Would the year 1979 have looked ASB to someone in 1911?

Thande

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But this has to be the most prophetic cartoon I've seen from this period--1919 to be precise.

It accurately predicts the social faux pas of your mobile phone going off at inopportune times.

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But this has to be the most prophetic cartoon I've seen from this period--1919 to be precise.

It accurately predicts the social faux pas of your mobile phone going off at inopportune times.

My God, that's a good example of thinking outside the box. Most depictions of future technologies come in two flavors: utopic and dystopic. There never seems to be room for annoying but useful.
 
The idea of a woman prime minister wouldn't be that surprising, the idea of it being that early would be however (Thatcher herself said in the 1960s that she didn't think there would be a woman prime minister in her lifetime).

I have some political cartoons in the early 20th century that are rather more prophetic than you'd expect. Let me see if I can find the book...

To be pedantic I think she said it in response to a question she was asked on a BBC children's show while she was Education Secretary in the early 1970's. Thatcher was pretty much the exception though, the only woman to have close to being PM since her was Harriet Harnan and women are still under represented in politics. There have obviously also been women elected in other democracies like Merkel, Brundtland, Gillard, Indira Ghadi and Golda Meir but they have tended to be one off's. Has there been an example in a democracy of a woman PM being succeeded by another woman?

Great cartoons BTW!
 
My favourite is that one from 1919 where the Big Three are coming oiut from Versailles and Clemenceau says "Strange, I seem to hear a child weeping".

The infant is labelled "Class of 1940".
 
I recently saw something from a future prediction that was done by a science magazine in '79, the predictions for what science was supposed to be able to do in 2010 was in in so many cases not even close to reality.

As to the cartoons and literature, it seems to me that the the predictions that were done unintended (ie the prediction was not the main item, more meant as a filler) have the highest rates of coming true.
Its like Scifi novel, where the lit bits that the writer thinks up as background filling that mostly comes closest to what becomes truth. The moment the writer concentrates on thinking up things it seems to go wrong.
 
Has there been an example in a democracy of a woman PM being succeeded by another woman?

New Zealand has had two consecutive female Prime Ministers, Jenny Shipley and Helen Clark. The President of Ireland has also been a woman since 1990, though that's really more of a ceremonial position.

Back on topic, the most ASB thing I could possibly see is the rise of communism in agrarian countries rather than industrial ones. Marxist theory was predicated on the idea that history went in stages, and Russia completely jumped over the capitalist stage to go straight from feudalism to communism. And then the same thing not only happened again in China, but the man responsible created his own variation of Marxism that cut the capitalist stage out altogether. And then communism takes off most spectacularly not in the industrial world of North America and Europe, but in the agrarian, undeveloped nations of Latin America, Africa and Asia. A history of the world in 1979 probably would have shocked most of the world's communist parties in 1911.
 
Would the year 1979 have looked ASB to someone in 1911?
1911 Heck -- 1979 did look ASB to the prognosticators of 1950.

In 1975 one of the TV channels showed a 1950's movie Short showing predictions for the year 2000.
Trans Continental Bullet Trains,
Glass Domed Cars that drove themselves on 5 lane Super Highways, while Dad, Mom, and their 5 kids played games or read.
June Cleaver Mom - showing off her push button Kitchen while Dad sat in his Suit and Tie watching TV in the living room.
Not a T-shirt, or Jeans or Shorts, in Sight. Heck not a Black or Hispanic in Sight either.
Of Course in 1950 no-one had any Idea of what the long term impact of the GI Bill would turn out to be.
 
The short answer is without a doubt yes. The major powers of Europe were Britain, Germany, and France, with A-H, the Ottomans, Russia, and Italy at most second rate powers. In 1911, colonial rebelions were subsiding, and western ideas were in vogue, even in the states outside the reach of the European empires and ex-colonies. At that point, China is a nonentity, and the United States is only still emerging as a power on the world stage.

By 1979, there are really only three powers of consequence: United States, Soviet Union, and People's Republic of China. Additionally, the exent of colonial empires has not just receded substantially, but nations throughout the world are moving away from westernization, and toward revolution of one sort or another.
 
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