A Look At Japan's Retro-Future

By Stuart Fox Posted 10.23.2009 at 3:01 pm 5 Comments

Those Robots Are Still Nicer Than Nuns : via Pink Tentacle

As much as we love the actual future here at Popular Science, we love the past's vision of the future almost as much. So we basically freaked out when our good friends over at Pink Tentacle discovered this spread from a 1969 issue of the Japanese magazine Shonen Sunday.

These pictures show a predicted 1989 where computers have changed how we live. The above photo depicts a classroom full of children learning on computers, watching a video of a teacher, and receiving beatings from enforcement robots. Considering that most students today actually use their computers for sexting, downloading music, and online poker, maybe those robo-thugs weren't such a bad idea.

Rosie Was Sexier Than Whatever's Cleaning Those Dishes : via Pink Tentacle

This pic shows the home of the future. The personal computer and Roomba-like vacuum robot are pretty spot on, but why is Mom's computer using a punch card? And why does the robot need arms to clean the dishes? If they have video phones and flying cars, you'd think they'd at least have a dishwasher.

This One's Actually Not That Far Off: via Pink Tentacle

This third image is probably the most accurate. Sure, it was off by about 20 years, but that machine is the spitting image of the DaVinci medical robot. Listed as one of our top surgical advances of the last 20 years, remote surgery via robots was a bold prediction in 1969, but one that our present technology has vindicated.

This article leaves me with one question, though: Why is everyone in the future always wearing a jumpsuit?

[via Pink Tentacle]

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5 Comments

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Mr_Twitcher

10/23/09 at 3:46 pm

Those are not jumpsuits, I believe they are the much-superior speedsuits, of the sort popularized by Dr. Thaddeus S. "Rusty" Venture. The real question is, why aren't we all wearing speedsuits in the present?

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I_Wonder...

10/26/09 at 10:25 am

Kudos on nailing the important question Twitcher :P lol

I'm amazed at the last prediction. With all the crazy ideas people have proposed, its nice to see some of our predictions coming to fruition.

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Oakspar77777

10/27/09 at 8:01 am

Enforcement robots aside, the real reason why you do not see classrooms with video teachers teaching kids on computers is not technology, but money.

Teachers today are constantly pressured to put more and more material online. Online classes are now common in even rural high schools.

If only the enforcement robots were ready - I have some targets that need programming in.

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pyro62792

10/27/09 at 2:23 pm

Well if thats what our operating rooms will look like in five ten years then im gonna request being knocked out before i have to go in there. Because I like many others fear the idea of having to go into one right now. Add in all those shiny metal robots with mutiple arms and tools, that would freak almost anyone out wouldnt it?

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I_Wonder...

10/30/09 at 9:47 am

Well we have operation rooms like that right now, but just like the picture, the robot isnt automated. There is still a human controller, the robotics just allow the person to be much more accurate.