> Was [...] the thought that the car was going to change life on the street, really so beyond envisioning "Prediction #6: Automobiles will be cheaper than hor

> Was [...] the thought that the car was going to change life on the street, really so beyond envisioning "Prediction #6: Automobiles will be cheaper than horses are today. Farmers will own automobile hay-wagons, automobile truck-wagons, plows, harrows and hay-rakes. A one-pound motor in one of these vehicles will do the work of a pair of horses or more. Children will ride in automobile sleighs in winter. Automobiles will have been substituted for every horse vehicle now known. There will be, as already exist today, automobile hearses, automobile police patrols, automobile ambulances, automobile street sweepers. The horse in harness will be as scarce, if, indeed, not even scarcer, then as the yoked ox is today." Dec 1900 [1] I enjoy reading commentary about this set of predictions... to see how people misunderstand the past. Or why something didn't happen. Take horses. One commentary says, 'no, wrong, horses were cheaper than cars are today'... and compares only purchase price, being unfamiliar with stabling. Another claims horses were more environmentally friendly than cars... forgetting that horse fodder was once a primary import of cities, their waste a primary export, and that it and carcasses once decorated streets. A major use of horses was... shipping fodder for horses. And I fuzzily recall an SV person giving a talk at Stanford, arguing you can't predict the future (sigh), and dissing the article in general, and the horse prediction as 'they thought horses will become extinct - silly them'. When they didn't say extinct; and some commercial breeds are; and given the change of urban horse populations (from like cars, to like giraffes), a non-technical "extinct" wouldn't have been wrong. Unfamiliar with the past; inattentive to the present; and lackadaisical in thought; we watch the future arrive, and find it unexpected. There's a surprise. Perhaps VR ("so this is what it was like... oh, that's weird"), and AR ("overlay the past on the present"[2]) will help. [1] "What may happen in the next hundred years" (Watkins; 1900; The Ladies Home Journal) as jpeg: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0c/John_Elfreth_Watkins_Ladies_Home_Journal_Predictions_1900.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0c/John_Elf... ; as text: http://yorktownhistory.org/wp-content/archives/homepages/1900_predictions.htm http://yorktownhistory.org/wp-content/archives/homepages/190... [2] Old photos overlaid on new: Zoltán https://www.facebook.com/ablakamultra https://www.facebook.com/ablakamultra https://www.flickr.com/photos/mrsultan/sets/72157626149118210/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/mrsultan/sets/7215762614911821... ; assorted https://www.google.com/search?q=then+and+now+composite&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=then+and+now+composite&tbm=i...