(futuristic noises)
- You know, you'd think we'd have
time machines by now.
So, people have always predicted
what the future's going to look like.
It's something that's just really interested
people for a long time,
which is probably why there's a new Hollywood movie
that takes place in the future every couple months.
But interestingly, a lot of the predictions
that took place back in the day were about
the time that we live in right now.
For example, remember Back to the Future?
Well they travel to October 21 2015,
which is just next year, and I don't think we're
any closer to having hover boards than we were then.
But it's not just old movies, there's a lot of
documented predictions from the past about
what our future would look like that are just
absolutely ridiculous.
So I gathered the 10 best, or worst,
to share with you guys, so here they are,
10 predictions about the future that were
hilariously wrong.
Number one is: everyone will have jetpacks.
In 1966 Reader's Digest predicted a whole
different world than what actually happened.
Featured on the cover of the magazine is
a painting by Fred Freeman showing life in the year 1999,
with people in jetpacks, a dome climate controlled
city and moving sidewalks.
But, to be honest with you, I can't really
hate on them for having such a wild imagination
at the time, I mean that's really all they had.
I looked up major world events in 1966 and
there was a famine in India, but that's about
as exciting as it got, it wasn't exactly an exciting time
to be alive.
Number two is helicopters will replace cars.
In 1951 Mechanics Illustrated published an article
that predicted that helicopters would be a cheap mode
of transportation in the future that would replace cars.
The prediction was based off an engineer's
theoretical design in the 1930s of a personal helicopter
that could be sold to the average consumer.
There was only one small design flaw in it,
which was that it required human legs as landing gear.
No wonder this thing never came to be,
I don't even know how they took this guy seriously
in the first place!
I mean, clearly he gets all his design ideas
from Fred Flintstone.
Number three are flying homes.
In 1966, the inventor, writer and TV host
Arthur C. Clarke predicted that we would have
flying homes by the year 2001.
He believed that water pipes, drains and
anything that would tie a home to that ground would be gone,
and we would develop a compact power source
strong enough to make a home vertically mobile.
Cool prediction, except the biggest technological event
of 2001 was iTunes was released,
and it's now 13 years later and the windows version
is still a buggy piece of (bleep) so
I'm guessing flying homes are still a ways off.
Number four is outer space factories.
In 1983, scientists from the Science and Technology agency
in Tokyo predicted that by the year 2010,
that the Earth would be surrounded by
orbiting factories and laboratories.
The facilities were predicted to be capable
of producing new pharmaceuticals, aloes,
and other substances only possible in
a zero gravity environment.
I think what's most disturbing about this is
that this prediction was based off a poll of the opinions
of numerous government officials
and university professors.
Well Japan, you did get that one wrong,
but 1983 was the same year that you released
the original NES and that just brings back
all kinds of good memories so you get a pass.
Number five is gold will become worthless.
In 1911, famously brilliant inventor Thomas Edison
was quoted by saying that by the year 2011,
that bars of gold would become as cheap and plentiful
as bars of iron, because we will have discovered
the secret of transmuting metals by then.
Well, he was a little off, because around that
time it actually hit a record high value.
See, this is a good example of why people shouldn't
speculate about things that they really don't
know anything about..
He was an inventor, not an economist,
so he knew nothing about it.
That would be like me predicting the price of haircuts
in the next ten years, I clearly don't
have any expertise in the area.
Number six is colonization of the moon.
In 1958, NASA predicted that we would have
a permanent moonbase where humans could survive
by the year 2007.
This was based off a project by the U.S. Air Force
called the LUNEX project, which was supposed to have
a 21 man underground air force base on the moon.
They also envisioned a lunar Noah's Ark,
where they could store human DNA to continue the human race
if the Earth were ever wiped out.
Uh, scientists at NASA, I think it's time
we had a little talk about the birds and the bees.
See, you can't grow a human just by having their DNA,
there's some other stuff involved like...
That's not a test tube.
It's a penis.
Number seven is underwater cities.
In 1985, Todd Mills, the organizer of the
FutureWorld Expo in San Francisco predicted
that we would be living in underwater cities and
that it would happen soon.
He said that this would be made possible by the
creation of energy produced by laser fusion,
that would fuel entire underwater cities.
You know what I noticed, why was
everybody obsessed with lasers in the 20th century?
Maybe they could have focused on something
a little more practical, like their own fashion.
Check that out, that is Sylvester Stallone
in the year 1983.
Cool mullet bro.
Number 8 is the elimination of letters C, X, and Q.
In the year 1900, famous American civil engineer
John Watkins predicted that by the year 2000
we would no longer use the letters C, X and Q
in our everyday alphabet because they would
become unnecessary.
He believed that changes in mass communication
as well as changes in the way that we
fundamentally communicate with each other would
render the letters useless.
Well, he was wrong about that,
but he was pretty close, I mean I do see the way
that half you people spell.
Some of your Tweets and Facebook statuses look like
a whole nother language.
You know, they have this crazy new thing
called Spellcheck, use it.
Number nine is nuclear-powered vacuums.
In 1955, Alex Lewyt, president of the well known
Lewyt Vacuum company was quoted as saying
that nuclear powered vacuum cleaners would be
a reality within 10 years.
Not only that, but he believed that
nuclear powered appliances of all kinds would be
commonplace in households across America.
Damn, this guy was so bad at predicting
the location of nuclear devices, I'm surprised his
last name isn't Bush.
Oh! What!
That's an Iraq war joke.
And number 10, the collapse of the internet.
In 1995, Robert Metcalfe, one of the cofounders
of ethernet, was quoted in InfoWorld Magazine
as saying that the internet would soon explode
in a spectacular fashion like a supernova
and that in 1996 it would catastrophically collapse.
He believed that the exponential growth of the internet
could not possibly continue, and that if he was wrong
he would eat his words.
Well, he was a man of his word,
because just two years later at the 1997
International World Wide Web conference,
he took a printed copy of the article, put it in a blender
with some liquid and drank it all.
Okay, well first off, ew.
Secondly, nobody literally expected you to
eat your words, dude.
I wonder if he takes everything this seriously.
I hope nobody ever uses the phrase
eat your heart out, because you're gonna see
Cannibal Bob pop out.
Well, that's all for this video guys, I hope you enoyed it
and I think what we should take away from this experience
is just to stop predicting what the future's gonna
look like, because you're almost guaranteed to be wrong.
If you want to add me to Facebook and Twitter,
the links to those will be in the description below,
along with all my other social networking sites
and other than that, I will see you guys next saturday
with a brand new video, peace.
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wherever you want, I really appreciate it either way.
And other than that, you'd think we'd be able
to do at least a little time travelling by now.
You know, maybe not like a full blown TARDIS,
but, just something to move around.
Damn science,
(foreign language)