In the year 2000: Firemen rescuing a woman and child from a blaze.

Predicting the future is always risky business. Having been part of the drafting of various institutional ‘vision’ documents, the underlying ‘understood’ assumption was not to hold back – to give a free reign to ones imaginative capacities to conjure up definitive ‘ideal states’. French illustrator Jean-Marc Cote in 1899 had the unenviable task of future gazing 100 years, and with that, to come up with a series of postcards for the Paris World Exhibition in 1900. These postcards (En L’an 2000 – In the Year 2000) were distributed across France in the first decade of the 20th C, and were rediscovered much later in 1985, by American science fiction writer Isaac Asimov. Asimov published a collection of these postcards with his commentary as a book titled “Futuredays: A Nineteenth Century Vision of the Year 2000”. Take a look at some of these postcards, and try and not be amused. Try and imagine life in the year 3012 instead.

In the Year 2000: A curiosity horse – genetic engineering?

In the year 2000: Audio news

In the year 2000: Glowing radium instead of fire.

In the year 2000: Modern kitchen, food dispensed by machines.

In the year 2000: Barbers’ hair cutting and shaving machines. Reminded me of Charles Chaplin’s feeding machine.

In the year 2000: Ferocious air battle

In the year 2000: Battery powered roller skates

In the year 2000: Electric train. Note the ‘Chinaman’ in Paris.

In the year 2000: Electric, robotized farming

In the year 2000: Video telephone. Skype!

In the year 2000: Underwater tour with a domestic whale.

In the year 2000: Underwater sports – croquet.

See the entire set of 49 cards here.