#1 A Collection Of Tactile Pictures For The Blind - Created By Martin Kunz, 1902
#2 A Door Lock Created In 1911 By The German Locksmith Frank L. Koralewsky (1872-1941)
#3 It’s Unbelievable To Think That A Roman Glass Work From 300 Ad Can Survive Intact. This One Is At The Rheinisches Landesmuseum Trier An Archaeological Museum In Trier, Germany
Predicting what the future of human technology, innovation, and production will look like is harder than it looks. While it’s easy to make a handful of educated guesses about broad trends, it’s hard to be specific without lots of data. There are so many different factors to consider, after all, including shifts in the investment space, changes in demand, global economic shocks, ever-changing consumer tastes and demands, etc.
One thing that you can do is look ‘upstream’ of an industry’s investment space.
#4 This Love Letter Was Written By Alfred Joseph Frueh, An American Cartoonist, And Illustrator
When folded according to the instructions, the letter transforms into a mini model of an art gallery.
Frueh made this model to inform his wife about the details of a specific art gallery before her visit.
Image courtesy of the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
In a nutshell, if you want to predict what the tech landscape will likely look like in a few years, look at what corporations are designing today. That way, you can see what technologies specific companies are ‘betting on’ to be relevant in the future.
Broadly speaking, if you see companies investing billions upon billions of dollars into specific technologies, they are expecting that these products will be around at least long enough for them to earn their initial investment back. Though, of course, the aim is to be (extremely) profitable.
#8 This Crocheted Wedding Dress Was Made From Hospital Bedsheets
Marguerite was institutionalized after developing symptoms of schizophrenia at the age of 41. While in the hospital, she produced drawings, watercolors, and embroideries.
She ultimately stopped creating artworks when she became increasingly troubled by hallucinations, but produced this wedding gown as her final work: deeply wanting to one day experience marriage, she began to make a bridal gown for an imaginary wedding day. Unfortunately, she died in 1955 and would never wear the dress.
There are no known photographs of Marguerite Sirvins, but a drawing was made by surrealist artist Gérard Vulliamy in 1945.
#9 Check Out This "Cat And Mouse" Regency-Era Cobweb Made By The English Artist, Eleanor Green In 1817
“Cobwebs” are a rare example of a mechanical valentine with at least two layers of paper patterned with concentric circles and an image on the top layer
Meanwhile, even if you have a fairly good grasp on current investment trends, it’s still important to be skeptical. You can never fully tell how tech might actually evolve until after it happens.
If anyone tells you that they 100% know what is going to be the Next Big Thing, they likely have no clue what they’re talking about. (But they’re likely trying to hype you up to get you to invest in whatever it is they’re selling.)
#10 A Message For The One You Love Today: “You And I Are Earth”, 1661. Creator Unknown. Found In A London Sewer. Tin-Glazed Earthenware Plate. Collection Of The Museum Of London
#12 Lion Sandals Ghana CA. 20th Century Collection Of The Metropolitan Museum Of Art
However, one thing that we might be (almost always) certain of is that humankind’s love of storytelling and need for connection will survive. No matter what other things the future might bring, people will still want to feel like they’re part of something bigger than themselves.
So, they’ll want to be entertained in a way that brings them together with other people. We can count on entertainment to be a core part of the future… even if the specifics of entertainment technology might be hard to predict. What seems ‘normal’ to us now would have sounded like sci-fi a couple of decades ago.
#14 A Circa 1845-1846 Daguerreotype Memorial Portrait Of A Pet Squirrel. Collection Of The Nelson-Atkins Museum
According to the World Economic Forum (WEF), the biggest emerging technologies of 2025 include things like structural battery composites, which combine energy storage and structural strength in a single material, so reducing weight and improving efficiency.
Other top tech this year includes osmotic power systems (they “generate clean, steady energy from differences in water salinity using membranes”), advanced nuclear technologies (for instance, small modular reactors and next-generation cooling systems), and engineered living therapeutics (modified microbes or cells create medical compounds inside your body).
#16 I Love How Over The Top This Circa 1920’s Folk Art Bird Tree Is! The Anonymous Artist Must Have Had Fun Creating This, Probably Thinking “Just One More Bird”
#18 An Ancient Bowl Depicting A Swarm Of Mice. 180 Bc - 500 Ad. Culture: Nazca; South Coast, Peru. Collection Of The Art Institute Of Chicago. Via Achayatharangel
Other major emerging technologies, as per WEF, are things like:
- GLP-1 medications for neurodegenerative disease
- Autonomous biochemical sensors to detect health and environmental markers
- Green nitrogen fixation to reduce the high carbon footprint of ammonia production
- Nanozymes, which are synthetic nanomaterials that mimic natural enzymes
- Collaborative sensing, which connects sensors across homes, cities, and vehicles into AI-powered networks, to enable real-time monitoring and decision-making across these systems
- Generative AI watermarking, to help verify content’s authenticity and origins
#19 It’s Not Christmas Without “Asbestos Snow”!
When snow made from asbestos falls on Dorothy and her friends in a poppy field, they awaken from a spell cast by the Wicked Witch of the West.
#20 This Folk Art Sculpture Of A Bird Was Made By Moses Ogden, Sometime In The 1890’s. It Consists Of A Natural Root Form Minimally Altered By The Artist
Ogden was born in the 1840's and served in the Civil War. After the war, he built a small cabin for himself in Angelica, New York. At night, after his day job as a blacksmith, he would go out into the forest and bring back pieces of wood that spoke to him as an artist. His cabin ended up being filled with these fantastical carvings. It was known locally as "Moses Ogden's Wonderland". It was one of America’s first folk art environments and Ogden was its backyard visionary.
During his lifetime, Ogden was offered vast sums of money to sell his artwork but he always refused. It was said that he found too much enjoyment "in contemplation of the forms and reminiscence of their discovery, conception and execution."
In September, 1917, Popular Science magazine did a small article on Ogden’s “curio shop”. That Popular Science article shows this bird sculpture as well as other pieces. It would be the last public notice of his work and eventually the objects were lost to time and the fading memories of those who remembered it.
Then, in the early 1980’s, a grouping of roughly forty sculptures were discovered in an attic in Olean, New York, not far from Angelica. The answer to who created them remained a mystery until the antique dealer Richard Rockford discovered an old postcard of a moustached man in a bowler hat sitting in his front yard, surrounded by these fantastical carvings. In the lower left corner of the postcard was written “Mose Ogden’s Wonderland” and the mystery started to unravel, the beginning of an artist’s rediscovery story.
Today, Moses Ogden is still relatively unknown to all but a few die-hard dealers and collectors but that is slowly changing as more discoveries emerge.