This is the third of eight posts today.

6) SHOW-AND-TELL

For those participating on ZOOM, today, we open the floor to any club members who have “fancraft” projects to showcase—sci-fi scale models, SF/F woodworking or needlecraft, whatever genre-themed, hands-on project it may be that you are working on at present, or have recently completed. 

Those not able to join our ZOOM chat for the show-and-tell may contribute by using this post’s “Leave a Comment” feature to type in a quick description of any such project on which they are currently working.

Or, they may find the following interesting:

7) WHAT THE FUTURISTS OF 1923 PREDICTED FOR 2023!

Surrounding any new year, ruminations on the previous 12 months, and predictions regarding the next 12 are a staple of media features in newspapers, on radio and TV, and on the Internet. Articles about what is to come always fascinate, and we are both awed and amused by reviews of how prescient, or not, were past prognostications.

We came across the following snippets on what those living in 1923 imagined life would be like in 2023. Paul Fairie, an educator and researcher at the University of Calgary, is interested in and collects such material, and we thought to share a few of his examples with club members.

Here, then, is a sampling of what prognosticators in 1923 were suggesting life would be like one hundred years hence, in the astounding year 2023!

• Envisioned for 2023 was a world in which “many varieties of aircraft are flying thru the heavens.” This was not an unreasonable extrapolation in the early years of heavier-than-air flight, only twenty years after the Wright Flyer first flew at Kitty Hawk.
• Aviation pioneer Glenn Curtiss thought that “gasoline as a motive power will have been replaced by radio, and…the skies will be filled with myriad craft sailing over well-defined routes.” Radio replacing gasoline? Not quite sure how that was supposed to work!

  

• Watch-sized radio telephones were anticipated by 2023, allowing global communication. Pretty much bang on!
• Newspapers were foreseen to have disappeared by now, with people instead listening to the news rather than reading the morning paper at the breakfast table. Not quite yet, but we do seem to be moving in that direction.
• People in 2023 were expected to live longer than those of 1923—a safe bet—but the estimates of just how long would be the average human lifespan were a tad ambitious: 100 years, with particularly hardy individuals reaching as much as 150 and 200 years old! One scientist of the day speculated that the average lifespan would be 300 years! Not quite.
• Cancer, tuberculosis, polio, leprosy, and other afflictions were expected to have been eliminated by now, necessitating fewer doctors. Yes and no. We have found cures and effective treatments for many diseases in the past 100 years, and we do currently have fewer doctors and other medical professionals, but the latter is the result of poor choices made by politicians and administrators, not because diseases have been eliminated.
• To protect their kidneys, people in 2023 would wear “kidney cosies” in cold weather. Nope.
• Beauty contests would be obsolete by 2023 because pretty much everyone will be physically beautiful! Beauty contests still exist, though are seen as less acceptable, but for entirely different reasons than cited here. And, men and women today are no better or worse looking on average than people were in 1923.
• Curled hair was predicted to be the stylish choice for the men of 2023, shaved heads and blackened teeth all the rage for women! Not particularly and definitely not!
• Automation would have resulted in a four-day work week by 2023, it was thought. Long days of drudgery and toil would no longer be the norm, with some estimating work days of just four hours thanks to the wonders of electricity. Yes, to some degree, but also no, not yet.
• Electricity would ensure that every town was spotless. Not at all!

  

• British scientist/inventor/author Archibald Low, once president of the British Interplanetary Society and a writer of “scientific romances” (early SF) invented a nascent version of television, the first drone, and prophesized that “the war of 2023 will naturally be a wireless war.” Electricity promised endless possibilities, he stated, putting forth an invention of his own that he believed would render artillery obsolete: jets of water highly charged with electricity. “Wireless telephony, sight, heat, power and writing may all play important parts,” said Low of wireless technology. He also predicted department stores, the internet, and speculated that by 2023, civilization may well have advanced enough that mental telepathy might develop as a means of communication. Swing and a miss on that last one!
• Technological and industrial advances would open more of North America to habitation by 2023. The population of the United States was forecast to grow to 300 million, with Canada’s pegged at 100 million. A good guess, the number under the mark by just a little regarding the U.S., and a little more with regard to Canada.