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Medical experts inputting data into the electronic library (1981)

It’s quite easy for people to talk cynically of the various ways in which technology is supposedly undermining culture and society. (And those complaints are obviously nothing new.) In particular, people have — rightly or wrongly — been afraid of “information overload” for ages.

But I’m an Internet apologist. The ability of average people to obtain information instantaneously is just phenomenal. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

When I was a kid, growing up in the late 1980s and early 90s, I had no idea what the Internet was. But the futurism books I’d check out at the library would hint at the massive information infrastructure that was to come. One such book, World of Tomorrow: School, Work and Play by Neil Ardley had a two-page spread about the electronic library of the future. This 1981 book explained everything from what homework might be done in the future to how computer criminals might make off with all your data.

The picture above shows medical experts inputting data into a large centralized electronic library. The idea that an electronic library would be so organized in one physical space might be the most jarring aspect to these types of futures, which were imagined before our modern web. The 1993 AT&T concept video “Connections” talked about electronic education in a similar way, with students linking to an “education center” in Washington, D.C.

Text from the World of Tomorrow book appears below. It may seem so quaint to modern readers, but it’s fantastic to read about how “this service at your fingertips is like having a huge brand-new encyclopedia in your home at all times.”

Imagine you are living in the future, and are doing a project on Halley’s comet. It’s quite some time since it last appeared in 1986, and you want to find out when it will again be seen from Earth. You also want to know the results of a space mission to the comet, and find out what the comet is made of.

In the days when the comet last appeared, you would have to look up Halley’s comet in an encyclopedia or a book on astronomy. If you didn’t possess these books, you would have gone to the library to get the information. And to find out about the space mission, you might have had to get in touch with NASA. Now, finding out anything is much easier — thanks to the computer.

People still collect books as valuable antiques or for a hobby, but you get virtually all the information you need from the viewscreen of your home computer system. The computer is linked to a library — not a library of books but an electronic library where information on every subject is stored in computer memory banks. You might simply ask the computer to display you the range of information on Halley’s comet. It contacts the library, and up comes a list of articles to read and video programs. You select those you want at a level you understand — and sit back.

Having this service at your fingertips is like having a huge brand-new encyclopedia in your homes at all times. The computer can tell you anything you want to know, and the information is always the very latest available. There need be only one central library to which computers in homes, offices, schools and colleges are connected. At the library experts are constantly busy, feeding in the very latest information as they receive it. In theory one huge electronic library could serve the whole world!

The city of the future (April, 1934 Popular Science Monthly)

As New York City’s buildings sprouted toward the heavens in the late 19th and early 20th century, there was a concern that people on the ground would be deprived of sunlight. The buildings were blocking out the sun for those on the ground and it looked like a problem that was only going to get worse.

The April, 1934 issue of Popular Science Monthly ran this illustration by B. G. Seielstad, which shows the city of the future as it was imagined by British writer R. H. Wilenski. It looks like this kind of design would depend much more on spacing such buildings out, but there’s no doubt there would still be some major shadows.

With modern elevators and living quarters perched high above the ground, Seielstad and Wilenski’s vision of the city of the future appears positively Jetsonian to modern eyes.

Shaped like trees with slender trunks, homes and office buildings of the future may rise into pure air on pedestals of steel. Our artist presents here his conception of this startling proposal, made recently by R. H. Wilenski, noted British architect. The scheme leaves the ground level virtually unobstructed. Each building is supported upon a single, stalk-like shaft of steel or strong, light alloys, resting in turn upon a massive subterranean foundation. Modern advances in the design of high-speed elevators simplify the problems of transporting passengers between the buildings and the earth. Access from one building to another is provided by a system of suspension bridges, and stores and places of recreation contained in the building make it possible to dwell aloft for an indefinite time without needing to descend. Gigantic, luminous globes are placed at strategic points to light the aerial city by night, while by day the inhabitants enjoy the unfiltered sunshine and fresh air of their lofty nests.

Honeymooners on the moon as imagined by illustrator Arthur Radebaugh (June 1, 1958 Closer Than We Think)

Where were newlyweds supposed to honeymoon in the future? The moon, of course.

Honeymoons on the moon show up in popular culture throughout the 1950s and 60s, in everything from songs to comic strips. The June 1, 1958 edition of the Sunday comic strip “Closer Than We Think” by Arthur Radebaugh claimed that it would be the new default destination for lovebirds, replacing the cliched honeymoon spot, Niagara Falls:

Scenic spots on the moon, in years ahead, may become honeymoon havens, like Niagara Falls today. Newly wedded couples will be able to fly to a low-cost lunar holiday in a space craft propelled by thermo-nuclear energy. Space expert Wernher von Braun foresees pressurized, air-conditioned excursion hotels and small cottages on the moon. Couples could dance gaily there, whirling high in the air due to reduced gravity pull, and look out on a strange, spectacular scenery — part of which would be a spaceman’s view of the familiar outlines of the continents of the earth.

Father Andrzejewski, a priest in a small Wisconsin town, spoke to a group of Girl Scouts in 1962 about the 50th anniversary of the Scouts organization and said, “What looked difficult 50 years ago, is now commonplace, and only these last few weeks do we realize that perhaps one of the Brownies here today might spend her honeymoon on the moon.”

Father Andrzejewski’s reference to “these last few weeks” was about John Glenn who, on February 20, 1962, became the first American to orbit the earth. With each new advance made in space, it seemed ever more inevitable that average citizens would soon be visiting the moon — even for their honeymoon.

The October 21, 1966 Sandusky Register in Ohio ran a short piece in the Opinion section about honeymoons on the moon, with an admittedly odd kicker:

Young ladies who expect the moon when they get married may one day have their wish. Astronomer Fred Whipple predicts that in the not too distant future trips to the moon will replace the traditional journey to Niagara Falls.

Just how soon is anybody’s guess. Dr. Eugene Konneci of the National Aeronautics and Space Council thinks spaceships might be book passengers around the year 2001. But he says ticket prices will probably be figured according to the traveler’s weight — at about $10 a pound.

If so, that old 20th century saying that nobody loves a fat girl will be even truer in the 21st. At least, those who do will think twice before proposing a honeymoon on the moon.

In 1964 the comic strip “Dick Tracy” had a young couple visit the moon for their honeymoon.

A young couple blasts off to a honeymoon on the moon (October 6, 1964 Dick Tracy)

Honeymooners on the moon (October 18, 1964 Dick Tracy)

Honeymoon on the moon (October 4, 1964 Dick Tracy)

Though newlyweds aren’t rocketing off to the moon just yet, we continue to see private space tourism as a promise that awaits us just around the corner.

An advertising campaign from the American Federation of Musicians (September 2, 1930 Syracuse Herald)

After the release of The Jazz Singer in 1927, all bets were off for live musicians who played in movie theaters. Thanks to synchronized sound, the use of live musicians was unnecessary — and perhaps a larger sin, old-fashioned. In 1930 the American Federation of Musicians formed a new organization called the Music Defense League and launched a scathing ad campaign to fight the advance of this terrible menace known as recorded sound.

The evil face of that campaign was the dastardly, maniacal robot. The Music Defense League spent over $500,000, running ads in newspapers throughout the United States and Canada. The ads pleaded with the public to demand humans play their music (be it in movie or stage theaters), rather than some cold, unseen machine. A typical ad read like this one from the September 2, 1930 Syracuse Herald in New York:

Tho’ the Robot can make no music of himself, he can and does arrest the efforts of those who can.

Manners mean nothing to this monstrous offspring of modern industrialism, as IT crowds Living Music out of the theatre spotlight.

Though “music has charms to soothe the savage beast, to soften rocks or bend a knotted oak,” it has no power to appease the Robot of Canned Music. Only the theatre-going public can do that.

Hence the swift growth of the Music Defense League, formed to demand Living Music in the theatre.

Every lover of music should join in this rescue of Art from debasement. Sign and mail the coupon.

The robot of recorded or “canned” music had many guises, all somehow destroying the best things in society. Here the robot makes a lunge in its attempt to steer “musical culture” away from a decidedly more pure course:

A robot at the helm from the March 9, 1931 Simpsons Leader Times (Kittanning, Pennsylvania)

Another ad claimed that musicians were being put out of work by Hollywood because recorded sound required just a few hundred musicians in recording studios. The ad even uses scare quotes around the word “music,” implying that recorded sound couldn’t even be considered as such:

300 musicians in Hollywood supply all the “music” offered in thousands of theatres. Can such a tiny reservoir of talent nurture artistic progress?

The robot putting musicians out of work (June 5, 1930 Bradford Era)

Joseph N. Weber, the president of the American Federation of Musicians, made it clear in the March, 1931 issue of Modern Mechanix magazine that the very soul of art was at stake in this battle against the machines:

The time is coming fast when the only living thing around a motion picture house will be the person who sells you your ticket. Everything else will be mechanical. Canned drama, canned music, canned vaudeville. We think the public will tire of mechanical music and will want the real thing. We are not against scientific development of any kind, but it must not come at the expense of art. We are not opposing industrial progress. We are not even opposing mechanical music except where it is used as a profiteering instrument for artistic debasement.

That debasement came in the form of the evil robot grinding up instruments in a meat grinder, like in this ad from the November 3, 1930 Syracuse Herald.

A robot grinding up musical instruments (November 3, 1930 Syracuse Herald)

The robot was even shown as a new nurse ineffectively soothing a baby, which represented the audience of the future.

The robot playing nurse to the audience of the future (September 15, 1930 Capital Times)

You best hide your daughters, because this ad from the August 24, 1931 Centralia Daily Chronicle in Centralia, Washington shows an “unwelcome suitor” who has been “wooing the muse for many dreary months without winning her favor.”

The robot attempting to woo your daughter (August 24, 1931 Centralia Daily Chronicle)

The robot was often shown as greedy in the ads, caring nothing of people but only of profit, like in this ad from the October 1, 1930 Portsmouth Herald (Portsmouth, New Hampshire).

A robot debasing music by simply playing for profit (October 1, 1930 Portsmouth Herald)

Fundamentally, the ads were an effort to make people believe what made music so special was the musician’s soul that was somehow only reflected in a live performance. This ad from the August 17, 1930 Oelwein Daily Register (Oewlwein, Iowa) got to the heart of it — robots have no soul.

The soulless robot as depicted in the August 17, 1930 Oelwein Daily Register (Oelwein, Iowa)

The woman of the year 2030, illustrated by Edward McKnight Kauffer in 1930

In 1930 Frederick Edwin Smith, the First Earl of Birkenhead, wrote a book, The World in 2030 A.D., containing predictions about war  (it’ll be less vicious when the world is a “single economic unit”), the state of agriculture (it will gradually go extinct), and the effects of science (Einsteinian physics will “provide the instinctive background to all men’s minds.”)

But the chapter that really stuck out for me was the one about women in the year 2030, which included predictions about ectogenesis; creating life outside of the body, presumably in a laboratory setting. The author claims that this will be the first step to men and women being paid equal wages for the same work, and usher in a brave new world that enables women to vastly “expand their accomplishments in every sphere of life.”

In 2030, the prospect of woman’s liberation from the dangers of childbirth will almost certainly become a matter of general realisation. This evolution, the most serious biological departure since the natural separation of living organisms into two sexes, will vitally transform the whole status of women in society. Unless their present importance and limitations be clearly apprehended, their future development cannot be apprehended.

Science as I hinted in a previous chapter, already foreshadows the possibility of producing living offspring in the laboratory from the germs of various animal species. Hitherto no living animal has been brought to birth ab initio; but the foetus of various species has been removed from the maternal organism and further developed by skilful manipulation in biological laboratories. It is certain that scientists will one day succeed in producing a living human infant by such means. This process, known as ectogenesis, will be violently and furiously opposed by the spiritual descendants of all those who now attack contraception….The first practitioners of ectogenesis will possibly obtain the crown of martyrdom.

Today, some religious groups oppose in vitro fertilization on the grounds that the act of procreation is disconnected from the love of the parents, who have been joined together in sacred matrimony. Frederick Edwin Smith foresaw such concerns.

Although its economic effect on woman is the most important result which ectogenesis will bring, I must consider also its effects on marriage and family life, as we know them. First, ectogenesis will entirely divorce physical love from the reproduction of the species. The common practice of contraception has already, in some measure, accustomed certain classes of the population to this idea; its complete realisation will occupy many generations and create a violent social readjustment.

This idea of separating romantic love from the procreation equation showed up in popular media of the early 1930s. A book by Ira S. Wilde in 1933 predicted that by 2033 we would see governments deciding who might be allowed to marry. The 1930 movie Just Imagine even farcically shows people getting their baby from a vending machine. And, of course, the classic dystopian novel Brave New World (1932) by Aldous Huxley portrayed a future where children are raised in labs and conditioning centers, and the word “mother” has become an obscenity.

The illustrations for 2030 were created by Edward McKnight Kauffer using airbrush. You can see more illustrations from the book over at BibliOdyssey.