Articles like this one from Weekend Magazine in 1961 hyped the idea of the near future so much that those of us who were lucky enough to actually experience The Year 2000 were totally let down by the boring sameness of it all. "Where the hell is my jetpack and ray gun?" was the question in the back of every nerd's mind on January 1st, The Year 2000.

Excerpt:

Doors will open automatically, and clothing will be put away by remote control. The heating and cooling systems will be built into the furniture and rugs.

You'll have a home control room - an electronics centre, where messages will be recorded when you're away from home. This will play back when you return, and also give you up-to-the minute world news, and transcribe your latest mail.

You'll have wall-to-wall global TV, an indoor swimming pool, TV-telephones and room-to-room TV. Press a button and you can change the décor of a room.

The status symbol of the year 2000 will be the home computer help, which will help mother tend the children, cook the meals and issue reminders of appointments.

Cooking will be in solar ovens with microwave controls. Garbage will be refrigerated, and pressed into fertiliser pellets.

Apparently in The Year 2000 we will all still inhabit the same gender roles and social castes. I guess they didn't interview Philip K. Dick for this article.

Interestingly, things being small wasn't prognosticated. The idea of an entire room of your house being devoted to electronics and messaging seems off-the-chart inefficient. I guess the miniaturization of electronics hadn't really started in 1961. Plus, big things were still impressive then--hence "wall-to-wall global TV," etc. My favorite prediction: "Rocket belts will increase a man's stride to 30 feet." I'm not sure they fully thought through the environmental implications of that one. One prediction seems downright quaint: "Mail and newspapers will be reproduced instantly anywhere in the world by facsimile." Okay, yup, they nailed that one.

via Backwards City
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