The future according to 1962

More data for my theory: predictions of the future tell more about the present.

This weekend, scanned pages of Modern Mechanix offered us images of 2008 from the vantage of 1968. Some predictions are on the mark, some are off. More than anything, it’s particularly cringe-worthy to read that we will today use only plastic disposable plates and flatware. While it’s a “wife-saving” way to cut down on dishes, the world of 1968 cared not where all that petroleum came from and what landfill the plastic was going to.

Again, Bostworld offers us a set of pictures and captions of the year 1975 from the vantage of 1962 (or go direct to the Flickr set). You’ll see some familiar things: computers in libraries and schools, compact stereo sets and microwave-able bacon. However, it also imagined that we would still be plagued by door-to-door salesmen and that women’s jobs are limited to homemaking, teaching and typing.

Of course, the hardest thing to predict about the future is social and societal change. So, we import our own attitudes about the present near-directly. Although the Jetsons showed the oft-promised flying car, no one imagined that women would learn to drive them in the 21st century. While we can now have instant translation of the Pravda, no one in 1962, 1968 or 1975 was ready to predict that the Soviet Union would collapse and that the Pravda would become a tabloid.

To paraphrase Cory Doctorow: if you want to know about the future of technology don’t read Jules Verne; if you want to know about Victorian attitudes toward technology, read Jules Verne.

See my previous post on the Monsanto House of the Future for more.

Columbia University dismantles cyclotron

The cyclotron, with Enrico Fermi (middle).

Via Slashdot, Columbia University is dismantling the cyclotron the provided studies for the rise of nuclear power and the atomic bomb. This was the lab from which the Manhattan Project received its name.
From the New Yorker article:

Elizabeth Wade, a Barnard senior, first sneaked down to see it with some friends during her freshman year. “It was this big dark, stormy night,” Wade, a comparative-literature major, recalled. After evading security guards and traversing the tunnels, the group reached the basement of the physics building, armed with word-of-mouth instructions: Find the out-of-order men’s bathroom, and send the skinniest person in your party shimmying up the heating vent and into the hallway of the abandoned laboratories, where she can open the door for everyone else.

Inside, Wade and her friends followed a trail of graffitied clues that led to the cyclotron. They worried that it might be radioactive (it’s not), but were awed nonetheless. “It looked like science fiction,” she remembered. “It was kind of mythical.”

Both Wade and Columbia employees report feelings of awe and wonder at the now-inert machine. Connected to this machine was the Trinity test, named for divinity. These feelings are a lot to load onto a machine.

One Slashdot commenter pointed out that it isn’t the machine that’s important, but what the machine represents and stands for. Many scientists used it as a tool for noble and ignoble studies. It stands for something much larger than it’s 65-ton self. The University of Manitoba’s funeral for their IBM 650 has much the same purpose: to honor a machines that aided humans in changing the world and in changing themselves.

The Passion in Google Maps

From the ESV Bible Blog:

This week is Passion Week (or Holy Week), the week that commemorates the final week of Jesus’ life. It encompasses Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday through his resurrection on Easter.

Here’s a Google Map that shows what happened where during this week in and around Jerusalem (including a harmonization of the four Gospel accounts). Click a letter on the map for details of what occurred in each place.

Link to Google Maps to see it all.

Princeton Seminary unites with Microsoft

Princeton Theological Seminary (my alma mater) has partnered with Microsoft to digitize its theological library. At over one million volumes, PTS has the second-largest theological library in the world, bested only by the Vatican.

The effort will begin with pre-1923, out-of-copyright works. In an excellent move, these works will become available to the public on the Internet Archive.

I’m excited to see the seminary provide long out-of-print theological works and make them available again. I’m also excited to see Microsoft partner with the Internet Archive, (as far as I know) an unprecedented step. Freedom is Christian!

Microsoft’s own press release tells the story. From the article:

Princeton Theological Seminary and Microsoft Corp. have entered into an agreement to digitize a large number of materials in the public domain from the collection of the Seminary library. This initiative will enable the library to contribute religion content to Microsoft’s Live Search Books service and thus increase worldwide access to its historic religion collection.

Princeton Seminary President Iain Torrance said, “This seminary exists to serve the church both near and far. Continuity, depth, and access are what make a library great. Microsoft will help us to be accessible as never before. We are really grateful for their partnership.”

This initiative is one of the most significant ventures in the Seminary’s history. Collaboration with Microsoft and its groundbreaking technologies, which are designed to assist discovery and use, continues the Seminary’s investment in enhancing online resources. Microsoft will give the Seminary digital copies of all the materials and allow them to be shared with noncommercial institutions and nonprofit organizations, which will enable the Seminary to advance in a remarkably concrete way the vision of a theological library for the world, and enable students, researchers, and scholars global access to Princeton Theological Seminary books in the public domain.

Please note that this is only follow-up act to Microsoft’s acquisition of the Vatican, a joke so old it’s growing hair.