Tuesday 18 January 2011

Back to the Future

When I was young, futuristic visions of the world were focused on the year 2000. I'm convinced we were promised that we would be living in a version of the world not dissimilar to that in The Jetsons. I am still bitter about being misled.

I've come across this article from the American publication "Popular Science Monthly" which dates from 1925 and pictures the world of 1950. Predicting that our cities would get more and more crowded, the article outlines some potential solutions.

Neither the solutions proposed in the article nor the jet cars we were promised would be in common use by now have come to pass. In both cases the timeframes of the fantastical (and wildly unrealistic) visions was a mere 20-25 years - roughly a generation. It seems that our desire for development and to make the world a more desirable for the next generation has always run ahead of our ability to achieve our ambitions.

I've shown the article as it would have appeared as a double page spread and also enlarged below to allow you to read and study further. I hope you enjoy! 




Hat Tip to sadanduselss.com for the images.


Andrew

1 comment:

Stephen Chapman said...

I quite like the idea of the different levels for slow and fast traffic.

Good spot.