(futuristic noises) - You know, you'd think we'd have time machines by now. So, people have always predicted what the future's going to look like. It's something that's
just really interested people for a long time, which is probably why
there's a new Hollywood movie that takes place in the
future every couple months. But interestingly, a
lot of the predictions that took place back in the day were about the time that we live in right now. For example, remember Back to the Future? Well they travel to October 21 2015, which is just next year,
and I don't think we're any closer to having hover
boards than we were then. But it's not just old
movies, there's a lot of documented predictions from the past about what our future would
look like that are just absolutely ridiculous. So I gathered the 10 best, or worst, to share with you guys, so here they are, 10 predictions about the future that were hilariously wrong. Number one is: everyone
will have jetpacks. In 1966 Reader's Digest predicted a whole different world than
what actually happened. Featured on the cover of the magazine is a painting by Fred Freeman
showing life in the year 1999, with people in jetpacks,
a dome climate controlled city and moving sidewalks. But, to be honest with you, I can't really hate on them for having
such a wild imagination at the time, I mean that's
really all they had. I looked up major world events in 1966 and there was a famine in
India, but that's about as exciting as it got, it
wasn't exactly an exciting time to be alive. Number two is helicopters
will replace cars. In 1951 Mechanics Illustrated
published an article that predicted that helicopters
would be a cheap mode of transportation in the
future that would replace cars. The prediction was based off an engineer's theoretical design in the
1930s of a personal helicopter that could be sold to
the average consumer. There was only one
small design flaw in it, which was that it required
human legs as landing gear. No wonder this thing never came to be, I don't even know how they
took this guy seriously in the first place! I mean, clearly he gets
all his design ideas from Fred Flintstone. Number three are flying homes. In 1966, the inventor, writer and TV host Arthur C. Clarke predicted
that we would have flying homes by the year 2001. He believed that water pipes, drains and anything that would tie a home
to that ground would be gone, and we would develop
a compact power source strong enough to make a
home vertically mobile. Cool prediction, except the
biggest technological event of 2001 was iTunes was released, and it's now 13 years later
and the windows version is still a buggy piece of (bleep) so I'm guessing flying homes
are still a ways off. Number four is outer space factories. In 1983, scientists from the
Science and Technology agency in Tokyo predicted that by the year 2010, that the Earth would be surrounded by orbiting factories and laboratories. The facilities were
predicted to be capable of producing new pharmaceuticals, aloes, and other substances only possible in a zero gravity environment. I think what's most
disturbing about this is that this prediction was based
off a poll of the opinions of numerous government officials and university professors. Well Japan, you did get that one wrong, but 1983 was the same
year that you released the original NES and that just brings back all kinds of good memories
so you get a pass. Number five is gold will become worthless. In 1911, famously brilliant
inventor Thomas Edison was quoted by saying
that by the year 2011, that bars of gold would
become as cheap and plentiful as bars of iron, because
we will have discovered the secret of transmuting metals by then. Well, he was a little
off, because around that time it actually hit a record high value. See, this is a good example
of why people shouldn't speculate about things
that they really don't know anything about.. He was an inventor, not an economist, so he knew nothing about it. That would be like me
predicting the price of haircuts in the next ten years, I clearly don't have any expertise in the area. Number six is colonization of the moon. In 1958, NASA predicted that we would have a permanent moonbase
where humans could survive by the year 2007. This was based off a project
by the U.S. Air Force called the LUNEX project,
which was supposed to have a 21 man underground air
force base on the moon. They also envisioned a lunar Noah's Ark, where they could store human
DNA to continue the human race if the Earth were ever wiped out. Uh, scientists at NASA, I think it's time we had a little talk about
the birds and the bees. See, you can't grow a human
just by having their DNA, there's some other stuff involved like... That's not a test tube. It's a penis. Number seven is underwater cities. In 1985, Todd Mills, the organizer of the FutureWorld Expo in
San Francisco predicted that we would be living
in underwater cities and that it would happen soon. He said that this would
be made possible by the creation of energy
produced by laser fusion, that would fuel entire underwater cities. You know what I noticed, why was everybody obsessed with
lasers in the 20th century? Maybe they could have focused on something a little more practical,
like their own fashion. Check that out, that is Sylvester Stallone in the year 1983. Cool mullet bro. Number 8 is the elimination
of letters C, X, and Q. In the year 1900, famous
American civil engineer John Watkins predicted
that by the year 2000 we would no longer use
the letters C, X and Q in our everyday alphabet
because they would become unnecessary. He believed that changes
in mass communication as well as changes in the way that we fundamentally communicate
with each other would render the letters useless. Well, he was wrong about that, but he was pretty close,
I mean I do see the way that half you people spell. Some of your Tweets and
Facebook statuses look like a whole nother language. You know, they have this crazy new thing called Spellcheck, use it. Number nine is nuclear-powered vacuums. In 1955, Alex Lewyt,
president of the well known Lewyt Vacuum company was quoted as saying that nuclear powered
vacuum cleaners would be a reality within 10 years. Not only that, but he believed that nuclear powered appliances
of all kinds would be commonplace in households across America. Damn, this guy was so bad at predicting the location of nuclear
devices, I'm surprised his last name isn't Bush. Oh! What! That's an Iraq war joke. And number 10, the
collapse of the internet. In 1995, Robert Metcalfe,
one of the cofounders of ethernet, was quoted
in InfoWorld Magazine as saying that the
internet would soon explode in a spectacular fashion like a supernova and that in 1996 it would
catastrophically collapse. He believed that the exponential
growth of the internet could not possibly continue,
and that if he was wrong he would eat his words. Well, he was a man of his word, because just two years later at the 1997 International World Wide Web conference, he took a printed copy of the
article, put it in a blender with some liquid and drank it all. Okay, well first off, ew. Secondly, nobody literally expected you to eat your words, dude. I wonder if he takes
everything this seriously. I hope nobody ever uses the phrase eat your heart out,
because you're gonna see Cannibal Bob pop out. Well, that's all for this video
guys, I hope you enoyed it and I think what we should
take away from this experience is just to stop predicting
what the future's gonna look like, because you're
almost guaranteed to be wrong. If you want to add me
to Facebook and Twitter, the links to those will be
in the description below, along with all my other
social networking sites and other than that, I will
see you guys next saturday with a brand new video, peace. Hey guys, thanks for
watching my new video, if you enjoyed it,
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appreciate it either way. And other than that,
you'd think we'd be able to do at least a little
time travelling by now. You know, maybe not like
a full blown TARDIS, but, just something to move around. Damn science, (foreign language)
