8
6 JAN 2020

2020 according to 1950

Odd future predictions & a close look at pond water

We were very lucky to get a microscope for Christmas and discuss the tiny creatures we found in a local duck pond. With the dawn of 2020 we then look at funny and unusual past predictions of the future to see if they got the present correct (not exactly!) - Anton also throws a few of his own predictions into the pot. Finally, we announce our first ever Curiosity of a Children Person of the Year winner πŸ†!

Full show notes coming soon.

Transcript

This transcript is automatically generated so may contain errors.

Welcome to the curiosity of Angels.

Welcome to 2020 Happy New year everyone.

Yeah, happy New Year and happy new decade. But today is the day of laughter. I decided this morning and it seems that it actually.

Is yeah, there's not a very professional start. Anyway, welcome, I hope everybody had a good Christmas and new year. And that 2020 is going to be a fantastic year for you all.

So what have you been up to since that last recording?

Well, I just been enjoying the Holidays and relaxing, yes, but I've also been looking through our new microscope.

Yeah, so will be going into a little bit later. Just some of the things we found in some water over here. You might have seen that on Twitter if you follow us on Twitter. If you don't you should and username is Curie child card. You can also find us and all the usual podcast places like Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify.

Now on Pod Catcher did that last night, podbean and everywhere else Stitcher. So look out for us and spread the word. And also please please please do a good thing this year and review us. Yeah so should we push on with the show then?

Yep, on with the show.

Father Christmas brought you a microscope. Didn't see this year.

Brought us a Microsoft.

Microscope actually. Yeah yeah. I think I've had more fun than you. Actually I love it. It's brilliant. So we decided to see what we could find. First. We looked in some water that we found in the garden. Didn't way.

So some rainwater in a pot.

Yeah, that collected in Frog Topia yeah, but we had a frog in the summer or is it in the spring?

And pretty sure is in the spring.

Actually, yeah, so we made a little home from actually lived in the house for a couple of days in here, yeah.

And then we also went to one of the local parks here some Rays park, which will probably be covering genzebe rates at some point. Yeah, it's got that name and there's a duck pond there. So we sneakily borrowed some mortar, didn't we? Yes you want to secret.

Wat at raindrops his old house. They hope arpund I didn't tell anybody what sort of things did we find in the water then?

Well, the first thing we found was a sort of living algae type thing and it is cooled a protozoa.

Zoa.

It was amazing actually. Just how many things we found. Some first look through the microscope so there's nothing there. Then I think once your eyes adjust and you know what you're looking for. Some amazing how much stuff is just coming round there. Yeah, yeah, there's some protozoa and they've got little kind of whips, whips, yeah, which they can control coming out of their mouth called flag Ella. Then they can use those. I think they use them for hunting a little bit to try and capture things and maybe to help propel them round.

Yeah, like a cowboy with a lawsuit.

Yeah, once they look like well.

The green and they look little bit like bogeys as well. Nice bogeys, good for you.

They've got a red eye as well.

It maybe not the actual eye itself, but it's kind of like a lens which helps direct the light into their kind of licencing organ.

Yeah, like he said, it's a lens, but it makes sure that the light for only One Direction actually gets in.

Harry and all the other One Direction lads yeah yeah.

Now they're actually green, aren't they? A lot of them, and that speaks a photosynthesise. And you know what that means?

It's like.

Plants their leaves turn sunlight into food or nutrient.

Yeah, so they've got chloroplast's in them, which helped convert the sun's energy to cute. That's right, I think I saw another little creature and there I and other predators over and I lost it. This is quite hard to find, but look at this long whipping armena springtail is it could attach itself to some of the leaflet or something in the water and it kind of fired itself out that spring tower music.

Ripping arms graftings input into like a cone shaped head.

So a little bit like a like a slingshot.

In a way it put putting stuff back and then it fires.

Yeah, more like spring. Spring shot.

But they should be called.

Right now we also found some of these chaps. What they called and what they don't like.

They heliozoa once.

He leaves their arms.

Now, do you know what he Leo is? No, I think was it a Greek God?

I think so.

And they called that because what do they look like?

They do look a little bit like the sun.

The circular and they've got lots of sort of hairs come out then which look like Rays of sunlight. May we also lots of algae, didn't we? Now what do they do to the water? There's lots of them in the water.

They turn it bright green.

Yeah, that's one of the things we first notice. We took two samples of water from the Duck pond and the first timers looks pretty clear, but the second one.

Green was man. Yeah, you suppose that straight away then we also saw some kind of star shaped things which have. First I thought might be in Poland maybe, but perhaps actually pollen smaller than that. So I might be wrong. So what? What do you now think they are?

A some sort of desmas.

Yeah, it does mess, so there's one that we found which we think it could be a pedia strum. And they're really pretty actually aren't, yeah?

And I see it says easiest from and in the middle. There's sort of like.

A star shape made of peace and on the outside is his lots of lots of cones around it.

Yeah, if you look at our Twitter season pictures of what we found, they look like stars almost like a snowflake, but probably some of the most exciting things we found where the rate affairs weren't. They say, yeah, that's a good video actually, let me take out the rate.

Of us, yeah, we were really really excited when we saw our first one. It was we were screaming was gonna have a look look at this is amazing.

So they are actually very small creatures and breached, so how many cells do they have?

In their body.

Just under 1000 or less than a thousands.

Yeah, but they're really tiny so that she might be smaller than some single celled organisms. And why are they called rate affairs?

Their heads is almost like propellers sucking stuffing.

Yeah, can report. It's cool to her type. Things haven't taken them, but those are called Celia. Yes I got see less those small hair like things and what they do.

They.

Spin, round or rotate.

Yeah, they're like little propellers and watch they use them for.

Sucking the water and filtering the water, but it's like sucking food in and actually we saw problem. I think it was the algae he's trying to eat but he couldn't quite get it in it just started spinning around but can he confided in his mouth I think we've put that in the Twitter.

Yeah, we have. It's amazing actually. You can see under the microscope.

How the water is being channelled actually see it flowing yeah towards them into their mouths from their kind of feeding and hunting. That's why they get the name right. First percent. These rotating little kind of hairs and they can also use them like propellers to propel themselves along. Now the ones we saw.

Never bottom, I don't know if it really is the bottom, but at the other end they've got like a foot with a claw which they can use to grab hold of things. So they were attached himself to maybe a bit of plants or maybe a bit of luck or something. They can kind of wave there in the water whilst their hunting can actually saw one kind of grab hold of you, so it's it's climbing tramp stamp on exactly. Yeah, it's really cool. And yes, then we also saw what we think is a.

Well, it's another type of rota for.

And it's the mytilini router for.

Yeah, these are really cool. I thought they looked a little bit like a manta Ray or something. Yeah, they swim around quite fast.

It sort of got horns as well.

And we had lots of these coming round, but it's actually hard to find what they were looking them up. Yeah, and until we search for horns, yeah, they also remind me a little bit of mermaids purses tonight when they're actually before down the beach. They are from Dogfish. It's the egg sacs.

Ohh yeah yeah and they sort of yellow we aren't.

There or they can be dark Brown in the drought, so the shape of those is very similar to the writers that we found, yeah?

And then one final thing that we found was the nematode.

Yeah, and what a nematodes.

Well, to get this straight then not a type of toad there a bit like earthworms, but their little the little let's just call them water worms.

Yeah, what you saying they live in water and also in soil and they can also be parasites. Yeah, so you might have seen limited since I G.

Well, it's pretty yeah and there their body isn't that flexible and it's quite hard as well.

That was our first commenting and water us amazed how much we found actually. So I thought, maybe in winter might be a bit cold for the life there. I think it dies back a bit. So in summer will definitely find more and more. So we're going down the beach arm and get some salt water, maybe some little crustaceans in there.

And our aim is to find our water there.

Yes, target Brad.

Yeah I want to find a Hydra. Is that meant to be immortal? I'm actually amazed I could spend hours.

You did spend.

Just exploring just a few square centimetres of water, but let's see much in what it reminded me of today.

This is really weird piece. When you got lots of the creatures there and with the Microsoft Pekin fakes at different depths so you can kind of look through the water and because you got all these different amoeba and things going in all different directions. It looked like when you see a futuristic film that flying cars in the city. Yeah and how they were going in different directions. It made me think of that.

Yeah.

And that leads us nicely onto our next feature.

The future.

The future Hall.

Case 2020 to me that sounds really futuristic.

When I was your age, 2020 was so distant that kind of how I imagined the world was much more futuristic than it is now.

Yeah, that's strange cause we have progressed very quickly.

As well though.

Yeah, lots of the changes that have happened, but not maybe what people predict it.

But then people are always trying to guess what the future holds.

And is there will be what science? What technology will come about as to say in the 1920s or 1950s or something that would be amazing. Predictions of the world is going to be this amazing futuristic place with flying cars and mega cities and stuff like that which hasn't quite happened, has it no So what I want to do is go into some predictions that people made in the past for what today would be like. Yeah, but before I do that I want to kind of know what sort of predictions do you have for the future.

Well, three ways that the world will end.

Okay.

The first one is that the world is just going to end turn into like Mars cause Mars had.

Signs of water on there and if you want to know more what I'm talking about gay wanted the BBC iPlayer. There's a programme called the Planets. It's serious one episode 2.

#2 is that.

Humans are going to kill every single other living thing in the world. Or maybe not bacteria. But yeah, like fish, the monkeys did giraffes to elephants.

The last one is that there's gonna be a big World War three.

So you got a pretty dark view of the future then.

Yeah.

But what I'm trying to say is that was gonna end.

Well, one day it will hopefully not in any of these really dramatic ways, you're saying.

Yeah, yeah, that's pretty scary.

Okay, I'm not that you put such a downer on the future. Let's look at some of the utopian ideas that people used to have about how the world might change, shall we?

Yeah.

Okay, so when branches growing up, I guess the main height would have been around space.

Back then, I'm kind of missions to the moon and missions to Mars, flying Cars and mega cities, and it's kind of the power of the machine and industry. It would have been before, like the computer age that we're in now, and few people actually predicted the computing revolution, particularly things like mobile phones, something that we've got in our pocket.

Take photos with. We can communicate with anybody all over the world. We can translate languages, we can discover anything. Yeah, they can table more computing power than what was used to send people to the moon. In fact, in 1943 Thomas Watson, who is president of IBM. So there big computer company. Yeah, he famously said I think there's a world market for maybe five computers. That's not many, is that? We've got more computers than that in the House, yeah, so let's look at some funny predictions.

1900 there will be no CX or que Jenelle friend Watkins Junior Ladies Home Journal.

Mr. Watkins, he predicted that would start to spell words fanatically that memory he get rid of additional letters. So you think C is covered by SNK. Yes, he got circle. You could use an S or class. You could use okay. He also thought that language would be simplified and condensed and this is kind of happened with texting lolz.

It's not funny, right?

But I actually think that changing spellings difficult. Think about today. There's more things are written than ever, and also computers are going to be doing a lot of the spell checking for us, so people don't have to remember how to spell so much, but.

He was sort of right because it was like Old English.

And the language progressed. He knew that that was going to happen, but obviously not let. It doesn't just disappear out the alphabet.

Yeah, languages is a living language, so it's always evolving. But then between the 14 and 1700s was what was called the Great Vowel Shift in the English language, and that's when the sounds of the vows changed, but the spelling didn't, which is why a lot of English words aren't fanatically spelt.

And I've got some examples here. We're going to play to you, so this is the word bite. This game from 1400 to 1900 and pronunciation. Okay, so if you listen how it's changed.

It starts off beat and ended despite say, the eye today used to be an eastsound. I've got another one here, so this is the word mate.

So smart and that's mate. Let's do one more. Scott boats here.

Boots the boat is quite subtle that one, but if you think those were major changes to the whole way, the language sounded.

Under the next prediction, 1911 man might become a one toad race. Richard Clement Lucas. This is given during a lecture to the Royal College of Surgeons, and he called the Outer Tays useless. I didn't give us quite how important they are to our sense of balance, so you could leave some of your tales, but you'll be walking oddly, and I think people have always wanted their toes. Yeah, because the world's oldest name prosthetic limb was a wooden table which is worn by an Egyptian lady more than 3000 years ago.

Wow, that's pretty cool 1923.

Flying cars Henry Ford senior Henry Ford. Yeah yeah. Yeah I'll forward fame yeah, so he actually started designing such cars in 1923.

And I think it will lead to more accidents than anything, but I think that maybe with modern drains and computers we might have something that sort of resembles a flying car one day. So if you think how well they can hover and manoeuvre, and then computers are, they can be used to keep it steady in the air. So I don't think we would fly them ourselves.

But I think it's in Dubai. The police have started making flying cars and it's like a big drone, yeah?

That's pretty cool, yeah, but they have a supercar. Somethings for the scars over there.

So here's a picture on here and it does look just like a little stubby plane, doesn't it? Now? Ford said, mark my words, a combination of aeroplane and motor car is coming. You may smile, but it will come.

I think I found another prediction similar to this which was in 1951.

It was says that intelligent apes would be preferable to robots when it came to driving cars and would play a role in reducing accidents.

Yeah, so you could imagine another monkey or gorilla or something.

Your your car for you and is that safer than a computer?

I don't think monkey pilots are gonna be very good. Little no. The only thing they're going to be good at is spreading a disease maybe or something.

Exciting through the trees there.

1937 alcohol will replace caffeine and tobacco.

Nikola Tesla.

Sorry about the accent there. Now. Do you know who test levels?

No, ohh I think there's a car manufacturer.

Yeah, the Elon Musk. Yes, I was gonna be inspired by this. He was an amazing inventor. Very interesting guy and came up with lots of incredible ideas.

Now when he died in 1943, the US government seized his documents. I think they did that illegally, actually, and Donald Trump's uncle, John G. Trump was when the FBI agents who was tasked with examining what was in them, but they want to know, kind of what had been working on, and supposedly it said that tests had been working on a death.

Ray, I hit that reminds me about the Greek guy. He made a giant mirror or he was going to make a giant mirror to reflect the sun and then make sun beams yet.

Archimedes, yeah.

Going back to Tesla, he said of coffee and alcohol.

Within a century, coffee, tea and tobacco will no longer be in Vogue. Alcohol will still be used. It is not a stimulant but is the first full eclipse of life.

So I think what that's saying is he like to drink.

Yeah yeah I would love to drink.

Okay, until 1950. Now this is from a Popular Mechanics article and they said that people would wash their hands with the hose. So got a picture of a lady spraying her furniture with the house as it will be there.

And it says because everything in her home is water brief, the housewife of 2000.

Can do her daily cleaning with the hosts so everything in your home would be made of plastics or synthetic fibres, so they'll be simple to clean with a detergent and then you just spray them down with water. Then in the middle of the room there be a drain which is kind of hide the matter, something which will collect all the water. Then once you sprayed everything down you would then blow hot air through the room like a big hair dryer to dry everything out tonight. But yeah, really easy.

Not happening.

No, but what about? Things like tablecloths and napkins?

Will there be made of a special paper under the future? Could simply burn them, or better yet, chemical factories will buy them and also your used underwear from you.

And they would convert the wid pulp into sugary foods so they could use them in sweets and things.

That's why chocolates Brown.

Maybe E numbers as well.

Yeah.

We she covered in earlier episodes, but if all of that seems like too much effort, why not get plates that melt in hot water so Housewives in 50 years may wash dirty dishes right down the drain and it doesn't sound particularly, doesn't washing more plastic particles into the seas, yeah?

This sort of getting the idea of plastic pollution in away.

Now another interesting thing to note here is the view of women in the 1950s.

Very much as a housewife doing all the domestic chores and things. It's less kind of even an equal than it is today, so you can see that things are progressed since the 1950s.

Just in the interest of balance, that same article also predicted that in the future, televisions would be connected to the telephone network, allowing people to make video calls.

To distant friends and family. And that's going to happen. This is, yeah.

1955

nuclear powered vacuum cleaners will probably be a reality within 10 years. Now I don't remember seeing any of those, so this was Alex Lewis, president of Loot, the vacuum company. Now this prediction would be made before we probably fully understood some of the dangers of nuclear radiation.

And it was seen as the power of the future would be in every home.

Not going into some more radioactive things in the 1920s, you could get blended up paint.

And it contained radium, and they'd use it on watch faces. So got picture here so they would paint the dials and the hands and things that you could look at your watch in the dark and you'll be able to see the time was.

Yeah, I've actually got them.

A little Clock like that.

I think it's probably using something different these days, so got an old advert here says the power of reading at your disposal 20 three years ago, Radium was unknown today, thanks to constant laboratories work, the power of this Mason usual for elements is at your disposal through the medium of on dark radium serves you safely and surely.

Yeah, definitely safely.

Yeah, it wasn't safe though.

Radium girls, there be asked from the painting to put the paint brush in their mouth just to point it. Know how we doing more painting? Yeah, just make the bristles nice and precise and sharp and sometimes that even paint their nails in their teeth with it. Unfortunate that meant that they were ingesting dangerous levels of radium, and many of them became sick or died from radiation poisoning.

But they've been told that this paint was totally safety East. Okay, 1964. Rand Corporation.

By 1980 we have robots doing housework for us.

Well, we do have the robot vacuum cleaners now. Yeah few years late and a military force would be on the moon by 1999.

Now when this prediction was made, it would be during the Cold War, so that's probably why they thought a military force would be on the moon.

But it may be your future prediction there.

Yeah, that's what they are trying to. Yes what they tried to do and then they wouldn't be affected by nuclear bombs.

Knife under the results is reflecting the low gravity environment as well.

Yeah, and this is aliens on the moon.

Supposedly there on the far side, Okay 1977.

There's no reason for anyone to want a computer in their home. Ken Olsen, founder of Digital Equipment Corporation.

So, do you want a computer in your home?

Um, yeah yeah.

Little did he know that four years later, in 1981, IBM would release their first PC and that'll be the true beginning of kind of the personal computer age.

On the first day that the PC was released, they had over 40,000 orders.

That's a lot. Is is funny.

No one would want to computer in their home. Every cell phone in their pocket.

Exactly, yeah, it's the same IBM he said there was a world need for any five computers not long earlier, yeah?

1995

almost all of the many predictions now being made about 1996 hinge on the insects continuing exponential growth, but I predict the Internet will soon go spectacular supernova and in 1996 catastrophic Lee collapse.

Robert Metcalfe, founder of three com. So he predicted that the Internet would disappear.

Yeah, that's never ever going to happen. If anything, its rising.

More is all the time. Yeah, more and more things and it's expanding. I mean we watching.

TV over the Internet for communicating with people where downloading everything with Facebook, Twitter, playing games, playing games, all these things, yeah. I mean, that's what made this smart phones revolution possible really? Is that interconnectedness? Then? Also the Internet of Things coming where every device in your home will be connected to the Internet like your fridge will know when you put food in, then tell you when it's going out.

Dating things T shirt will have little computers that you can get tracked by.

Yeah, and also to help you when you're watching it will talk to your washing machine and get the credit wash cycle one.

Yeah, and your car's radio someone can control that. Crash your.

Car and of course there also in spam email. He was so confident with his prediction that he promised to eat his own words if he was wrong and he duly did this in 1999 when I've got a copy of the article blended up in some liquid. Yeah, but didn't see what type of liquids, so I think rather than what it's really something stronger she needs is so embarrassed and he drank it.

Okay, got few more predictions here 2005.

Computers will be conscious with superhuman intelligence.

En passant is a futurologist also thought that computers would have taken over most of the physical work by now, and that even have emotions and appears instead.

If I'm on an aeroplane, I want the computer to be more terrified of crashing and I am so does everything it can to stay in the air.

Now, I'm not sure that's a good idea myself, so I think panicking exactly a panic and it would crash. Be sure he wants something. Animation Alicia's can just, since its altitude. Oh my God, I gotta.

Crash Boo Boo Boo Boo.

So I'm not sure that's the correct. Yeah, design philosophy.

And it would be saying, please help me, please put deal with the safety things about 11 hours too early, yeah?

I'm scared of flying.

You haven't even taken for two.

I'm scared of Heights.

Okay, so see that 1950s Popular Mechanics Article an that started with the Storey of a fictional futuristic city and at its centre was an airport so that there is also massive amounts of construction around of super agent full of vehicles and there be 2 tiers higher than the top ones would be. Domestic traffic in the bottom ones would be industrial and commercial traffic.

Then also houses were built to last no longer than 25 years and I just be continually replaced and then there be chemicals useful this cleaning and there be plastics everywhere. So there's a picture here of kind that future city. They're not in the suburbs, so you'd have like nice kind of green areas surrounding the houses and trees and things.

But Interestingly, it did have some predictions in the future where they're saying that burning coal would be illegal and in hot countries solar power would be the choice for generating interesting, so not even nuclear power. So you can see some.

Kind of good environmental concerns there, as it's quite an interesting mix.

Can you remember that these predictions there can only be made based on people's current knowledge and understanding of the world is by very few people kind of predicted the mobile phone and computing. Yeah back then. So there's an understanding that maybe Cole was bad, but maybe less so. Plastics, although to be fair to the article, they said that some of them would be made.

Some waste plant material which actually is reading scientific America, thinking there was an article in there about the top trends of 2019 and one was bio plastics so they can biodegrade.

But the thing that I found missing from there, there's nothing kind of natural about the environment. There's no word, and there's no stone. There's really no bacteria. Is there being killing all this off these chemicals in these kind of really inorganic services where it struggles to live? Going bacteria isn't as evil, which people like to say half the time. It's really important for.

Our health if we don't have bacteria. Actually, that's number for how the world will end. Bacteria will die so.

Yeah, so I think that a lot of these predictions they maybe didn't have.

The right balance.

Then they were made with these amazing great, big bold ideas, but I think they missed something human about. It. Seems like the computing revolution. I think it's starting to almost lose something human.

Those are kind of make he warned about maybe some of the things we're doing today with modern technology. Do we fully understand it yet? Yeah, and what sort of future is that leading us to?

Yeah, like in some games there's like droids and robots coming evil and rebelling.

Yeah, well it could be if.

Machines become conscious. Do they then need to start having their own rights? Yeah.

You probably become conscious ***** with artificial intelligence.

There's lots of experiments where they tried to get him to write music or create pictures and things, but there are a lot of that through machine learning where they've only had an input from lots of existing, say music. Then they've used. That's translating you sung. Can they be truly creative and can they come up with a new idea? Or can they just reinterpret existing ones, which could argue that's what music is? Will creativity is.

We can cite off topic here.

But I wanted to finish this with predictions of the future with lots of things about plastic there and I just wanted to mention somebody who I found this year was my 2019 person of the year in the first annual Kirsty for child person of the Year Awards.

This is a young man from the Netherlands who's studied engineering and it's called Boyan Slat and is also the founder of the Ocean Cleanup. This is relevant to what we're talking about before with the plastics, and you know that waste plastics and rivers, and the sea is. There's a major problem, an it's brilliant what he's doing. He's created different vessels for rivers and also machines that travel. The Asians collecting waste plastic.

I don't think it's brilliant. He's actually trying to change the planet. He's not just talking about action or saying people need to change. He's generally doing it. Yeah, I think it's fantastic.

My favourite person is you because you helped start the podcast you spoke about getting the microscope and you just helped me.

Well, I just believe everybody should be curious. Be particularly trying to predict the future, or even better, if you want to change the future, you need to understand the past and the current.

To be able to form the best future, any do that through knowledge and staying curious.

Anyway.

Thank you for listening to another episode of Curiosity for Child.

I hope you enjoyed it.

And do you have any predictions for the future or what do you think of the ones that recovered today? Please contact us on Twitter at Curie Child pod.

Yeah, and will be excited to hear your different things and maybe even if we might even.

Almost rate what our favourite 1.

Was yeah Ohh here's a good idea. Why don't you write your prediction in a review of our podcast on Apple Podcasts Review Hitman Wink Wink and Winking?

Well, now you're blinking.

My left eye my right eye can my right into Salvus Vegas?

Okay, goodbye everybody. Enjoy your start to 2020.

Amigos.

By

Jenny Penny Maya espanola.

Welcome to the curious.