2 (1970)
The Population Bomb: Scenario 3 (1970)
The Robot Rebellion (1982)

The Coming Ice Age (1982)

The 1982 book Fact or Fantasy (World of Tomorrow) by Neil Ardley contains the two-page spread below which illustrates domed cities of the future. The domes are necessary to protect humanity from the "savage cold" yet to come.


What is our planet going to be like in the future? From the way in which the Earth moves around the Sun, we have some ideas of the kind of weather that both we and our descendants are going to suffer or enjoy. It seems that the rest of their century; in general, summers will be less warm and winters more severe. Meteorologists expect the next century to be mostly cold, but the weather should improve in about 150 years time!

See also:
Closer Than We Think! Polar City (1959)
Communities May Be Weatherized (Edwardsville Intelligencer, 1952)
Postcards Show the Year 2000 (circa 1900)
Superfarm of the Year 2020 (1979)

Poison War (1981)

Don't you hate it when countries use pterodactyls in war?

The 1981 book Future War and Weapons (World of Tomorrow) by Neil Ardley describes future wars being waged with drugs which would produce vivid hallucinations in opposing soldiers. Below is the entire two-page spread.


See also:
Robot Rebellion (1982)
Space Colony Pirates (1981)
Gigantic Robots to Fight Our Battles (Fresno Bee, 1934)

Time Travel (1982)

The 1982 book Fact or Fantasy? (World of Tomorrow) by Neil Ardley features this picture of "time tourists" choosing their destination.

Time tourists choose an era of the past to explore. They then enter the time machine on the left and watch history unfold before them. But they can only view the past and not enter it and live there. The time machine does not show the future, otherwise people could change what is going to happen.

Delicious Waste Liquids of the Future (1982)

The 1982 book Our Future Needs (World of Tomorrow) by Neil Ardley envisions a world where liquid waste is converted into food.

A food factory of the future serves a desert city. Pipes bring waste liquids from industries in the city to the factory, where they are converted into foods by bacteria in tanks. Solar panels capture the Sun's rays to provide heat for the food-manufacturing processes in the factory.