In 1923, newspapers ran a series of predictions about what the world would be like in a hundred years, and some are eerily accurate.
Source: RT in Spanish
A century ago, fantasies about the year 2023 were mostly wild and naive. Futurologists came to imagine bald women with black teeth, telepathy as the main mode of communication, and a four-hour workday, among other follies.
Paul Fairie, a researcher at the University of Calgary in Alberta (Canada), has gone viral on Twitter after collect newspaper clippings dating from 1923 in which various ‘experts’ appear making their predictions for the future, 100 years from now. Here are some of them.
four hour work day
In 1923, something as normal as an eight-hour workday was considered a not inconsiderable and quite progressive achievement. This work schedule did not become a reality in the United States until 1937, when the Fair Labor Standards Act was first proposed. However, one expert predicted that by 2023 the working day would be “no more than four hours a day, thanks to the work of electricity”.
A promising life expectancy
According to predictions from 1923, humans should currently have a half-life of 100 years. In isolated cases it could increase to 150 or 200. There were even some who went further and dared to say that it would be 300 years.
Historically, life expectancy has increased year after year thanks to new medical advances and a higher quality of life, but recently researchers have observed that life expectancy has decreased for the first time in decades. according to a report from the US National Center for Health Statistics, life expectancy at birth decreased by nearly a year from 2020 to 2021. “That decline—from 77.0 to 76.1 years—brought life expectancy at birth in the United States States at its lowest level since 1996,” he said.
women will be bald
According to an anthropologist from the 1920s, men and women today should look very different. As for hair, it was predicted that “men’s curls” would be in fashion, while women would shave their heads and paint “their teeth black.”
In this sense, another expert believed that beauty pageants would disappear in our time. He said that they will simply disappear due to lack of use, because “all people will be beautiful”, and it will simply be impossible to choose the most attractive one.
The radio will replace the gas
Glen Curtis, an authority on aeronautics, said radio would replace fuel by 2023 and that planes would travel “well-defined” routes powered by radio waves. Unfortunately, flying cars powered by radio waves have not yet reached real life, although some prototype vehicles have been designed that run on radio frequencies.
Newspapers will be a thing of the past
Some even predicted that by 2023 newspapers would have disappeared 50 years earlier, and people would only listen to the news. Something that, in part, may be true. In the 1920s, radio became a new way to listen to news and other important events, but print media, such as newspapers, remained the dominant source of information for most people. However, as technology advanced, more people were moving away from newspapers to more current options to stay informed.
Wireless warfare and intrauterine telepathy
A century ago, Professor AM Low predicted that our world would be wireless. He supposed that the information would be transmitted through atomized water charged with electricity and, consequently, would start “the war of 2023”, which would also become “a wireless war”.
In addition, the professor stated that the citizens of 2023 would have the ability to communicate with “telepathy” even as embryos in the womb, which he described as a “very useful method of communication.”
The appearance of the ‘smartwatch’
This latest prediction for 2023 could be the most disturbing and accurate to date. It describes a world in which most goods are ordered on “talking movies” from China and delivered on huge “1,000-mile-an-hour freighters” that deliver your order before sundown.
The prediction also assumes that the whole world will stay in communication via “watch-sized radios” that can connect you to anyone on Earth.
