A Glimpse of Futures Past

by Rean Rhyne

We were browsing through National Geographic's marvelous release of ALL of its issues on CD-ROM-- every page, cover to cover, including ads. (This rewarding activity, you understand, was courtesy of our local public library; the Magellan's Log research budget would never stretch to cover such a resource.)

There, covering repressed decade after repressed decade of the 20th century, were all the bare-breasted indigenous females which had provided much-needed release for generations of American Boy Scouts. There were the exquisite photo essays on the mating rituals of the manatee and cooking in the Kalahari.

Best of all-- and showing what children of the media-age we have become-- were the ads. It is sobering for one who delights in getting all the hip in-joke references of current advertising to realize that in 50 years our favorite commercials are going to look precisely as quaint as National Geographic ads from 1956 touting the soul-enhancing potential of the Buick Roadmaster.

The choicest tidbit we came across was in a long piece from the October, 1969, issue called "The Coming Revolution in Transportation." Aha, we thought. Let's see what the best minds of the generation that brought us the Beatles and Vietnam saw in their crystal ball about the future (that's us!).

The editors of NG saw fit to summarize the predictions by having a staff artist do a double-page spread painting of (you ready?) the airport of the future (which, again, means us). Their future, our present. And our airport.

Here it is, folks, what 1969 thought we'd being doing transportation-wise in 2001. For your complete viewing entertainment, we've even included the explanatory caption that came with the painting.

"To the right of the skylighted lounge, a wing of the terminal shelters passenger waiting areas and automated ticketing and baggage-routing machines.

"Cars park on upper levels of a local traffic hub, left, while the roof serves as a mini-port for V/STOL (vertical or short take-off and landing) planes. Wheeling overhead, a Sikorsky Skycrane helicopter carries a passenger-filled lounge to a metroport in the city, left background.

"As a hydrofoil scoots upriver, an air-cushion vehicle takes on fares, and trains roll in and out. An automated highway rushes traffic along computer-controlled routes; tubes whisk "people capsules" between terminals and the city."

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