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One of our favorite things to daydream about is what the future will look like. We’re huge fans of sci-fi, and it’s a personal hobby of ours to try and try to make personal predictions not just for the upcoming year, but what the next decade and even century might offer. This love of futurology is nothing new—people have been trying to foresee the distant past for ages.

Paul Fairie, a researcher at the University of Calgary, put together a viral thread about the predictions made by people in 1923 about life in 2023. Some of these are wild and come with a very definite retrofuturistic, utopian twist! Scroll down to check out how folks living a century ago imagined our present, upvote the newspaper clippings that caught your eye the most, and take a peek at how the internet reacted to Paul’s post.

What do you think 2023 will bring, dear Pandas? What do you imagine 2123 might look like? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Image credits: paulisci

#1

Future-Predictions-From-1923-About-2023

By 2023 there'll be no mail between New York and San Francisco. Pittsburgh and London concerns will record, on talking films, orders from merchants in Peking, and 1,000-mile-an-hour freighters will make deliveries of goods before sunset. Watch-size radio telephones will keep everybody in communication with the ends of the earth.

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N Miller
Community Member
3 years ago

This is pretty close to accurate (don't know anything about US mail to comment on the first part). 1000mph frieghters aren't quite right, but we do have deliveries before sunset, Ali Baba is a thing, and smart watches are increasingly affordable and common.

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    #2

    Future-Predictions-From-1923-About-2023

    No More Hard Work by 2023!
    DR. CHARLES P. STEIN- METZ, the electrical expert, believes that the time is coming when there will be no long drudgery and that people will toil not more than four hours a day, owing to the work of electricity. He visualizes an amazing transformation in life in 2023. Every city will be a "spotless town." That is to be the work of electricity, also.

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    JoMeBee
    Community Member
    3 years ago

    This is actually frustrating to me 'cause the mental workload in my field has increased probably 20x due to computers...

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    #3

    Future-Predictions-From-1923-About-2023

    Cancer, tuberculosis, infantile paralysis, locomotor ataxia, and leprosy will be eradicated.

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    Headless Roach
    Community Member
    3 years ago

    I wish..

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    #4

    Future-Predictions-From-1923-About-2023

    Fewer Doctors and Present Diseases Unknown; All People Beautiful 
    Beauty contests will be unnecessary as there will be so many beautiful people that it wil be almost impossible to select winners. The same will apply to baby contests.

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    Damitria
    Community Member
    3 years ago

    Would love the eradication of beauty pagents. Especially child beauty pagents

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    #5

    Future-Predictions-From-1923-About-2023

    The population of the United States in the year 2023, probably 300.000,000, will imply an immense progress in the drainage of our low lands, in the irrigation of arid lands.

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    Esme Weatherwax
    Community Member
    3 years ago

    Nearly right. Google says 338,289,857

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    #6

    Future-Predictions-From-1923-About-2023

    In reading a forecast of 2023 when many varieties of aircraft are flying thru the heavens, we do not begin the day by reading the world's news, but by listening to it for the newspaper has gone out of business more than half a century before.

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    Damitria
    Community Member
    3 years ago

    Well, not completely wrong. Newspapers are still around but dying out and we are both listening to and reading news just in a different format

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    #7

    Future-Predictions-From-1923-About-2023

    A new Polar airline is opened making flights across the north pole from Chicago to Hamburg possible in 18 hours.

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    Esme Weatherwax
    Community Member
    3 years ago

    Smashed this one - takes about 8 hrs

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    #8

    Future-Predictions-From-1923-About-2023

    A scientist says a century from now the average length of human life will be 300 years. Quite a change. We of today have been living that long about once a month.

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    Headless Roach
    Community Member
    3 years ago

    Look... I am just trying to get through to Friday

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    #9

    Future-Predictions-From-1923-About-2023

    WS SHOULD WORRY. 
    Good night! It is now predicted that by the year 2023 - only a mere little stretch of a century ahead - women will probably be shaving their heads! And the men will be wearing curls. Also the maidens may pronounce it the height of style in personal primping to blacken their teeth. Won't we be pretty? - Savannah News.

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    Lakota Wolf
    Community Member
    Premium
    3 years ago

    I AM kind of tired of brushing my teeth...

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    #10

    Future-Predictions-From-1923-About-2023

    CURLS FOR MEN BY 2023 PREDICTS ANTHROPOLOGIST
    Bases His Statement on Trend of Masculine and Feminine Styles.

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    Damitria
    Community Member
    3 years ago

    Mens hair care and styles have evolved and some guys do look fabulous with long, curly hair

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    #11

    Future-Predictions-From-1923-About-2023

    The private kitchen will disappear. Tomorrow's food will be seasoned and prepared by chemical formulas, which will preserve the freshness of fruits and meats, rid them of indigestible qualities, and send them to the table ready to use. Instead of sauces that merely cozen the palate, we shall have delectable blends of concentrated vitamines, calories, ferments, and tissue tonics.

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    Esme Weatherwax
    Community Member
    3 years ago

    Microwave meals

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    #12

    Future-Predictions-From-1923-About-2023

    "Kidney cosies" will be worn to protect the kidneys on chilly days, just the same as a teapot in the north is kept warm by a "tea cosy."

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    BlueEyesWhiteDragon
    Community Member
    3 years ago

    Well, maybe we should be wearing kidney cosies. I'll link my Etsy shop once I get production up to speed. 😂

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    #13

    Future-Predictions-From-1923-About-2023

    THE WAR OF A.D. 2023. 
     
    Professor Forecasts Wireless Wonders. 
     
    |How we shall fight in A.D. 2023" is the subject of a contribution by Professor A. M. Low to the September "Nineteenth Century and After." The professor dwells on latest scientific war terrors, and refers to an invention of his own-jets of water highly charged with electricity- which will render cavalry obsolete. 
    "The war of 2023," he proceeds, "will naturally be a wireless war, for there is no end to the possibilities of this wonderful force."
    "Wireless telephony, sight, heat, power and writing may all play important parts.
    Professor Low states that at the present time he can, by an expenditure of about three horse-power destroy a wire at a distance of more than a yard without any connection at all. 
    Professor Low concludes that it is quite possible that when civilisation has advanced another century, mental telepathy will exist in embryo, and will form a very useful method of communication.

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    BlueEyesWhiteDragon
    Community Member
    3 years ago

    Drone warfare. As for telepathy...quick what am I thinking right now?

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    #14

    Future-Predictions-From-1923-About-2023

    By 2023 the average life of man could be increased to 100 years. In individual cases it could be increased to 150, perhaps 200 years.

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    SaneMinotaur (she/her)
    Community Member
    3 years ago

    I thought it was predicted to be 300 years?? :o

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    #15

    Future-Predictions-From-1923-About-2023

    Canada may well have 100,000,000 people. She is powerful now, with her fine equipment for transport, of commerce and trade, equipment sufficient to serve twice the number of people she has today, and with 100,000,000 population, who can set bounds to the power of Canada 100 years from now.

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    BlueEyesWhiteDragon
    Community Member
    3 years ago

    It's a little under 40 million, according to Google.

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    #16

    Future-Predictions-From-1923-About-2023

    Utensils and dwellings will be manufactured largely of pulps and cements so as to utilize vegetation and stone in every stage of decay, ordinary waste or unfitness.

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    BlueEyesWhiteDragon
    Community Member
    3 years ago

    We're working on it! https://www.residentialproductsonline.com/rise-plant-based-building-materials

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    #17

    Future-Predictions-From-1923-About-2023

    Minneapolis Journal: It is an attractive prophecy that Glenn Curtiss, the airplane authority, gives of airflight. He predicts that by the year 2023 gasoline as a motive power will have been replaced by radio, and that the skies will be filled with myriad craft sailing over well-defined routes.

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    Headless Roach
    Community Member
    3 years ago

    TV killed a radio star before it could replace gasoline

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