It's hard to believe that we're at the end of another year. The world turns, we grow a little older and civilisation changes ...
That we would have evolved so quickly that our feet would just be one big toe. The Royal College of Surgeons thought that way back in 1911 that evolution was progressing at such a pace that all those bones in our feet would fuse together into one digit. Let's hope the nerves in our 'one big foot' had evolved so that it hurt less when we kick the corner of the bed in the dark!
Apparently, the letters C, X and Q will no longer be part of the English alphabet! So, no more queuing, playing the Xylophone or even chomping on chocolate! And we'll be speaking in compressed sentences to communicate more efficiently, with little or no grammar. That last part is already happening if you read any young person's text messages, but whatever next? We'll be communicating in hieroglyphs? Oh, hang on ...
The inventor of AC current, and renowned lightning tamer, Nikola Tesla, predicted that people would no longer smoke tobacco or drink tea and coffee. Thankfully he was right about tobacco, but who amongst us could cope without a nice cup of tea? I wonder if he thought we'd get our stimulants from electric shocks?
Well, this is a strange one. All roads will become tubes! In 1957, it was thought that we'll travel from home to a tube station, drive into the tube and be fired pneumatically to our destination! Hmmm ... channel tunnel anyone? Thankfully, we don't have to drive the 22 miles under the sea as a handy train will take us and our vehicle while we relax.
Did you know that in 1966, Arthur C Clake predicted that by 2020, our houses would float in the air and we could move them anywhere in the world? Well, we have houseboats which can move, but all of them? A very strange prediction for such a renowned author. I wonder if he'd watched too much Jetsons?
And finally, for this blog post, the last prediction that I discovered was that everyone would be as rich as lords and no-one would have to work anymore. In 1966, Time Magazine predicted that our society would be so automated by 2020 that machines would produce absolutely everything for us and we'd all earn £300,000 a year for doing nothing!
So there you go. Some of my personal favourite wild predictions from the 20th Century, and I haven't even mentioned monkey butlers!
If you feel inspired to find out more about anything I've said here, do call me on 01908 774320 or leave a comment below and I'll be in touch as soon as I can.