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French artists in 1899 envisioned what life would look like in the year 2000

openculture.com

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Re: French artists in 1899 envisioned what life would look like in the year 2000

#131

Post by kwhitefoot »

Affric wrote: post #2

It’s interesting because they got so much right but they just couldn’t quite imagine the computer so they have humans pulling levers, remotely operating machinery, being carried by advanced surveillance helicopters… Perhaps this hints that our vision of the future should have us doing less.

> they just couldn’t quite imagine the computer

Or they imagined that such devices would be much more powerful but much less general than what we actually have. The card showing books being shredded and fed into students by headphone looks like a computer to me even though it is cranked manually. Quite a lot of my software development career was dedicated to programs that transformed knowledge in one form (specifications and domain expertise) into knowledge in a different form (detailed drawings, bills of materials, and descriptions of the final product.

Re: French artists in 1899 envisioned what life would look like in the year 2000

#132

Post by timeon »

BriggyDwiggs42 wrote: post #84
type0 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They envisioned robotic tailors and even today we are far away from that it's last one this slide https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/a-19th-century-vis...

Not that we could do it but i feel like the real issue is that manufacturing a couple of univeral sizes of less form-fitting clothes is a significantly easier solution to this problem. I think they tended to expect tech to change instead of culture, while in reality our culture has adapted to what is available technologically.

Tailor-made fits are desirable but, with elastic materials, not longer required.

Re: French artists in 1899 envisioned what life would look like in the year 2000

#133

Post by timeon »

Affric wrote: post #2

It’s interesting because they got so much right but they just couldn’t quite imagine the computer so they have humans pulling levers, remotely operating machinery, being carried by advanced surveillance helicopters… Perhaps this hints that our vision of the future should have us doing less.

> Perhaps this hints that our vision of the future should have us doing less.

People in Matrix movies were not doing much.

Re: French artists in 1899 envisioned what life would look like in the year 2000

#134

Post by ant6n »

withinboredom wrote: post #94
ant6n wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the better road movement was started by cyclists.

I believe the better road movement was started by Rome, long before cycles were even a dream.

Different movement. I actually meant the „good roads“ movement from the 1880s:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Roads_Movement

Re: French artists in 1899 envisioned what life would look like in the year 2000

#135

Post by lelag »

olabyne wrote: post #127
samdung wrote: post #90

I found more of these: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/a-19th-century-vis...

"la correspondance cinéma-phono-télégraphique" was a good guess. That's exactly our modern video calls, except with smaller devices. "La curiosité" is a good one too, most city kids are seeing a horse like they would see a lion

A few were not very insightful, but likely obvious to anyone paying attention.

Automobiles de guerre: tank were already right around the corner, 15 years away.

Audition du journal: commercial broadcasting was 20 years away, with early efforts starting as soon the early 1900s.

Re: French artists in 1899 envisioned what life would look like in the year 2000

#136

Post by joks »

redeeman wrote: post #55
redeeman wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WOULD, not "could"

to downvoters: are you suggesting it was illegal for women to wear pants back then? (and no, the paris decree does not count). There were female marketed "trousers" appearing in the 1850s, so it is clearly completely retarded to suggest that the french artists "couldnt envision women wearing pants". But carry on with the official party line, but do so knowingly that it is fake.

Something does not need to be illegal for it to be unacceptable at the time

Re: French artists in 1899 envisioned what life would look like in the year 2000

#137

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

wanderingstan wrote: post #83
jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's crazy how different things are now. My neighborhood dates from the turn of the century. The houses that date back to the original days of the neighborhood are easy to spot, because they're built up on a berm about 3 to 4 feet higher than the street level. This is because when they were built, the street was just a bunch of mud and horse manure. The standard house design would dig out a half under grade bas…

> My neighborhood dates from the turn of the century. Note that this phrase now means “24 years ago.” Seems every day I have to correct myself to “turn of the 20th century.”

Wow, you're right and I'd never even thought of that. Lol.

Re: French artists in 1899 envisioned what life would look like in the year 2000

#139

Post by executesorder66 »

ein0p wrote: post #108

And we still aren’t quite there where it comes to freeing people from hard manual labor. A bit depressing if you ask me. Nobody can even make a decent house cleaning robot which knows how to clean around cables and won’t paint your entire apartment in dog diarrhea if your dog poops where it shouldn’t have.

https://existentialcomics.com/comic/540

Re: French artists in 1899 envisioned what life would look like in the year 2000

#140

Post by fennecfoxy »

sandworm101 wrote: post #65
GuB-42 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't realize that the underwater thing was so important back then. We are all thinking about flying cars, and these drawings don't disappoint, but there is as much happening underwater as it is happening in the sky. Now, we are still fascinated with flying, machines, etc... but going underwater is boring by comparison. We have submarines, mostly for the military, a bit of scientific exploration, etc... but beside…

>> the underwater thing was so important back then. Because, unlike outer space, the deep ocean was a magical and alien dimension that existed only feet away from everyone's doorstep, and the technology for getting there was under rapid development. Jules Verne's 20,000 LUTS came out only twenty years previous to this article. The artist may well have read it as as child.

Putting it as "20,000 LUTs" just makes me think of https://wiki.sipeed.com/hardware/en/tang/tang-nano-20k/nano-... lmao
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