This site simply PWNS with a capital O.


Paleo-Future
a look into the future that never was


Be sure to check out the series of German postcards from 1900 depicting life in 2000!
Postkarten

As well as many other parts of the site.

~
I used to be absolutely fascinated by this kind of thing and what it told us about the nature of human thought and prediction. And I still am. I like to look through encyclopedias or newspapers from the time just before, during, or just after something major happens, to see how it was viewed at the time, rather than through the editorial lens of history.

For example, looking up "Adolf Hitler" in a 1937 edition of an encyclopedia at the library at UCLA, and seeing what it had to say about him from an American perspective, since it was clear he was grabbing power and land in Europe and was a tyrant and open racist, but neither Britain, France, nor America was yet at war with Germany. What would they say about him? Would there be any speculation of the explosion soon to come by some particularly prescient author?

Or reading a blow-by-blow account of the 1883 eruption of Krakatau (Krakatoa) and feeling like I was there, seeing, hearing, and feeling it personally and thinking to myself "What the FUUUCK???"

~
So this site is like a dream come true. I could spend days on it.
Hmm, I just might do.