I've tasted it - it's the future.

[blue_condition]

Thanks to matgb for posting this splendid link to The Usborne Book Of The Future. At the tail end of the seventies, post-Winter of Discontent and pre-"oh dearie me we've got a fascist government" this was a veritable Summa Theologica of everything the eleven year old boy could want from The Future. And it had facts in it. Sort of.

Comments

[ravensthorpe]

I was introduced to the future by Peter Fairley and James Burke's similar book produced around 1968. Pre oil crisis so you can imagine how optimistic that was about the year 2000.

The room of the future looks surprisingly accurate, MP3 player(?), wide-screen TV, apart from the one thing 70s films and books never foresaw - high definition full colour computer screens.

[nmg]

Also, the wristo on p.44 actually looks charmingly retro compared to current mobile phone technology, and failed to anticipate much of the convergence (listening to music on your wrist-radio? sending short text messages? getting an accurate location from a satellite, and downloading a map of where you are? ludicrous!)

[nmg]

It's a damned good book - a friend bought me a copy for my birthday a few years ago (to replace my long-lost copy from my childhood).