People have this weird obsession with knowing what's next. We always have. If you look back at the history of tomorrow, it’s basically just a long, messy timeline of us being incredibly confident about things that never happened. We thought we’d have nuclear-powered vacuum cleaners by now. We didn't. Instead, we got 280 characters and high-speed delivery for cat food.
History isn't just about what happened in 1776 or 1945. It’s also the story of what people thought would happen. It’s a graveyard of failed predictions, from Victorian steam-punk dreams to the neon-soaked cyberpunk anxieties of the 1980s. Understanding this "past future" matters because it shows us how our current fears about AI or climate change are shaped by the same patterns of hope and panic that drove people a century ago.
The Victorian Version of the Year 2000
Back in the late 1800s, there was this series of postcards produced in France called En L'An 2000. They are hilarious. One of them shows a "schoolroom" where the teacher is literally grinding books into a machine that pumps the information directly into students' heads via wires.
It’s easy to laugh at. But honestly, it captures a core truth about how we predict things. We usually take a current technology and just... make it faster? Or more intense? For the Victorians, the "technology" was the physical book and the mechanical grinder. They couldn't imagine a digital cloud, so they imagined a mechanical one.
Jean-Marc Côté and his fellow artists also predicted underwater croquet and flying firemen. They saw the 21st century as a place of extreme mechanical convenience. They weren't entirely wrong about the "flying" part, but they missed the "why." We didn't get personal wings because they’re a logistical nightmare. We got drones instead. This tells us something huge about the history of tomorrow: we almost always overestimate the speed of physical transport and underestimate the speed of information transfer.
Why the 1950s Thought We’d Live on the Moon
After World War II, the vibe changed. Science was the hero. The history of tomorrow during the Space Age was dominated by the idea that "bigger is better."
You've probably seen the old Popular Mechanics covers. Giant rotating space stations. Domed cities in Antarctica. Commuting to work in a personal aerocar. Experts like Wernher von Braun—the guy who basically built the Saturn V rocket—were writing articles for Collier's magazine laying out detailed plans for Mars missions that were supposed to happen by the 1980s.
So, what happened?
Politics and economics happened. Prediction experts often fail because they treat technology like it exists in a vacuum. They forget that humans have to pay for this stuff. The Apollo program wasn't just a scientific triumph; it was a Cold War flex. Once the flex was over, the funding dried up. This is a recurring theme in the history of tomorrow. We can do amazing things, but we usually stop if they don't make money or win wars.
The Digital Shift and the Death of the Flying Car
By the 1970s and 80s, the "tomorrow" people were dreaming about started to look darker. Think Blade Runner. Think William Gibson’s Neuromancer.
We stopped looking at the stars and started looking at the screen.
This was a massive pivot. Instead of physical expansion (space travel), we chose internal expansion (the internet). Alvin Toffler’s 1970 book Future Shock nailed a lot of this. He argued that the sheer pace of change would make people feel alienated and overwhelmed. He was right. We didn't get the flying cars promised by the 1950s, but we got the "electronic cottage" he predicted—the ability to work from anywhere.
Looking at the history of tomorrow, this shift from "atoms" to "bits" is the single most important transition. It explains why our houses look mostly the same as they did in 1960, but the way we interact with the world inside those houses has been totally rebuilt.
The Problem with Expert Predictions
Even the smartest people get it wrong. In 1995, Clifford Stoll wrote a now-infamous piece for Newsweek arguing that the internet would never replace the newspaper and that e-commerce was a pipe dream. "The truth is no online database will replace your daily newspaper," he wrote.
Oops.
He wasn't a dummy. He was an astrophysicist. But he fell into the trap of "Linear Thinking." Most people assume the future will be a slightly better version of today. They don't account for "disruptive" shifts—things that change the rules of the game entirely.
How to Actually Look at Tomorrow
If you want to understand where we're actually going, you have to look at the constraints. The history of tomorrow shows us that human nature is the only constant. We still want to eat, we still want to be loved, and we still want to be entertained.
- Watch the energy. Every major shift in human history—the steam engine, the internal combustion engine, the lithium battery—is tied to how we harness power. If you want to know what 2050 looks like, don't look at the gadgets. Look at the grid.
- Follow the friction. Humans are lazy (in a good way). We adopt technologies that remove friction from our lives. Remote work stuck because it removed the friction of a commute. Streaming stuck because it removed the friction of the video store.
- Ignore the "Flash." Avoid the hype cycles. Remember the Segway? It was supposed to redesign cities. It didn't. It became a tool for mall cops and tourists. If a "future" technology requires us to completely change how we move our bodies or build our streets, it’ll probably take much longer than people think.
Making Better Bets
Don't buy into every "future" narrative you see on social media. Most of it is just marketing. To stay ahead, you need to develop a "probabilistic" mindset. Instead of saying "X will happen," ask "What are the three most likely versions of X?"
Realize that "tomorrow" is usually just "today" but with better software and more expensive electricity. The most radical changes aren't the ones that look like sci-fi movies; they’re the ones that happen in the background, like the way GPS changed how we perceive geography or how LLMs are changing how we process language.
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Actionable Insights for Navigating the Future
- Audit your "Future Bias": Look at your own career or business. Are you betting on a "flying car" (a cool but impractical tech) or "the internet" (a fundamental shift in how we connect)?
- Invest in "Enduring Skills": Technology changes, but psychology doesn't. Skills like persuasion, storytelling, and complex problem-solving have been valuable for 2,000 years. They will be valuable for 2,000 more.
- Study Failed Predictions: Go read the Global 2000 Report to the President from 1980 or Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb. See where they went wrong. Usually, they underestimated human ingenuity and our ability to pivot when things get dire.
- Monitor Infrastructure: Pay attention to boring stuff like submarine cables, semiconductor manufacturing, and power plant construction. That's where the real "history of tomorrow" is being written right now.
The future isn't a destination we’re traveling toward. It’s something we’re constantly building out of the wreckage of our old ideas. Keep your eyes on the data, but keep your heart skeptical of the hype. That’s how you survive the next version of tomorrow.