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ARTHUR C. CLARKE PREDICTED THE FUTURE

IN 1960s BBC TV Show

By Francis AnisibaPublished 10 months ago 5 min read
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ARTHUR C. CLARKE PREDICTED THE FUTURE
Photo by Bruno Guerrero on Unsplash

ARTHUR C. CLARKE PREDICTED THE FUTURE

It's a 1964 BBC documentary. Arthur C. Clarke is the man; he worked with Stanley Kubrick to produce 2001: A Space Odyssey. You turn up the volume and are shocked by your own ears. What is Clark saying about the world in which we may quickly touch each other? He is describing our present as if he were standing right next to you, so what exactly is he saying? When Clark was discussing messaging apps, he mentioned how we would be able to contact our pals from anywhere on Earth without having to know where they were. That does sound a lot like using a smartphone. Clark, Mr. The device will remember your friend's number so you won't even need to know it. In the 1960s, manufacturers were just beginning to transition from rotary dial phones to push button phones, but Clark saw further into the future of communication. He told a tale of how a person would be able to conduct business from Haiti or Bali as if they were in London. It was a BBC show, so it's not surprising that he mentions the English language.

There was no other way to make money 60 years ago than to work a nine-to-five job today, you can open your laptop and work from anywhere on the planet. Next, brain surgeons in Edinburgh operating on patients in New Zealand—these were Clark's exact words, and he was right about this. Remote surgery also became a reality in 2001 when a doctor in New York operated on a patient in France. If you're wondering how this is possible, robotics is the quick answer, perhaps even on a different continent Don't commute and communicate is another example of how Clark foresaw the future. Recently, workers around the world became accustomed to remote work and are now simply refusing to go back to the office. The least they'll accept is hybrid work, which is when you work from your bed for four days and then come into the office one day to say hello. This would have been impossible in the 1960s, considering that you had to commute everywhere.

He was a pioneer in predicting the future. In 1945, he wrote an essay titled Wireless World, which is a great title if we consider that the first Wi-Fi network debuted in 1997. However, the essay's main topic was the launch of communication satellites into orbit, which was more than ten years before the first artificial satellite began orbiting the Earth. So, it's not as if Arthur C. Clarke foresaw the invention. This device would have a TV screen and a typewriter keyboard, and people would use it to access information. Of course, it is a desktop computer, but since Clark was describing it in 1970s terms, he could have also included the mouse. Clark also correctly predicted that this calm Soul PC would be used for getting bank statements, booking theater tickets, and browsing the news—exactly what we do with computers and smartphones today. The World Bank estimates that nearly 56 percent of the world's population lives in cities today; this number will only rise in the future. Sorry, Mr. Clark, that was a complete miss. There are also borderline cases. Arthur Clark had a vision of what a search engine would look like. However, he believed that cities would completely disappear. The replicator that the speaker described sounds like a device from a Bugs Bunny cartoon since it is a device that instantly duplicates everything.seems a little out of the question, but to be honest, 3D printers already exist, even if they aren't as advanced as Clark's replicator. Who knows, this prophecy might come true in ten or twenty years. The British author wasn't the only daydreamer of the time. Just three years after the Clark Show premiered on the BBC, Walter Cronkite, America's favorite TV host, tried his hand at predicting the future. Cronkite hosted a program called the 21st century with the aim of showcasing what a 21st-century home would look like, and he was oddly excellent at it.

Let's begin with his imagined living room, complete with a large, full-color 3D television and console controllers for numerous devices.

I could be mistaken, but did Cronkite just describe a home entertainment system? Chat music that plays from speakers when a button is pressed I imagine I'm so famished for more that I enter the 2001-era kitchen in my head. Okay, so that one was a little wrong, but you can still get disposable plates at the grocery store, which wasn't the case in the 1960s. Additionally, you had to either clean the house yourself back then or pay help. Cronkite and his guests expressed hope that this would change as they mentioned small-scale robots that would follow orders and could even be taught to avoid running into people while cleaning the house. Finally, these tiny robots wouldn't have to resemble humanity in any way.

Now that you're probably no longer focused on the robot vacuum cleaner in the corner, let's talk business. The show depicted the home office as having a futuristic printer that would use data from satellites to print our newspaper. While this idea may seem naive to us now, bear in mind that the first laser printer debuted half a decade after the show's airing. The most mysterious device Cronkite mentions is an electronic correspondence machine. They didn't explain its functions on the show, but it's possible they were referring to a smartphone at the time. At the time, the TV remote controller was all but perfect, so this device seemed even more impressive. There was also talk of a closed circuit camera system. These intercom systems are in every home today. Sixty years ago, you had to use a peephole to see who was at the door.

Every now and then, there is word of a tech firm building a flying automobile, but it always turns out to be a bust, and we can still only fantasize about taking off and flying over traffic jams, as predicted by Cronkite in his other program about the 20th century. Although they presumably meant to say airbags when they said "inflated pillows," the 1960s television program got certain things about automobiles right.

Cronkite apparently foresaw the development of anti-lock brakes, which automakers began incorporating into vehicles decades later. He also mentioned cruise control and motion sensors, which allow drivers to track the distance to the automobile in front of them now but were unimaginable in the 1960s. How many times have your grandparents said that everything was of higher quality in their day? Well, this isn't always a good thing because back then, traffic signs were solid, causing serious damage to cars that hit them. Cronkite foresaw the deliberate weakening of modern traffic signs to fail and save the driver's life, and that is all for today. If your curiosity has been satisfied, please like and share the video with your friends or, if you want more, just click on them.

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