Report from the XXI century: Soviet academicians' predictions about the future

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Dreaming about the future was a popular pastime for many Soviet citizens. Moreover, often it was not romantic dreamers who were engaged in forecasting, but people of science. One of the striking examples of predictions of the future is the book "Reporting Their XXI Century", published in 1958. The authors of the articles in it were eminent Soviet academicians. And, apparently, accurate information about discoveries in various branches of science helped them make the picture of the future quite plausible. After all, many of their predictions really came true.

In fairness, it should be clarified that not all of the academicians' predictions turned out to be one hundred percent hit. And even where they were close to today's realities, some details may differ. So, for example, one of the articles says that by the twenty-first century the Moon will become the seventh continent of the planet for mankind, and apple trees will bloom on Mars. Alas, Vladimir Engelhardt's prediction that cancer will move from the category of serious diseases to a par with the common cold has not yet come true, that is, it will be treated just as quickly and easily.

And yet, many predictions, and especially those related to technical progress, have been translated into reality. What was fantastic for the Soviet people of the late 1950s, has long been a daily routine for us. But for the then academicians, the appearance in human life of the achievements described by them is a matter of several decades. And in a number of cases they turned out to be right.

1. Mobile phones and video communication

Academician Vladimir Aleksandrovich Kotelnikov in his article entitled "The Second Half Century of Radio" speaks of the existence in the twenty-first century of devices strikingly similar to modern mobile phones. And not just as a means of negotiations, but with the ability to see the interlocutor. The scientist sees these “gadgets” like this: “… Early weekend morning. You remembered that in the evening you forgot to agree with your friend about a joint out-of-town walk. You reach out and pick up a small, cigarette-case-sized apparatus from the nightstand. This is a television transceiver for personal use, which all inhabitants of our planet, without exception, are equipped with. You set your friend's callsign and press the call button …"

It turns out that Academician Kotelnikov predicted video communication via modern smartphones. He also described their size and distribution among consumers fairly accurately. Amazingly, the scientist also predicted the appearance of nicknames - it was not for nothing that in his story it was precisely the "call sign" that was established, and not the name. The forecast turned out to be surprisingly accurate: almost every person on the planet really has small-sized mobile phones with video communication capabilities, and the number is only growing every day.

2. Video broadcast

On video communication and mobility, the possibilities of “a television transceiver for personal use, according to Kotelnikov, are not exhausted. Further in the article is the following episode: “… The walk was amazingly successful. It is a pity one thing: it is not possible to see the football match, which will take place in the afternoon at the Central Lenin Stadium. Why not watch it with the help of individual devices? And, sitting on the steep bank of one of the Volga seas, breathing in the wondrous scent of a spring forest, you follow all the vicissitudes of a football battle …"

It is safe to say that the scientist predicted a real-time video broadcast with the ability to view on a smartphone. Indeed, today you can watch any broadcast events on-line, being at any distance from the place where it takes place. The main thing is to have a sufficiently fast and high-quality Internet connection on your phone. Moreover, online broadcasting, or streaming, has recently experienced a wave of popularity.

3. Plasma

Perhaps this is one of the most predictable forecasts made by Academician Vladimir Kotel'nyov. Technological progress, in his opinion, will make it possible to create things familiar to him and his contemporaries in a more compact form. He cites a TV as an example: “… there is no doubt that there will be tiny TV sets that fit in a waistcoat pocket, and gigantic ones with a screen of several square meters. A large screen size will not entail a large TV size. The TV will be like a picture: the whole apparatus will become flat. The screen thickness will be very small."

And here the Soviet scientist turned out to be absolutely right: over time, televisions, as well as computer monitors, became thinner and sleeker. And today, many owners can boast of a huge and at the same time thin plasma, which looks organically on the wall. Indeed, the TV has become like a picture: sometimes thin monitors are decorated with frames to look more like canvas. This, for example, is done in museums or galleries.

4. Printer

They also thought about the development of typewritten devices in the book. In particular, the new generation typewriter was seen as follows: “… It stands on the left corner of the desk, taking up no more space than an ordinary typewriter of the mid-20th century. And although white sheets of paper protrude from it, it does not have the innumerable buttons with letters, without which it is impossible to imagine a typewriter …"

And this prediction turned out to be correct. The device, which will replace the typewriter, was really invented, even guessing with the size, was called a "printer", and today these gadgets with a couple of buttons instead of dozens are successfully working in hundreds of thousands of offices and residential apartments around the world.

5. Personal computer

Another "guide" on the technological innovations of the future, academician Sergei Alekseevich Lebedev, in his article "The revolution of mental labor has begun" clearly shows the introduction of information technology in education and everyday life of the average citizen. He does this on the example of visiting people of the future “Bibliotranslatsiya”: “… Somewhere in Transcarpathia, in the very center of a neat Ukrainian village, on one of the houses there is a sign:“Bibliotranslation”. Boys and girls enter the house, apparently high school students, students of technical schools located in the village. Each of them arrives exactly at the appointed hour. You can't be late: in booths like those intended for international telephone calls, bluish TV screens are already glowing …"

Today we can say with confidence that we, as they say, “caught up and surpassed” this forecast of Academician Lebedev. We have had the opportunity to have our own separate “bluish screen” for a long time, but to access them we don’t need to go somewhere: a personal computer is waiting for us at home. And if you get a laptop, then the problem of binding to a place almost completely disappears.

6. Electronic libraries

Lebedev quite accurately predicted the capabilities of the electronic machines of the future. So, in his article you can find the following episode: “There are few books in the rural library. There are much more of them in Lvov, in the regional book depository, in Kiev, in Moscow. There are so many books in large libraries, the range of topics and questions is so great that hundreds of consultants-bibliographers have to carry out reference work … A person can not burden his memory with a mass of unnecessary technical information. He will be helped by the "memory" of the so-called information electronic machines."

Modern gadgets have enough memory to accommodate hundreds of thousands, if not millions of different electronic editions. Now, in order to spend a trip or an evening at home reading an interesting book, you do not need to register in libraries and sort through the shelves of bookstores - you just need to pick up your smartphone or tablet.

7. Digitization of documents and video lectures

Academician Lebedev's “library translation” is endowed with several more functions, which have already been successfully translated into reality today. The author sees the use of "booths with screens" in the following way: "Here is a group of students-admirers of the great Taras Shevchenko - they read the rarest documents from the biography of the creator of" Kobzar "passing on the screen. And in the next booth, the screen is occupied by columns of formulas, and an invisible announcer helps the future technician to master the basics of higher mathematics."

And in the case of this forecast, it is safe to say that it was exceeded. So, today there is an opportunity in real time to get acquainted with the rarest historical sources and documents, without leaving the computer screen. The practice of digitizing artifacts has been actively used for more than one year in archives, museums and libraries. As for the lectures, here progress has gone even further: the announcer has long ceased to be invisible to us. Today, on the Internet, you can find online lectures on any subject or simply an issue of interest.