The World Of Tomorrow...TODAY!

One of the most entertaining magazine articles I've read in a long time is actually fifty six years old. This piece from the February 1950 edition of Popular Mechanics predicts what life will be like in the year 2000.

It is amazing in what it gets wrong (we're all supposed to be commuting via personal helicopter) and what it gets right (shopping on TV). Here's a taste:

If old Mrs. Underwood, who lives around the corner from the Dobsons and who was born in 1920 insists on sleeping under an old-fashioned comforter instead of an aerogel blanket of glass puffed with air so that it is as light as thistledown, she must expect people to talk about her “queerness.”

So what would be more shocking to the folks at PM fifty years ago: That we aren't sleeping under our aerogel blankets of glass, or that the word "queerness" is more commonly used to describe congressmen than grandmothers?