“The future of the past”. I must admit that I sometimes miss the optimism of technology programs in the ’80s and ’90s. Everything was going to be bright, efficient, clean… but in 1995, the series Tomorrow’s World from the BBC adopted a more pessimistic tone for its predictions for the year 2025, with protests in cyberspace, “business barons” closing down a good part of the network, out-of-control hackers, and the failure of electric cars…
With 38 years on air and approximately 1,400 episodes, Tomorrow’s World was one of the most important science and technology series in the world. A very interesting aspect of Tomorrow’s World was that many of its broadcasts were done live, and from time to time, technical demos ended in spectacular failures. The BBC gave the series an ending in July 2003, chaining some reboots until reaching its current version, Tomorrow’s World Today. However, the BBC archive is immense, and among all that material appears a 1995 broadcast of Tomorrow’s World, with predictions for the next thirty years:
2025, According to Tomorrow’s World in 1995
The most optimistic numbers of 1995 indicated that the Internet had some 40 million users. Tomorrow’s World’s presentation suggests that the retail space was one of the first to take advantage of its virtues, but once money began to flow through the network, banks did everything possible to make it safer. Its conclusion? The “business barons” took control of the Internet in the year 2000, and changed its name to “Supernet,” drastically limiting access. What was the users’ response? Hacking, “electronic terrorism,” riots in real life, drained bank accounts, and out-of-control viruses. Only by 2020 was the situation contained, with the ever-present threat of new attacks.
Another section was dedicated to cars: Imagining the conversion of the M25 motorway into a “ten-lane monster” in 2012 (currently, some sections already have six on each side), Tomorrow’s World mentions that the most successful governments refused to charge “punitive taxes” on the use of private vehicles, and that all campaigns to adopt public transport “failed miserably.” Beyond its historical optimism about electric cars, the short rejects the idea of a “revolution” in battery technology (which ultimately did happen), and speaks of an “evolution” in internal combustion engines, reducing emissions and gaining efficiency. As for autonomous cars, users will be obliged to load special plans (like flight plans), with an additional cost for driving during peak hours.
The BBC article also mentions asteroid mining, the use of an advanced gel to eliminate space debris, smart speakers, holograms, virtual reality headsets, implanted microchips for banking operations, and surgical robots. Personally… I think the “business barons” did get their way. The “shitification” of the web is almost absolute, and the user must dance between sandboxes and subscriptions.
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