Nerve Endings Firing Away

Many futuristic movies show flying cars and climate-controlled cities on far-flung planets. Even the first Terminator had predicted robots going to war against mankind as early as 1997 but thankfully nothing of the sort happened. Science fiction deals completely with visualizing the future and more often than not predicting doom (because I guess, it makes for an interesting story). While admitting that predicting the future is no simple task, it is worth noting that how such visualizations are in the realm of the fantastic. Try as we might think how the future might look we shall always be restrained by the thinking of our times.

So how did our ancestors perceive our times? Did you ever wonder how people living in the 19th century visualize life in the 21st? Did they expect the Internet, space travel, or even things we take for granted like the vending machines? Paleo-Future posted some postcards circa 1900 about how life would be in 2000:

Note how the last two perceptions contradict each other. The link above shows you a few more. Sadly, we still cannot walk on water, or fly on our own or with the exception of giant stadia do not have enclosed cities. Also note how they thought how we would travel in the future but strangely the clothing would remain the same. I guess, they thought we had achieved perfection :)