It was during the 1900 world’s fair in Paris that commercial artist Jean-Marc Côté was commissioned by a French company to create a series of images that would show what life would be like in the year 2000. Jean-Marc Côté made some ridiculous future predictions, but a handful of them happened to be true.
Jean-Marc Côté had a lot of crazy future ideas. Most of these ridiculous future predictions were totally outlandish, however, there were some that came pretty close to what our world is like today. These predictions were actually never seen at the time, as the company that made the commission went out of business.
However, years later the commissioned art was founded by famed science fiction author Isaac Asimov. Each ridiculous future prediction was artfully rendered by Jean-Marc Côté in pictures that showed how different life could be. Weirdly though, everyone was still dressing pretty much the same. Apparently, he didn’t think that fashion would change at all. Here are nine ridiculous future predictions, and three not so ridiculous ones!
1. FALSE: We would not be heating our homes with radium, as most people would prefer not to die of radiation poisoning just because they wanted to be warm in the winter.
2. FALSE: Côté seemed to think that we would be spending all of our time underwater. Well, he was totally wrong about that, since the ice caps haven’t fully melted yet.
Wikipedia/Jean-Marc Côté 3. FALSE: There was such an obsession with humans living underwater, Côté even made the ridiculous future prediction that we would domesticate whales for travel. Spoiler: We did not do that.
4 FALSE: We would not be able to learn faster by… what is happening here? Are they grinding up books and feeding them into the students’ heads? Way off, Jean-Marc.
5. FALSE: Firefighters would not end up with bat wings strapped to their backs. That seems like a bad idea since those wings would most definitely be flammable.
6. FALSE: Likewise, the police would also not be flying around with bat wings and propellers (or silly outfits). They would, however, continue to use guns.
7. FALSE: We haven’t managed to completely automate our bathrooms yet. Once we figure that out though, getting a robot to take our bathroom selfies will be priority number one.
8. FALSE: We also have not yet automated our barbers and hairdressers. If we ever did that, there’d be no awkward small talk during haircuts. What kind of world would that be?
9. FALSE: Yes, we’d be able to travel across the ocean faster. No, it wouldn’t be because we were doing it in blimps. Why is it the cops and firefighters have wings but we’d still be travelling by blimp?
10. TRUE: We did end up with many video calling services. However, they did not look as elaborate as this whole setup, which would require two people to run it.
11. TRUE: People from 1900 probably would think kitchens today look like science labs. Jean-Marc Côté may have inadvertently predicted the popularity of molecular gastronomy.
12. TRUE: They weren’t exactly motorized roller skates, but hoverboards were popular for a little while. Jean-Marc Côté even predicted how stupid we looked when we fell on our faces.
