When Tomorrow’s World seemed like pure fantasy
Anton recalls taking a glimpse into the future 40 years ago and found the ideas back then difficult to see as credible
LOOKING back at looking forward. It’s fascinating to see how we thought that the future might pan out. More than 40 years ago, I was asked to write a magazine looking ahead to the 1980s. Some of it came to pass; some of it didn’t. Much of it I found difficult to believe anyway.
I mean, here’s one. In late 1979, one expert told me that, come the middle of the new decade, we would be able to find out through our television screens what holidays were available, choose our destination, pay for it, and have the tickets fall into our lap. All at the press of a button. As if …
Meanwhile, the Equal Opportunities Commission wanted women as well as men to share in the new technology. The young mum of the 1980s could have a computer terminal in her front room. Into the mains she would plug what looked like a portable typewriter, and, using a telephone to call the office, punch in a code to identify herself, then be all set for a day’s work without leaving her fireside.
Working from home? I couldn’t see many people doing that. But then, I’d never heard of Covid-19. The Health Education Council wasn’t so sure that it would be a good idea, for men or for women: tensions might build up when partners didn’t escape to the office for part of the day.
Philip Virgo, chairman of the Conservative Computer Forum, painted a dystopian picture: “If we fail to use new technology in the 1980s, we’ll face massive unemployment, and risk revolution, bloodshed, and the 1984 state.”
Others argued we’d have a permanent pool of six million unemployed, but that was fine. A few “de-skilled” button-pushers would control the rest of us who would be sent to education centres to learn how to enjoy our newfound leisure time.
None of the imaginative people I consulted mentioned that, one day, we’d each own a hand-held device on which we could summon up trillions of bits of information and communicate with anyone anywhere in the world face to face.
That was a Star Trek episode.
How would we heat our homes and power our factories in the 1980s? The Department of Energy was already spending £6 million on research into solar energy. But wind power? Probably not. It would cost three times as much as nuclear energy to provide the same amount of electricity, although by the end of 1979 it was hoped to have two fullscale model wind farms, two miles out to sea, up and running. So, you never know …
We were going to see some revolutionary forms of travel in the 1980s. The use of non-inflammable helium instead of combustible hydrogen to inflate airship envelopes would see the re-emergence of the cigar-shaped craft that had connotations of the Hindenburg and R101 disasters of the 1930s. Same shape, but safer.
Electric cars? British Leyland didn’t think so: “For a start you’d have to keep recharging the battery. And that is a wasteful use of fossil fuel. And their limited range of 50 miles would mean they’d be useful only for use around towns.”
Sport? Nottingham Forest assistant manager Peter Taylor told me that a European Football League was inevitable: “It’s got to come. Getting from East Midlands Airport to places like Brussels, Amsterdam and Frankfurt is a doddle.”
There was, of course, the chilling prospect of 1984. How near was George Orwell’s vision? Was Big Brother already with us? By the end of the 1970s, police use of computers was already well advanced. Special Branch reportedly had data on over one million people.
Computer crime might increase in the 1980s but, as cash became outdated, muggings would cease. Today, we are indeed becoming a largely cashless society. But there are still parts of Derby that I wouldn’t want to walk around on a dark winter’s evening. Or even on a bright summer one.