{"id":13766,"date":"2017-07-24T17:56:44","date_gmt":"2017-07-24T15:56:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/?p=13766"},"modified":"2017-07-24T17:56:44","modified_gmt":"2017-07-24T15:56:44","slug":"a-100-year-old-french-vision-of-digital-transformation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/2017\/07\/a-100-year-old-french-vision-of-digital-transformation.html","title":{"rendered":"A 100-Year-Old French Vision of Digital Transformation"},"content":{"rendered":"

I recently stumbled across a series of French postcards<\/a> that were published in\u00a01910, probably as part of a publicity campaign for groceries, predicting what life in the future would look like.<\/p>\n

They depict a wonderful collection of then-current technology being used for far more far-reaching uses. For example,\u00a0here’s the 1910 vision of Skype\/Facetime video calls:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This machine does a scan of your body and automatically prints your closes on demand. That’s now on the edge of reality — there are now lots of 3D scanning systems available, and on-site production of clothes has been\u00a0patented by Amazon!\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In 1910, the first commercial flight was still four years away, and so flying was a particular fascination of the era. They predicted\u00a0arial firefighters —\u00a0now drones are now being used for fire surveillance<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And here’s the predicted arial\u00a0coastguard — they strangely didn’t think that a helicopter would be more practical, despite predicting their existence in the next image.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

What did they think you would\u00a0do with a helicopter? Arial\u00a0spying of neighbors, of course! And now can get arrested for that…<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

They also predicted having the news read out to you at your convenience at home:\u00a0“Alexa, what’s the news?<\/a>”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The future was full of new entertainments like electric rollerskate — and yup, they now exist<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

They predicted levitating electric trains in\u00a0China? Yup, they exist<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This is their vision of home automation — that looks like some sort of dishwasher on the right. And there are indeed prototype robots to do your hair…<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>They didn’t get everything right though — a radium-powered fireplace for the home?\u00a0No thanks!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Finally, isn’t it wonderful that even as everything else changed, they predicted that people would be happily bundled up in uncomfortable, restrictive Belle Epoque clothes?!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Alexa, what’s the news” and other technology visions from France in 1910.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13781,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14],"tags":[1290,502,509,512,1291,1122],"class_list":["post-13766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-thoughts","tag-belle-epoque","tag-france","tag-future","tag-futurist","tag-lan-2000","tag-vision"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/lan-2000-listening-to-newspaper.jpg?fit=600%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3X9RF-3A2","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13766\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}