The Future of the 1960's

One of my favorite cartoons when I was growing up in the 60's was "The Jetsons".  I think everyone I knew bought into the idea that the future--the way distant 2000's and beyond--would be full of flying cars and moving sidewalks, all because we believed "The Jetsons".  I was hopeful that my adulthood would be an adventure of flying without the need for gasoline, and buildings would be up in the sky and ultra-modern.  Everyone would have a nuclear family, with a husband/father like George, and the wife/mom would stay home like Jane, while the daughter Judy and little Elroy would go to school.  Jane would have the help of Astro the Dog and Rosie the Robot, and errands would go smoothly and easily all day long at the touch of a button, while George would go off to work for Mr. Spacely in his flying car.

For awhile there, buildings were starting to look more sleek.  The lines were clean and crisp, there was a lot of glass.  We have a neighborhood where I live that I drive by often.  When I was a child, it was just being developed.  Now, keep in mind that my family lived outside of town, in a rural area.  Our house was a simple little box, with windows and doors that functioned to bring in light and to allow us entry.  But this neighborhood, IT had pizzazz!  The houses were so up-to-date and modern!  They looked a little bit on the spacy side, kind of modeled after spaceship ideas.  This was shortly after the Seattle World's Fair in 1962, where the Space Needle was the crowning jewel.  This was our future, and it was exciting and fresh.

Jetsons' mansion--way cooler than most neighborhoods

Space Needle inspiration

Today that neighborhood is more rundown than most of the city.  It has been known to have more gang activity than the average, and most of the houses just look tired and shabby.  It doesn't inspire anyone with much of anything.  What was the future, has become the past.

"The Jetsons" got quite a few things wrong, though I'm sure no one was trying to predict the future at all.  It was all for laughs, the opposite of "The Flintstones".  Our "future" in all actuality is not how "The Jetsons" predicted it would be.  For instance, there aren't that many wives/moms who stay home while the husband/father goes to work.  Homes sit empty all day while the whole family is gone to their various places of work or school.  Even Astro may be at a doggy daycare.  Most of us don't have Rosie's help, but we may have a Roomba to vacuum our floors while we're gone.  We are stuck in rush hour traffic, with our tires planted firmly on the ground, or walking on the same concrete sidewalks that have been in our cities for eons.  Certainly nothing much has changed since I was young!

But wait!  As I researched for this post, I started to realize that "The Jetsons" foretold more than I could have imagined.  They had big screen TV's, watches with moving images on them, and video phones.  Their flying cars seemed to operate on fuel other than gas, and it would seem possible that one could actually plug his flying car in at night and charge it up for the next day.  They still had cash, which is kind of funny when you think of it, because we don't often carry cash around with us in the Real Future.

LeisurelyJane watching robotic sports on her big screen TV

Is this really so different from what we have available today for our portable viewing pleasure?

One of the better uses of video phones, I'd say



We also have satellite entertainment, cars that can tell you if you're going to collide with something (or at least turn our headlights off for us after we leave the car), and home cooling and heating systems that keep us comfortable twenty-four hours a day without even thinking about it.

When I think back on "The Jetsons" and lament that we don't really have all those ultra-modern conveniences, maybe I should think about the conveniences we DO have--the ones that "The Jetsons" predicted, and the ones that they didn't.  It was a joke back in the 60's, but the future is here!