1964: Predictions

The 60-hour week of 1914 that became the 40-hour week of 1964 probably will be the 30-hour workweek of 2014 -- a six-hour day five days a week.
     -- U.S. News & World Report, 1964

Shopping for food has undergone a radical change -- we now buy nearly everything hygenically packed from the display shelves of the many self-service stores -- and perhaps quite soon our purchases will be delivered to us by conveyor belt.

     -- "Home Management," edited by Alison Barnes, 1964

The new towns will inevitably awaken the public to the possibilities for better housing and environments. They may revolutionize the public taste, creating stronger demand for both sales and rental units.

     -- "New towns for America," House & Home, February 1964

One will be able to browse through the fiction section of the central library, enjoy an evening's light entertainment viewing any movie that has ever been produced (for a suitable fee, of course, since Hollywood will still be commercial) or inquire as to the previous day's production figures of tin in Bolivia -- all for the asking via one's remote terminal.

     -- Arthur L. Samuel, "The Banishment of Paper-Work," New Scientist, February 27, 1964

Man may have landed on the surface of Mars by 1984. ... Astronauts will be shuttling back and forth on regular schedules from the Earth to a small permanent base of operations on the Moon.

     -- Dr. Wernher von Braun, "Exploration to the farthest planets," New Scientist, April 21, 1964

No one will be willing any longer to earn his living by mending your watch or re-soling your shoes. When a watch goes wrong or a shoe sole wears down at the toe, the thing will just have to be thrown away and replaced by a mass-produced replica.

     -- Arnold J. Toynbee, "At Least the Beginnings of One World," April 21, 1964 

The U.S. population will reach 322 million to 438 million in 2010. (Actual number: 309 million.)

     -- "U.S. Population Estimates Listed," United Press International, July 1964; Census Bureau report: @

There is every likelihood that highways at least in the more advanced sections of the world will have passed their peak in 2014; there will be increasing emphasis on transportation that makes the least possible contact with the surface.
     -- Isaac Asimov, "Visit to the World's Fair of 2014," August 16, 1964

One of the great medical discoveries of the near future will be a method of suspended animation, so that a man can sleep away down the centuries and in this manner travel into the future. This technique, which may possibly be based on deep freezing, will one day be used to send into the future people suffering from diseases or ailments beyond the ability of present-day medical science to cure.
     -- Arthur C. Clarke, BBC's "Horizon," September 21, 1964

"Earning" a livelihood may no longer be a necessity but a privilege; services may have to be protected from automation and be given social status; leisure time activities may have to be invented in order to give new meaning to a mode of life that may have become "economically useless" for a majority of the populace.

     -- "Report on a Long-Range Forecasting Study," T.J. Gordon and Olaf Helmer for The RAND Corporation, September 1964 

The woman of tomorrow will wear pleats and tights, and live in a house spun from glass fiber, with patent-leather walls and no furniture at all.
     -- "Designs on Your Future," The Saturday Evening Post, October 17, 1964

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