Behold Philco-Ford Corporation’s conception of the fantastic futuristic year 1999AD. The date isn’t given, but it’s for the Corps 75th anniversary, so circa 1967.
There is, unsurprisingly, a mix of “not even close” and “well, kinda.” Your average Dad will have spent ten years in college majoring in astrophysics and minoring in biology, and as a hobby he will genetically engineer floral abominations. In 1999, your average housewife will buy clothes and other useless crap on the computer that is connected to a wide interlinked network of other computers including various online retailers. The household computer will also have cameras all over so that the whole place is under surveillance. Banking and something akin to emails (though, oddly, handwritten) are also done on the household computer. But where this, as with many predictions, gets it wrong is the assumption that different functions will be carried out by different machines, rather than one single device that can pretty much do everything. The household sickbay is… bizarre. The remote control for the TV is *hilariously* gigantic, but at least the party where they watch the big-screen 3D TV is so awful (and full of the sort of pretentious pricks that you want to beat to death with a Louisville Slugger) it would make you want to kill yourself. Briefly shown is the Ford “Seattle-ite” concept car from 1962, which was damn near a parody of the big tailfin design ethic that had died out by the time the film was made. It was designed by Alex Tremulis and HAD A NUCLEAR POWERPLANT.
On the whole this thing comes off almost as a tie-in to “2001: A Space Odyssey.” The technology seems like it would fit squarely into that world; there’s even an almost visually identical game of computer chess played at one point.
I’ve never seen this before today, but I started having flashbacks to the 70’s when I heard the narrator voice. If you’re old enough, you too will doubtless go ‘hey, wait, I know that voice…”
ᚾᚪᛣᛚᛖᚪᚱ ᚠᚪᛣᚳᛁᚾᚷ ᚪᚪᛏᚩᛗᚩᛒᛁᛚᛖᛋ, ᛒᚪᛒᚤ!