In 1923, experts took a stab at making predictions about what life would be like in 100 years. These predictions included four-hour workdays, women with shaved heads, and a complete lack of ugly people. Paul Fairie, a researcher at the University of Calgary, compiled 100-year-old newspaper clippings with such predictions and added them to a now-viral Twitter thread. It's kind of crazy that "kidney cosies" never caught on (jk!).
NPR:
"Digging through archives is a fun hobby — it's weirdly relaxing to read about what people were thinking decades ago."
He also thinks it's revealing that many of these century-old predictions were about things people worried about at the time and that remain a source of concern for some today.
For instance, predictions about men curling their hair appear to stem from "a general worry about anything that challenges gender norms," while talk of a four-hour workday is seemingly part of a larger conversation about the promise of automation.
NPR recently examined the predictions made in 1923 about life in 2023 and assessed how accurate they were.
Also see: Rules for Predicting the Future, according to Octavia Butler and The Simpsons predicted 2020 including the murder hornets
