When I was a little girl I loved spending time on my grandparent’s farm. My grandma always called the refrigerator the “icebox”. I thought it was a little strange and didn’t understand what it meant. I know now that it was just a habit since she probably had an actual icebox growing up. Can you imagine a time before refrigeration? When I think about it, having known someone who had an icebox at one time in their life makes me feel like it really wasn’t that long ago.
What about smoking? I really don’t know many people who smoke nowadays, but I know there was a time when it was popular. That was probably before my time – but not too far. I remember playing with and eating candy cigarettes when I was a kid. That probably wouldn’t fly today.
Here’s a scarier thought; I was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder in my 20s and still take medication daily. Thanks to medicine I live a somewhat normal life. Had I lived a hundred years ago I would’ve been put in an asylum. I couldn’t imagine that life. It sounds barbaric to me, but will there be a time in the future when people will view my current treatment as barbaric? I have experienced some pretty nasty side effects from my medications but I tolerate it because I want to work and raise my daughter – I want to have a life. Maybe in the future patients won’t have to deal with that.
I’m not young but I’m not old either, and I’ve seen a lot of changes just in my lifetime.
I want to know your predictions for the future. What advancements do you think we’ll see? What are we doing today that will be deemed unsafe or ineffective in the future? Will anything that’s popular now be considered inhumane?
My husband’s prediction is cell phones and capitalism. I’m thinking of changes to our food and medicine, but maybe that one’s too obvious. What’s your prediction?
American football.
Building society around the idea that everyone can and should drive multi-ton motor vehicles everywhere, not having accessible public transportation, routine speeding, sprawl, right turn on red, requiring people to cross at the intersections, and relying on flashing lights for safety.
The American prison system will be considered dangerous and ineffective eventually. The American policing system will be considered dangerous at some point. American treatment of the homeless will be considered inhumane.
Hopefully allowing and encouraging hate speech.
Also billionaires and conspicuous consumption and deliberate obsolesence.
Among other things.
I think it was Anne McCaffrey (?) noted eating meat as something that future generations will find repugnant and no longer allow in some of her SF novels – space operas set in far future. Can imagine that happening.
I hope we do back and see a lot of things because it will mean we have grown and improved and become better.
PS. In the US of A : Guns.
Hiopefully inthe future sanity will prevail the 2n d Amendment willbe abolished and the the current gun fondling culture will be seen over there how it is now throughout the rest of the world as absolutely sick and very wrong and dangerous.
Killing other living things to consume their substance.
(Or worse, eating them while they are alive)
Allowing humans to operate motor vehicles.
Driving.
They still make candy cigarettes. And there is still plenty of smoking around, but it’s in isolated pockets. One of my coworkers moved to a rural part of our state, and was complaining to me that everyone there smokes. His wife’s obstetrician smoked in the office, and so did the patients. People smoke in the grocery store, in the car-repair shop, everywhere.
In the early 2000s, I thought the USA was making progress as a society, but there’s a certain deplorable segment of the population that was encouraged to let their worst parts free and say out loud and proud the stuff they used to keep quiet. World-wide, the UK seems to have lost its mind, and Italy, Sweden, Hungary, Poland, and Finland have far-right leadership.
Social Media. Particularly the way the algorithms are tuned to “maximize engagement” rather than supply us with useful information and encourage meaningful connections.
social media