I can’t find a digital source, but stumbled into a note from a book I read recently, and can no longer recall, of a 1978 report by Purdue University engineers on what they imagined life in 2021 would be like. Here is my note:
The report focuses on the fictional Niray Family living in Midland City, USA. The father, David, has "a cylinder of Nutri-Juice for breakfast." Because in 2021, "No one cooks at home except a few eccentrics, like gourmets and old-fashioned people."
Dave then began his work, at home, as editor and feature writer for Trans Com News Service, one of the world’s largest. "Although he routinely worked on stories of national and international events, he seldom left his apartment. His video screen has access to all his files. He could interview almost anyone in the world from his Vision-Phone."
By Vision-Phone, Dave interviews a leader in Buenos Aires, composed his article, and then activated the house monitor computer system, which reminded him that Rent-a-Robot would be coming in to clean.
Ava, Dave’s wife, worked in a factory. She did her work in a control room before an enormous array of keyboards, video screens, and ranks and files of tiny lights. Her work was kept track of by a central computer, known as "the front office". The members of Ava’s crew were machines. She was a supervisor, "though she really did no supervision."
In the evening, they and their son, Billy, played electronic games on their video-screens.
They drank water "recycled directly from sewage", because, "there was really little choice. The wells had gone dry…and only an idiot would try to purify the stuff that came out of lakes and streams in the year 2021."
What is most intriguing to me is how right Purdue researchers were except about one thing: Ava working in a factory seems far-fetched.
But what is equally intriguing to me as I sit here trying to find the source for this note, is how bizarre this must be if you were in 1978. For one, Ava is a supervisor but doesn’t really supervise anything. The entirety of their day appears to be focused on entertainment. There is little mention of human contact. Knowledge is now simply news, where technology has replaced some component of truth (it seems obvious now how technology can facilitate its own perfect lies). And the report made no mention of any societal, cultural, economic, ecological, political, or aesthetic consideration.
Honestly, reading this today, the whole thing seems…bleak and lifeless. What a time to be alive, where every space is basically a control room. Controlling precisely what or how, it seems, is never asked.
