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At the time of writing, Paul’s thread was viewed nearly 9 million times, and got over 56k likes on the social media platform. And it’s no wonder. He made the thread incredibly relatable, provided entertainment as well as education, and really got Twitter thinking about the past, as well as the far future.
Some of the most interesting predictions that people in 1923 made included how by the current year, we’d have 4-hour workweeks, everyone will be disease-free and beautiful, and how we might all live till we’re 300. Cancer would also be a thing of the past. Someone even predicted that radio would replace gasoline, and that’s a retrofuturistic aesthetic that we’d very much want to see play out in a movie or TV show.
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One prediction that was eerily accurate was that the United States would have a population of 300 million. As it stands currently, there are nearly 332 million people living in the US.
However, the person who thought that there would be 100 million Canadians in a hundred years was wrong: right now, there are just over 38 million people living in Canada.
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Predicting the future is never easy, but there are some things that we can do to make our guesses a bit more accurate. A while back, Bored Panda spoke to Aaron Genest, an expert on labor in the tech and innovation industry and manager at Siemens. He explained to us that we have to take a peek at the investment space if we want to know what the technological landscape will likely look like in a few years’ time.
"I'd argue that most people underestimate the timelines necessary to produce the technological goods on which we rely and the investment made to allow them to exist. By looking 'upstream' in that investment space, we can have a pretty good idea of what whole industries are betting on," he told us.
"For instance, it takes almost two years to develop and produce a computer chip and get it to market for a phone, and five years to get something into a new kind of car. So if we want to have a sense for what, for instance, the gadgets in our cars will look like in 2026, we just need to look at what the car manufacturers are asking their suppliers to design today,” the expert told Bored Panda earlier.
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As such, ‘futurists’ and prognosticators don’t have some crystal ball that they look into to divine the future. They look at where billions upon billions of dollars are invested. The way that work is managed might change as well. The Covid-19 pandemic forced the world to embrace hybrid or fully remote work.
Teleworking suddenly became a viable alternative to showing up at the office. Though, of course, the exact opinion on this varies wildly from company to company and from industry to industry.
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Meanwhile, during another interview, Ramona Pringle, the Director of the Creative Innovation Studio and an Associate Professor at the RTA School of Media at Ryerson University, explained to Bored Panda what tech trends we might see. Storytelling. Connectivity. Entertainment. These are the things that should survive in the coming decades.
“We don’t know what the future holds, and anyone who says that they do is selling snake oil. But, there are certain things we can count on: we love stories, and we love to be part of something bigger than ourselves. Be it oral storytelling, books, blogs, movies, or video games, we’ve never lost our love of narrative,” the expert said.
“Equally true, even when we can’t go into a concert hall or colosseum, we look for ways to be together, connected, and part of a communal experience. The tech might change, but these will continue to be the drivers of our entertainment experiences,” Pringle told Bored Panda some time ago.
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“Immersion and interactivity have long been goals for creators and media makers when it comes to how technology can influence entertainment,” she said.
“For the last decade, we’ve leaned into virtual reality because of how it enables both of these. We can step inside a world and have influence over it, and the story or experience that unfolds. I think one of the things we can expect moving forward is, in a sense, the opposite of virtual reality. Instead, more of an enhanced reality or fictional reality, wherein the entertainment isn’t in a headset, but instead, all around us,” the expert noted.
“A decade ago, we didn’t talk to robots. Today, many of us do. Siri and Alexa are some of the more common bots, but we already interface with non-human characters regularly. As technology advances, including augmented reality and mixed reality, I think we can expect that entertainment will be something we can engage with off of the screen, but out in the world, with characters and stories we can engage with throughout the day, or throughout our houses,” she told Bored Panda.
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“Whoever would have thought that people would pay money to watch other people play games? Media that engages us and gives us something to gather around, be it together, or virtually, is something that will always appeal to us,” she said.
“In the last few years, we’ve seen the rise of interactive and immersive venues like the museum of ice cream or the Dr. Seuss experience. These are places we can go, with friends and family, and have a shared experience. It feeds back into our online experiences because we can share photos or memories and these environments are designed to foster that,” the researcher explained to us back in 2020.
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“Certainly, as we find ourselves in a time of social distancing, we’re seeing new creative ways of ‘being together’ even when we’re apart. So I think we can expect to see entertainment that helps us connect, be it online or off, and immerses us in an experience, story, or community.”
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Which predictions caught you by surprise? What do you personally think the future will look like, a century from now? Share some of your thoughts in the comments.
When you’re done with this list, check out Bored Panda’s feature about Paul’s earlier thread about how “nobody wants to work anymore,” going all the way back to 1894.