Friday, February 8, 2013

Predictions from the 1890's about the 1990's.....

The background: 

"In the early 1890s, the American Press Association put together a feature series of writings in preparation for the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. They commissioned 74 notable Americans to make predictions about American life in the 1990s, in the process producing an interesting commentary on life in the 1890s. The variety of essays reflected the diversity of the contributors, including a senator (John J. Ingalls), an electrical engineer (John J. Carty), a poet (Elizabeth Akers Allen), and a minister (Thomas De Witt Talmage). The segments ran in newspapers across the country from March through May 1893, in time for the World's Fair opening."   (Quote taken from here.)

A partial answering of the questions from Thomas De Witt Talmage:


In medicine? Well, cancer and consumption will be as easily cured as influenza or a "run round" [diarrhea].
Theology? Far more religion than now the technicalities nothing; the spirit of religion dominant. The minister's war hatchet will be buried beside Modoc's tomahawk.
Condition of capital and labor? At peace, by the prevalence of the Golden Rule, which enjoins us to do to others as we would have them do to us.
Treatment of criminals? Prisons will have ventilation, and sunlight, and bathrooms, and libraries, and Christian influences that will be reformatory instead of damnatory.
Education methods? The stuffing machine that we call the school system, which is making the rising generation a race of invalids, will be substituted by something more reasonable. No more school girls with spectacles at 14, their eyes having been extinguished by overstudy, with overwrought brain. And no more boys in their dying dream trying to recite something in higher mathematics.
What American now living will be the most honored by 1993? By that time longevity will be so improved that 150 years will be no unusual age to reach. So I answer this question by saying that that American now sleeps in the cradle on the banks of the Hudson, or the Alabama, or the Oregon, or the Ohio - a rattle in hand, gum-swollen with a new tooth, and he will soon undertake a course of measles and mumps.

Predictions is a tough business.  Care to take a stab at 2113?

Ed. Note:  Everything in italics came from here.

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