How They Imagined 2001 in 1967 (Videos)

Thanks to paranoia and the information explosion, during the Cold War imagination flew higher than missiles, and shows that predicted the future aired in primetime. One of them was Walter Cronkite's, the CBS news anchor, through a weekly documentary called “The 21st Century”. In a few rescued videos, we review how they saw more than 50 years ago what is already part of our past. This is how they imagined 2001 in 1967, a must-see document to rethink the ideas we have today about our future.

Legendary as few in the communication of those years, where both missiles about to explode and new furniture for the future home were announced, everything Walter Cronkite said was sacred word. The CBS anchor man starred in the CBS documentaries, where every weekend they did what sites like Neoteo do today; they advanced the future based on present designs. With more freedom of imagination and less scientific questioning, the CBS program joined science fiction at times, prophesying futures that we who live today find laughable.

The technological advances projected for the next 30 or 40 years in 1970 never came, or at least not in the way they proposed. In those programs, the average American had access to information and expectations about future homes, 3D entertainment centers, on-demand food plates, phones with video conferencing by default, inflatable furniture, satellite newspapers and, of course, robot maids.

The House and Living Room of 2001

The episode of “The House of the 21st Century” was particularly interesting, as it understood that 2000 would arrive with chaos and excessive pollution levels, due to high population density. Faced with this, engineer Philip Johnson, interviewed by Cronkite, insisted that citizens could have a kind of country house, to which they could escape to have all necessary comforts. This house would be as self-sufficient as a space capsule. With circulation of its own water supply and obtaining energy through self-charging batteries. The living room of 2001 was also taken into consideration, with giant 3D full-color TVs with stereos, as well as inflatable furniture in case unexpected guests came.

The Office of 2001

If there are laughable things to highlight, one of the main ones is related to how they thought the workday would be. In one of the CBS episodes, Cronkite explains that a recent government report concludes that Americans in the year 2000 will have a 30-hour workweek and vacations will be at least a month long. Laughs aside, this was a fairly widespread idea at the time and came from the early 19th century, when great classics of economics and sociology insisted that in the future, humans would work less due to machine efficiency. Something we are still waiting for.

The Kitchen of 2001

Many of the ideas expressed in this weekly documentary series by Cronkite would require the advancement of 3D printers. For example, the kitchen and dishes cooked on demand. Here we see the most absurd of the prophecies, as they more or less proposed an electronic chef that would cook everything we asked for. When finished eating, the plates would not be washed, they would be melted to collect material again and use it to create new plates in the future. The food and leftovers would also disintegrate into this recycled material of the future. The strange thing is that they don't explain how they will house the entire range of ingredient possibilities, although maybe we missed the episode “The Underground Food Shelters of 2001”. And I thought refrigerators with Twitter were ridiculous!

The Maid of 2001

Nothing of “girl who helps around the house” and flesh-and-blood housekeepers, because robots are not here to dominate us or serve as sexual consolation for the Japanese. Americans were taught by The Jetsons that Rosie was an inevitable consequence of the future, and the documentary “The 21st Century” took the idea seriously, like most of those devoted to humanoid robotics at the time. We could say it another way, but we prefer to quote this host so passionate about the future: “Robots are coming. But not to rule the world, but to help in the house. In the home of 2001, machines like this could help you cook your breakfast and also serve it to you.”

Home robots would serve to “do all the routine work of the house, all the uninteresting jobs that housewives prefer not to do.” Contextual sexism aside, the consulting scientist (Professor Thring) said that “they don't have to look human, since they can have three or four arms.” That is, less humanoid, more practical and efficient. And here we are with our dirty Roombas.

Although we may consider the moderately failed experience of those shows and half a century of science fiction when predicting coming years, the question about the future is always present whenever we show some modern gadget, and more so when it comes to a future concept. This is how they imagined 2001 in 1967 and we laugh at it, but within 40 years someone will read our futuristic fantasies and will die laughing under their anti-radiation mask while petting their mutant dog.