Here are some predictions made in 1900, about life 100 years in the future. What do I predict for the near future? Thats easy: dark humor.

Prediction #2: The American will be taller by from one to two inches. His increase of stature will result from better health, due to vast reforms in medicine, sanitation, food and athletics. He will live fifty years instead of thirty-five as at present for he will reside in the suburbs. The city house will practically be no more. Building in blocks will be illegal. The trip from suburban home to office will require a few minutes only. A penny will pay the fare.

Yep, The American will be taller alright. And being American will come standard with: a bigger penis, larger bank account, faster car, cooler sunglasses, better drugs & sex, a mansion with a swimming pool, a hot wife, perfect kids, and high-level officials that make you feel like a genius. Horray!

Prediction #3: Gymnastics will begin in the nursery, where toys and games will be designed to strengthen the muscles. Exercise will be compulsory in the schools. Every school, college and community will have a complete gymnasium. All cities will have public gymnasiums. A man or woman unable to walk ten miles at a stretch will be regarded as a weakling.

Yeah, sure, we have Daycare services for children that are dedicated to physical play — tumbling, etc. But, I’m starting to think they are designed to prepare us for when we’re entirely round. What do I mean?

Well, whoever predicted this, would be crushed by the total tonnage of fat clung to Americans coast to coast. I mean, hell, forget being a weakling if you can’t walk ten miles, a number of people in America can’t seem to drive ten miles… without eating!

Prediction #4: There Will Be No Street Cars in Our Large Cities. All hurry traffic will be below or high above ground when brought within city limits. In most cities it will be confined to broad subways or tunnels, well lighted and well ventilated, or to high trestles with “moving-sidewalk” stairways leading to the top. These underground or overhead streets will teem with capacious automobile passenger coaches and freight with cushioned wheels. Subways or trestles will be reserved for express trains. Cities, therefore, will be free from all noises.

*Beep-beep* *Rap-music-induced trunk rattling* “Hey, get off of your cellphone, we’re in bumper to bumper traffic here, and you didn’t move up your fraction of an inch, you son of a bi–”

Prediction #9: Photographs will be telegraphed from any distance. If there be a battle in China a hundred years hence snapshots of its most striking events will be published in the newspapers an hour later. Even to-day photographs are being telegraphed over short distances. Photographs will reproduce all of Nature’s colors.

The types of hoity-toity cats who made this prediction would not have been happy how it turned out. Given that the more accurate prediction is: “There will be a whole industry based on pictures and video, and getting them places super fast, for quick, global use, and it will be called ‘Porno’!”

Prediction #11: No Mosquitoes nor Flies. Insect screens will be unnecessary. Mosquitoes, house-flies and roaches will have been practically exterminated. Boards of health will have destroyed all mosquito haunts and breeding-grounds, drained all stagnant pools, filled in all swamp-lands, and chemically treated all still-water streams. The extermination of the horse and its stable will reduce the house-fly.

Negative Commander, World War III wouldn’t “bug” them.

Prediction #15: No Foods will be Exposed. Storekeepers who expose food to air breathed out by patrons or to the atmosphere of the busy streets will be arrested with those who sell stale or adulterated produce. Liquid-air refrigerators will keep great quantities of food fresh for long intervals.

I wish! We’ve all become a lot less obsessive about disease and much more obsessive about material possessions. And, food sells faster when people can see it — because their fat ass can imagine (over-)eating it. C’mon, we not only leave our food out in the open friends, we have it passed to us through drivethru windows surrounded in various carcinogenic fumes, before we eat it. Yummy.

– I’m jumping ahead, but, these two go together –

Prediction #17: How Children will be Taught. A university education will be free to every man and woman. Several great national universities will have been established. Children will study a simple English grammar adapted to simplified English, and not copied after the Latin. Time will be saved by grouping like studies. Poor students will be given free board, free clothing and free books if ambitious and actually unable to meet their school and college expenses. Medical inspectors regularly visiting the public schools will furnish poor children free eyeglasses, free dentistry and free medical attention of every kind. The very poor will, when necessary, get free rides to and from school and free lunches between sessions. In vacation time poor children will be taken on trips to various parts of the world. Etiquette and housekeeping will be important studies in the public schools.

See! One of the great national universities is already established, right here.

Make way for the ambitious!

Prediction #16: There will be No C, X or Q in our every-day alphabet. They will be abandoned because unnecessary. Spelling by sound will have been adopted, first by the newspapers. English will be a language of condensed words expressing condensed ideas, and will be more extensively spoken than any other. Russian will rank second.

Staring at the computer screen, the author began to shout in a sing-songy voice, “X marks the spot where you are wrong, bitch! Thats El Incorrecto–” But, before too many seconds could pass, an annoyingly loud, wrong-answer, game-show sound effect played, cutting him off, and muting his quips. At the same time, a huge red colored ‘X‘ jumped onto the screen.

Prediction #22: Store Purchases by Tube. Pneumatic tubes, instead of store wagons, will deliver packages and bundles. These tubes will collect, deliver and transport mail over certain distances, perhaps for hundreds of miles. They will at first connect with the private houses of the wealthy; then with all homes. Great business establishments will extend them to stations, similar to our branch post-offices of today, whence fast automobile vehicles will distribute purchases from house to house.

“TEH INTERNETZ”

Prediction #24: Vegetables Grown by Electricity. Winter will be turned into summer and night into day by the farmer. In cold weather he will place heat-conducting electric wires under the soil of his garden and thus warm his growing plants. He will also grow large gardens under glass. At night his vegetables will be bathed in powerful electric light, serving, like sunlight, to hasten their growth. Electric currents applied to the soil will make valuable plants grow larger and faster, and will kill troublesome weeds. Rays of colored light will hasten the growth of many plants. Electricity applied to garden seeds will make them sprout and develop unusually early.

Global Warming… the early years…