OUR LIVES IN 1950

Hokitika Guardian, 23 April 1927, Page 4

OUR LIVES IN 1950

MARVELLOUS CHANGES NEAR AT HAND. By PROFESSOR A. Al. LOW. the Scientist and Inventor. I dared to suggest not long ago that television would he possible and that \\e might telephone New York from London. I was compelled to listen to the usual remark that such miracles were impossible. In '2O years’ time, I believe many other great changes will have taken place on this earth. Air Jones, as lie reads his morning paper in 1.950. will have lost his parochial attitude. He will he anxious to know what happened in America as he is today to read the local news, because he will olteit have been there, thanks to facilities for cheap, swift and comfortable travel. If Mr Jones is wealthy he will unquestiomibly make use ol television, and his room will he heated electrically I by a system which, allowing for the recovery of by-products, brings such luxuries within the means of all. The man of the future will probably I enjoy electrical treatment during his ' sleep, and artificial light, both healtn- ! giving and pleasant will he so cheap 1 that houses will he built without the restriction imposed by a vain endeavour to locate the sun. Light is still 1 the most important requirement of any community, hut science has not yet achieved an efficiency of more than 21 per cent. The next 20 years will undoubtedly see a great advance in the position ol woman. With the gradual evasion ol physical disabilities. I do not believe that women will trouble to stay at home. I think that electric cooking, cleaning, and heating will remove the drudgery from domestic existence, and I believe that children will he educated on the quantity production scale after a psychological study of • their ! natural tendencies. ! Women will cease to expect the suggestion of protection, and will despise the weakness that is implied by any remnant ol chivalry. Ihc.tr dress will become more business-like, and they will stop a man in the street for a light without giving their mothers any worse shock than their grandmothers suffered when Lho wait/, was first invented.

Our buildings will encourage flat lift with communal kitchens on a great seale. Private cooking may become as extinct as private laundries; I am sure that cooked food will he sent out from service depots in reply to a (all by telephone. Within the last, few years flying lias become commercially possible. At the end of 2-> years 1 am certain that Mights to America, India, and all over the world will he as easy and almost as comfortable as are these journeys in our imagination to-day. It will ho perfectly easy to telephone to any part of the world, and it will not he necessary in those tints to use enormous power, or to broadcast a message without, any privacy. 1 believe that within 20 years the language of all nations will have partially blended as the direct result of inter-marriage and trans-European conversations; it is ridiculous to admit that a live-guinea aeroplane fare take-, us to a land where it is impossible to ask for “bed and breakfast.” The advent of a mechanical era will change the mental perspective of the world : it will even alter many of our physical characteristics, for to-day we can see that town dwelling and specialised feeding are beginning to destroy our eyes and damage our teeth. There will he many so-called surgical miracles performed in '1950. I believe that the sex of children is likely to he ascertained or even determined before birth, ami that as a knowledge of the functions of their glands enables any lack of growth to be counteracted they will receive all kinds of corrective electrical treatment. Specific treatment and food may even he given in our schools to develop characteristics which the nation will believe to he desirable ; yet it is not long since the possibilities of the so-ealied ‘‘thyroid’’ treatment would have been looked upon as a nightmare. I cannot think that 20 years’ study will he abortive as far as the cure of many modern disease is concerned, but ] do think that we shall acquire many strange nervous diseases. .Many physical and mental restri;-

lions under which we suffer to-day will be removed. Our sense will become more delicate and we will not seriously expect motor cars to travel at 2!) in.p.h. in 1950. But the Mali of that time will have other cause for complaint. He will not be allowed to make a noise, lie will not be allowed to blnekon the air with smoke from his chimney and if ho were seen to spit upon the floor of a railway carriage he would he treated as an outcast. And I do not believe that drunkenness will be regarded as a joke.

I do not think that we shall have reached a time of “Peace, perfect peace.’’ and I have no doubt that our children’s children will sip their concentrated food juice through a tube as they watch moving pictures received by wireless and listen to a broadcast from the front where the most terrible war of all time is taking place. The development of science cuts both ways. Jt is leading us to bacteriological bombs, death rays, and aeroplane torpedoes terrible beyond conception. But at the same time it is so removing the effects of distance that we shall see our handiwork and grasp some of its futility. Science is certainly improving the minds and morals of the universe. Few of our social evils could long be maintained without special protection in an age where television, world-wide broadcastng and 3-clav trips to India can help us to appreciate the thoughts of our friends.

Even wireless power and telepathy, as a result of a study of oscillation, might not seem any more wonderful to us in the future than Rugby radio station, an aeroplane, or a :..)Lri battleship would have appeared to our great-grandfathers, as they con lemnod the terrors of 20 in.p.h. in a railway train.

It will soon he time we made landing grounds of covered main streets, flood-lighted highways, provided travelling overhead crossings, and turned our tube stations into underground cities. Nothing is so difficult to define as the impossible.