Mostly Skiffy Things

I was watching "Brigadoon" the other night which is a musical about a little Scottish village that has fallen under a "miracle" where it only emerges from God-knows-where once every 100 years for 24-hours after which the villagers go to sleep for another century and are doomed never to leave it or everything will vanish into oblivion. Apparently in 1754, the vicar had called upon God to protect it from the wicked witches that were advancing on the village. I suspect advancing English troops might have been a better reason as this was only 8 years after the Battle of Culloden. Anyway I began doing some math: in a 1000 RL years only 10 days will have passed in the village. It would take 36,500 RL years for a Brigadoon year to have passed; 365,000 for 10 B. years to have passed and 3,650,000 years for a B. century to have passed. Imagine emerging from their night into the real world only to find it in nuclear winter or a world covered in cities and devoid of greenery or any of a dozen dark futures - IMO this "miracle" is actually a curse.

 

I came across a cute site showing what the French of 1910 thought the world of 2000 would look like. Apparently we would get automated haircuts, be taught by machines, be warmed by radium and have mechanical wings among other things all while wearing the styles of 1910.

 

Another site shows a PSA from 1967 which stars Marj Dusay and shows what life would be like in 1999. They predict a housewife will shop via a crude computer and husband will pay through a similar device though apparently he needs at least 4 or 5 such devices including one for handwritten e-mail to accomplish what the one we use today can do. There is neither keyboard not mouse and the devices appear incredibly clumsy. 

Both sites prove, to paraphrase Eddington, "The future is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine."