2020. / 2020
u 2020. godini će biti mnogo robota koji će se koristiti
kao terapeuti, asistenti, čak i kao najbolji prijatelji.. . In 2020 many robots will be used as therapists, assistants and even best friends...
I f we look at the ideas that people had half a century ago when they looked longingly at the future and hoped for miracles in 2020, we would be fully jus- tified in saying that we’ve disappointed the technological prophets of the 20 th century. Although we have moved closer to their ideas with some innovations, some of them were so bizarre that they would probably
never come to life in practise... MONKEY CHAUFFEURS
Some claimed that 2020 would see the start of the breeding of smart animals that would be capable of working inde- pendently. As Glenn T. Seaborg noted in his book A Scientist Speaks Out, every household in the 21 st century will have a robot to maintain the house, as well as a monkey to take care of the household. He also wrote that well-trained monkeys would work as family drivers, thus reduc- ing the number of deaths caused by mo- tor accidents. It’s a good thing that no one informed our animal friends about that gruesome idea! LIFE IN FLYING HOUSES When he wrote his famous novel 2001: A Space Odyssey back in 1968, Arthur C. Clarke predicted that we would largely live in radically di erent houses in the 21 st cen- tury, i.e. that they would be in the sky. They would simply levitate, without anything connecting them to the ground. Interest- ing, don’t you think? COOKING WILL DISAPPEAR If this prediction were to be realised, most people of the 21 st century would be truly grateful to scientists. Speci cally, in an arti- cle published in 1950 in the magazine Pop- ular Mechanics, it was claimed that in the 21 st century all food would be delivered to our homes in the form of frozen bri- quettes.“Cooking will become extinct as an art form and will live only in the memo- ries of older people. Some of them will still eat chicken or lamb chops, but everyone else will eat modern foods.” TELEPATHY AND TELEPORTATION Although he is considered a great ex- pert in the technology industry, Michael J. Farrell, the founder of the Mobile Insti- tute, which has existed since 1985, gave some fairly erroneous predictions. In the book Shift 2020, Farrell predicted that
WE WILL HAVE ROBOT THERAPISTS
2020 would be an era of nano-mobili- ty, or that from next year onwards telep- athy and teleportation would become possible, and that they would become part of our everyday lives in 2040. Oh, if only that were true! PEOPLE WILL STOP DRINKING TEA AND COFFEE This list also contains one prediction made by world-renowned Serb scientist Nikola Tesla. Speci cally, in 1937, speaking about the new century, he stated that tea, tobac- co and co ee would no longer be fash- ionable. “Quite simply, it will no longer be fashion- able to poison the body with harmful sub- stances,” he said. EVERYONE WILL BE VEGETARIAN When speaking about the meat indus- try of the 21 st century back in 1913, Gus- tave Bischo , the then president of the American Meat Packing Association, stated for The New York Times that peo- ple would mostly use vegetables. Due to a lack of meat, as he stated, vege- tarians will even become multimillion- aires in the 21 st century. And he wasn’t that far from the truth, don’t you think? On the other side, meat-eaters don’t give up easily, so this debate is still cur- rent in 2020. We’re cheering for the veg- etarians.
This prediction is perhaps more or less true, except that instead of having robots for best friends we have mobile phones, computers and tablets. Ariane van de Ven is an expert on global trends, which is why some of her predictions are also contained in the book Shift 2020. Speci cally, she stated at the time that many robots would be used as therapists, assistants and even best friends and comrades in 2020. Ac- cording to her, robots will help humankind in everyday situations. If we look at how much time we now spend holding some modern communication gadgets, we can see that Van de Ven wasn’t far wrong. NOBODY WILL WORK AND WE’LL ALL BE RICH There is probably no American in the world who wouldn’t like to see this 1966 prediction of Time magazine realised. Spe- ci cally, the article Futurists contains a pre- diction that almost everyone in the Unit- ed States will be independent and wealthy due to the enormous production of ma- chines. As the essay states, an average American family with nobody working would earn between $30,000 and $40,000 per year. When we compare the value of money in 1966 to its worth today, that amount would equate to about $300,000. To sit at home and not do any work. Quite a nice prediction, right?
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