Here are 6 videos spanning 50 years of predictions about our glorious technological future at home. What I love about all of these are the incidental predictions that need to happen when the videos are put together. They want to make promises about future technology and materials but they can’t help but imply various thing about how society will evolve. For instance, the 1997 Microsoft video which features a kid researching for a project doesn’t see Wikipedia coming at all (neither did Microsoft).

1. 1957: Monsanto Plastics

Oh visions of the future from the 1950s, why must you have so much back-handed sexism?

2. 1980: Xanadu

I really want to know what was going through the minds of the committee that decided that the first robot you should meet should be the murderous HAL from 2001.

3. 1988: Ameritech

There are a lot of predictions that seem accurate if you sort of squint a little. One that wasn’t was that Ameritech would still exist. (Via the excellent paleofuture.)

The Electronic Home

4. 1997: Microsoft

In the future, you will still be watching Oprah.

5. 2008: Samsung

I am pleased that in the future, the lead-in feature of RFID involves organizing your recipes.

6. 2008: Adaptive Path and Mozilla Labs

Adaptive Path decides to hitch their future horse to the New York Times, Yahoo, MapQuest, Amazon, and Google brands. I wonder how many of those will make it.

Aurora (complete video without commentary) from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

Fun activity: Predict what predictions in the last two videos will seem hopelessly naïve 10 years from now.