[extropy-chat] life in the future past

[Damien Broderick]

Sf fans of 1951 imagine their life in 2001:

http://www.fanac.org/fanzines/Rhodomagnetic/Rhodomagnetic18-27.html


NEW YEAR'S 2001 A.D.

Between martinis on New Year's Eve, it suddenly occurred to me that the 
people who celebrated New Years in 1901 could scarcely imagine the world in 
which I found myself. With the aid of another martini, this led me to 
wonder if I, sitting in the middle of the 20th century, could visualize my 
own New Years in 2001. I couldn't, of course.

So I got looking around, and here were all these young people around me. 
They, too, barring accident, would all be around in 2001. So I asked some 
of them to try to visualize for me what kind of a world they thought they'd 
be living in, come Jan. 1, 2001 A.D. The results appear on the following pages.

In each case, I tried to get each person to try to do an "honest" job. I 
wasn't looking for science fiction projections. I hoped to get a 
cross-section of what these people really thought would happen to their 
world and their lives in the next half-century.

There is, incidentally, no common denominator for the group, except that 
all might reasonably expect to live for 50 years more. Some read science 
fiction; some do not. Some are writers by trade; some are not. None of them 
had given the subject any thought before; fifty years is a mighty long time 
to think about.

No one of the writers, including the editor, got any opportunity to see 
anyone elses manuscripts until they were all in. The results - to me, at 
least, were quite surprising. After reading them - perhaps you'd like to 
speculate, too. Where will YOU be and what will it be like for you in 2001 A.D.

[etc]