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A century in the past, the favored English novelist W.L. George sat down and put his thoughts to envisioning the world we dwell in right now. That world has not, alas, turned out to be one by which his books are a lot learn, however in his day an awesome many readers have been moved by his social cause-driven fiction and reportage. One may evaluate him to Upton Sinclair, his up to date on the opposite facet of the Atlantic. Within the Paris-born-and-raised George’s ancestral homeland, George Orwell described him as an creator of what G.Ok. Chesterton referred to as “good unhealthy books,” singling out for reward his 1920 novel Caliban amid the “shoddy garbage” of his wider oeuvre.
Nonetheless even authors of garbage — and maybe particularly authors of garbage — can sense the form of issues to return. For its version of Could 7, 1922, the New York Herald commissioned George to share that sense with their readers. In response he described a world by which “business flying can have turn into solely commonplace,” lowering the separation of America and Europe to eight hours, and whose passenger steamers and railroads can have consequently fallen into obsolescence. “Wi-fi telegraphy and wi-fi telephones can have crushed the cable system,” leading to generations who’ll by no means have seen “a wire outlined in opposition to the sky.”
That goes for the transmission of electrical energy as properly, since George credit (a bit unexpectedly, it appears) the potential of wi-fi energy techniques of the type researched by Nikola Tesla. In 2022, coal will take a distant backseat to the tides, the solar, and radium, and “it could even be that atomic vitality will likely be harnessed.” As for the cinema, “the figures on the display screen won’t solely transfer, however they may have their pure colours and converse with abnormal voices. Thus, the stage as we all know it to-day might solely disappear, which doesn’t imply the doom of artwork, because the film actress of 2022 won’t solely must know methods to smile but in addition methods to speak.”
Different girls, nevertheless, have confirmed simply as succesful as George had imagined: “All positions will likely be open to them and an awesome many ladies can have risen excessive. The 12 months 2022 will in all probability see a lot of girls in Congress, an awesome many on the judicial bench, many in civil service posts, and maybe some within the President’s Cupboard.” Georges foresees the birth-control capsule, but in addition the “capsule lunch.” Not like some reformers, he hesitates to declare the abolition of the household, however he does think about the “majority of mankind” occupying modular houses in high-rise communal dwellings (“I’ve a imaginative and prescient of partitions, furnishings, and hangings product of kind of compressed papier-mâché”), all gathered in climate-controlled cities set underneath glass.
On the entire, in 2022, “the development of science will likely be wonderful, however it is going to be nothing like so wonderful as is the current day in relation to 100 years in the past.” Certainly, he suspects {that a} glimpse of our actuality wouldn’t a lot shock “the little lady who sells candies at Grand Central Station.” It may even be boring, what with full settlement and improvement leaving “no extra alternative in America than there’s in England to-day.” In 1922, George may write that “in fiction, America leads the world by sincerity, religion and fearlessness,” and imagine that “in 2022 American literature will likely be a literature of tradition. The battle will likely be over and the muzzle off. There will likely be no extra issues one can’t say, and issues one can’t assume.” Regardless of the inspirations of his prophecy, they have to not have instructed him about social media.
Associated content material:
In 1900, Girls’ House Journal Publishes 28 Predictions for the Yr 2000
In 1926, Nikola Tesla Predicts the World of 2026
Based mostly in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities and tradition. His initiatives embody the guide The Stateless Metropolis: a Stroll by means of Twenty first-Century Los Angeles and the video sequence The Metropolis in Cinema. Observe him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Faceboook.
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