A century ago, the popular English novelist W.L. George sat down and put his mind to make predictions about the world we live in today. That world has not, alas, turned out to be one in which his books are much read, but in his day a great many readers were moved by his social cause-driven fiction and reportage.
In 1922, novelist W.L. George makes accurate predictions about what the world will look like in 2022
For its edition of May 7, 1922, the New York Herald commissioned George to share that sense with their readers. In response, he described a world in which “commercial flying will have become entirely commonplace,” and “wireless telegraphy and wireless telephones will have crushed the cable system,” resulting in generations who’ll never have seen “a wire outlined against the sky.” As for the cinema, “the figures on the screen will not only move, but they will have their natural colors and speak with ordinary voices. Thus, the stage as we know it today may entirely disappear, which does not mean the doom of art, since the movie actress of 2022 will not only need to know how to smile but also how to talk.”
Other women, however, have proven just as capable as George had imagined: “All positions will be open to them and a great many women will have risen high. The year 2022 will probably see a large number of women in Congress, a great many on the judicial bench, many in civil service posts, and perhaps some in the President’s Cabinet.” Georges foresees the birth-control pill, but also the “pill lunch.” Unlike some reformers, he hesitates to declare the abolition of the family, but he does imagine the “majority of mankind” occupying modular homes in high-rise communal dwellings (“I have a vision of walls, furniture, and hangings made of more or less compressed papier-mâché”), all gathered in climate-controlled cities set under glass.
Above, you can hear a reading of W.L. George’s uncanny forecasts. The reading comes courtesy of the YouTube Channel Voices of the Past. Also, you can read the original text of the article here.
