Somewhere between vision and reality—it seems—the future took a detour. Or did it? By Gary Goettling

he future isn’t what it used to be. Through much of the 20th century, the popular image of life in the “future”—variously defined—was shaped by unbridled faith in the ability of technology to make everyday life easier. The 1939 World’s Fair, and General Motors’ EPCOT-like Futurama exhibit in particular, portrayed a destiny marked by automation and streamlined, high-tech efficiency. Those impressions endured through countless movies and television shows from “Flash Gordon” to “Star Trek.”

“The 1939 World’s Fair is a good beacon because that fair was oriented toward envisioning the future rather than celebrating what had already occurred, which was typically the case with fairs,” says Dr. Steve Usselman, an associate professor in the School of History, Technology and Society.

Steve Usselman: “The predictions often come true, but they take longer than anyone thinks and make less of a difference than anyone thought.”

Today those images of the future seem humorous, quaint and even naive in their optimism. We don’t live in domed cities or scoot around town in personal hovercraft. But in fact, according to Usselman, a number of those futuristic predictions have come true.

On a basic level, he says, the vision begotten by the fair supported a premise that life can be relieved of both hard physical labor and unruliness.

“It’s important to remember how far we’ve come in 60 years,” he explains. “Most of us no longer have jobs that require backbreaking physical work, whereas huge numbers of people used to do that in 1939.”

On the other hand, we’re still tired at the end of the day. “We no longer have this optimism that technology is going to relieve us of the need to work, and we don’t expect to stop doing the sort of work that most of us do now. To assert otherwise would seem quite naive today.”

And while people tend to focus on predictions that didn’t come true, many of the technological marvels presented at the fair did become reality in one form or another, he adds. Commercial television made its debut at the fair and would in years to come fulfill—indeed surpass—its technological expectations, if not its artistic ones. Fair visitors, many sporting metal pins reading “I Have Seen The Future,” were introduced to robots, home air conditioning and a model of an interstate highway system.

The fair certainly had its share of misses, too. A cure for cancer still eludes science, and automobiles are not remotely controlled by radio to eliminate congestion and accidents.

Where 1939’s “World of Tomorrow” faltered most was in its notion that technology could tame unruliness and bring a sense of order to the world—that everyday life could be made as streamlined, clean and well-organized as a modern kitchen.

When the acquisition of modern conveniences spread and life didn’t reach a corresponding higher level of order, people began to question some of their assumptions. The collision between reality and the utopian promise of 1939 foreshadowed our scaled-back expectations of the future today.

Usselman says the present public’s expectation of the 21st century and the future generally has most profoundly been shaped by one of the landmark technical achievements of the past century: the nuclear bomb.

“The bomb changed the perception of scientists as controlling forces to scientists unleashing forces that would be difficult to control,” Usselman explains. “That’s an extraordinary change.”

While we still embrace new technology for the most part, we no longer expect it to change the essence of our existence. In part, it’s because we live in a more skeptical age—and maybe that awakening to the limits of technology created the skepticism. Or perhaps the sheer pace of innovation has made us harder to impress. In any case, Usselman notes, we’ve also discovered that many accomplishments are not without a cost.

“The automobile was portrayed as something that would actually make life cleaner by allowing you to escape the city for the unspoiled countryside,” he says. “For years, TV was surrounded by an expectation that it would uplift and engage the population and allow us to experience things together. We’ve come to realize that yes, TV can do certain things, but it also does things that none of us are very comfortable with, too.”

Not too many years ago, computer companies held forth the promise of the “paperless office.” Today, the Internet is often portrayed as the harbinger of a new era in communications, commerce and personal interaction in virtually every way imaginable.

“In the ’30s, you could advance an image in which we could create a world that seemed to improve for everyone,” Usselman says. “You don’t hear that sort of prediction today, except maybe in the realm of health.”

He believes that while the fascination with new technologies has not dimmed, people are generally more realistic about the future, and understand that a lot of the world’s problems are not going to yield to technological solutions.

“The predictions often come true, but they take longer than anyone thinks and make less of a difference than anyone thought,” he says. “People who lived before the invention of the automobile, for instance, had the same basic problems and concerns as people who have grown up with automobiles. Human nature doesn’t change like technology changes. A lot of the world, and a lot of what we really care about in life, persists.”

A CENTURY OF PROGRESS, PART I

Graham Anthony