A language of condensed words expressing condensed ideas
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John Elfreth Watkins Jr.'s predictions about the then-upcoming 20th century ("What May Happen in the Next Hundred Years", The Ladies' Home Journal, December 1900) have been widely discussed in recent years on the web. You can read a transcribed version (with the predictions oddly re-ordered) here.
On balance, Mr. Watkins' predictions are more successful than most projections in science-fiction writing have turned out to be. Some of his suggestions start off successfully, before lapsing into what have turned out to be alternative-history fantasies:
Five Hundred Million People. There will probably be from 350,000,000 to 500,000,000 people in America and its possessions by the lapse of another century. Nicaragua will ask for admission to our Union after the completion of the great canal. Mexico will be next. Europe, seeking more territory to the south of us, will cause many of the South and Central American republics to be voted into the Union by their own people.
Or again:
The American will be Taller by from one to two inches. His increase of stature will result from better health, due to vast reforms in medicine, sanitation, food and athletics. He will live fifty years instead of thirty-five as at present – for he will reside in the suburbs. The city house will practically be no more. Building in blocks will be illegal. The trip from suburban home to office will require a few minutes only. A penny will pay the fare.
Others are more-or-less true but oddly incomplete, or wrong as to scale:
Man will see around the world. Persons and things of all kinds will be brought within focus of cameras connected electrically with screens at opposite ends of circuits, thousands of miles at a span. American audiences in their theatres will view upon huge curtains before them the coronations of kings in Europe or the progress of battles in the Orient. The instrument bringing these distant scenes to the very doors of people will be connected with a giant telephone apparatus transmitting each incidental sound in its appropriate place. Thus the guns of a distant battle will be heard to boom when seen to blaze, and thus the lips of a remote actor or singer will be heard to utter words or music when seen to move.
Some extrapolate 1900-era politics rather than 1900-era science:
How Children will be Taught. A university education will be free to every man and woman. Several great national universities will have been established. Children will study a simple English grammar adapted to simplified English, and not copied after the Latin. Time will be saved by grouping like studies. Poor students will be given free board, free clothing and free books if ambitious and actually unable to meet their school and college expenses. Medical inspectors regularly visiting the public schools will furnish poor children free eyeglasses, free dentistry and free medical attention of every kind. The very poor will, when necessary, get free rides to and from school and free lunches between sessions. In vacation time poor children will be taken on trips to various parts of the world. Etiquette and housekeeping will be important studies in the public schools.
And some are just wrong from beginning to end:
There will be No C, X or Q in our every-day alphabet. They will be abandoned because unnecessary. Spelling by sound will have been adopted, first by the newspapers. English will be a language of condensed words expressing condensed ideas, and will be more extensively spoken than any other. Russian will rank second.
Well, it's probably true that English is more extensively written than any other language.
Yerushalmi said,
January 1, 2015 @ 9:56 am
People actually are taller than their parents thanks to better nutrition and medicine. I'm impressed that somebody saw that coming.
===Dan said,
January 1, 2015 @ 10:27 am
" just wrong from beginning to end:"
"English will be a language of condensed words expressing condensed ideas"
LOL!
Tim Leonard said,
January 1, 2015 @ 11:29 am
"They will be abandoned because unnecessary."
He was even prophetic in his use of "because."
[(myl) Actually, as I pointed out a year ago, the because ADJECTIVE construction is quite traditional:
From 1820: This would at least be honest, though I think it would be unwise, because unnecessary.
From 1834: Still does he sometimes introduce into his speeches bursts of eloquence, which stir the heart like the voice of a trumpet, and are the more stirring because unexpected.
From 1840: The storm of war has rolled off to distant borders; or if, indeed, it be lowering near again, its terrors are unfelt, because unseen.
]
Robert Coren said,
January 1, 2015 @ 11:50 am
@Yerushalmi: I think that one is intended as an example of "start off successfully, before lapsing into what have turned out to be alternative-history fantasies" — yes, people are taller because of better health and (to some degree) nutrition, but city housing has not exactly vanished.
Eric said,
January 1, 2015 @ 12:33 pm
The educational entry, though depressingly optimistic, does have a few accurate points. US public schools do have free lunch programs for low income students, and "medical inspectors" do visit for free, though they only provide screening for vision problems, hearing problems, and scoliosis.
Trevor said,
January 1, 2015 @ 3:04 pm
Well, Nicaragua's starting to work on that canal!
the other Mark P said,
January 1, 2015 @ 4:10 pm
Much of what he writes is truer for Europe that the US
Medical inspectors regularly visiting the public schools will furnish poor children free eyeglasses, free dentistry and free medical attention of every kind. The very poor will, when necessary, get free rides to and from school and free lunches between sessions.
True, or nearing true, in large parts of the Western World.
Many European languages have lost unnecessary letters or reduced their grammar. English is the exception because of its very spread, so no one country can institute reform.
Jonathon Owen said,
January 1, 2015 @ 6:01 pm
"They will be abandoned because unnecessary."
Nice use of because x.
"English will be a language of condensed words expressing condensed ideas"
That's totes cray. I can't even.
Lance Nathan said,
January 1, 2015 @ 6:37 pm
inorite? wtf! droppin ltrs b/c unnecessary? can u imagine?
Jason said,
January 1, 2015 @ 8:09 pm
"There will be No C, X or Q in our every-day alphabet. They will be abandoned because unnecessary. Spelling by sound will have been adopted, first by the newspapers. English will be a language of condensed words expressing condensed ideas, and will be more extensively spoken than any other. "
Arguably he's anticipating an international standard creolized English, spelled phonetically. Give it time….
ohwilleke said,
January 2, 2015 @ 12:27 am
"Mexico will be next. Europe, seeking more territory to the south of us, will cause many of the South and Central American republics to be voted into the Union by their own people."
South and Central American people have joined the Union one by one in droves, just not collectively. Indeed, in terms of constitutional structure, those countries used to be much more closely modeled on the U.S. than they are now.
"He will live fifty years instead of thirty-five as at present –"
Who knew it would be seventy years and not just fifty.
"for he will reside in the suburbs. The city house will practically be no more. Building in blocks will be illegal."
The meaning of the term suburb has shifted since 1900. Lots of urban residential neighborhoods, like my own in Washington Park, Denver, Colorado either used to be suburbs that were consolidated into central cities, or would have been considered suburbs despite their technical inclusion in a municipality. Downtown urban living did almost vanish for a generation and has just been restored in my lifetime, and lots of places adopted zoning laws that require single family housing (most still have it).
'The trip from suburban home to office will require a few minutes only. A penny will pay the fare.'
That boat came, and sailed, and is on its way back again.
Keith M Ellis said,
January 2, 2015 @ 2:22 am
"He will live fifty years instead of thirty-five as at present –"
That was weird. So many people confuse life-expectancy at birth with life-expectancy at, say, 20, and so because infant mortality was much higher in the past, there's a widespread mistaken belief that there were few people older than middle-age in the past. Watkins's wording implies this same mistaken belief, but in his own time, which of course he would we know better. So I'm guessing that this is a self-aware technical usage.
According the sources I've found from a cursory search, life-expectancy at birth in the US in 1900 was 48 (14 years less for blacks!), while in 2000 it was 77 (still about 4 years less for blacks). However, life-expectancy at age 20 in 1900 was about 63, while in 2000 it had risen to about 78. (Life-expectancy at age 65 hardly changed over this period, increasing only by about 4 years for men and 7 years for women — and only about half those amounts since the establishment of social security retirement).
Keith M Ellis said,
January 2, 2015 @ 2:28 am
Oh, and it's interesting how much of an underestimate that turned out to be. In other predictions there's quite a bit of overestimation about medical advances and so I'm guessing that these experts just didn't really expect such a huge decrease in infant mortality. Which seems plausible to me, given the cultural beliefs about pregnancy and childbirth at the time.
Robert Coren said,
January 2, 2015 @ 11:22 am
I don't think "abandoned because unnecessary" is an example of the modern "because X" phenomenon that's been discussed here previously. In the latter, X is usually a noun (as in the parody example "because reasons". Here the author clearly means "because they are unnecessary", and has simply chosen to elide the two intervening words. It's a little awkward ("as unnecessary" would have been more elegant), but it doesn't strike me as a precursor to the more recent usage.
J. W. Brewer said,
January 5, 2015 @ 3:18 pm
I'm intrigued by "Several great national universities will be established," because it failed to foresee how much the prestige ("greatness") hierarchy of U.S. academia would continue to be dominated by older schools (schools which may very much have moved with the times, but still somehow benefited from their first-mover advantage). An overwhelming majority of the 107 "very high research activity" U.S. universities in this list http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_research_universities_in_the_United_States#Universities_classified_as_.22very_high_research_activity.22 were founded before 1900, and if you look at the 30 top-ranked "national universities" in the U.S. News stats (giving the 12th graders' perspective on prestige rather than a STEM grantmaker's perspective), only two of them (Rice and Carnegie-Mellon) have post-1899 origins, with UCLA apparently being a debatable case depending on whether or not you think a particular earlier foundation counts as its predecessor or not. He may have plausibly, but incorrectly, thought that the trend of late-19th-century foundations (Johns Hopkins, Chicago, Stanford, Cal Tech) able to go head to head with much older schools would continue.
MikeA said,
January 6, 2015 @ 12:46 pm
Sadly, the prediction about widespread use of synchronized sound and picture has come and gone, and before 2000. At least since the start of the shift to digital TV, it is now quite noticeable (at least to me) when an actors words are heard remotely near the time the lips move.
Andrew (not the same one) said,
January 6, 2015 @ 12:47 pm
One thing that strikes me in particular is the implied argument in 'he will live fifty years… for he will reside in the suburbs'. The implication seems to be that it is impossible to live a long life in the city centre.
Francisco said,
January 6, 2015 @ 5:58 pm
@Andew, the unhealthiness of cities was a sad fact of the 19th century, burdened with pollution from industries and homes (e.g. coal was still the most common heat source for cooking and heating in London in the 1950's). Extreme overcrowding in rooms without a window were common in poorer quarters. Rich and poor homes alike lacked basic sanitation and running water. The new 'suburbs' or 'garden cities' linked by tram or rail to the town centres promised a healthier environment. Such suburbs were quite distinct from the car-driven urban sprawl that would follow later, while the sanitation infrastructure and building codes introduced in the past century have made inner cities more liveable.