Back From The Future: 1995's predictions of 2025 life

The Chuo Shinkansen is currently being built for a 505 km/h maximum speed & does use supercomducting magnets for that:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C5%AB%C5%8D_Shinkansen

Not really. They are test trains and don’t carry passengers. Fastest passenger trains are 320km/hr

Run the electric trains on green energy. It’s 2025. I was told 10 years ago renewables were ready and cheaper than fossil fuels. What’s taking so long?

In the meantime, those really inefficient gas guzzling cars still rule.

The terrain is sort of difficult in the Canadian Shield, but it gets easy in the prairies, and then very difficult as you head west into the Rockies. I think the bigger problem going north and west of the Quebec City/Toronto corridor is the sparse population.

With a single line, you would also need to choose between serving Edmonton (like the CN mainline) or Calgary (like the CP mainline). VIA rail currently skips Calgary even though it's the bigger/faster growing city.

Really, you need at least 3 lines because you also have to go both north and south of Lake Huron. And that's not even getting into Atlantic Canada.

China almost got 500 KPH. They were running >400 KPH up until 2021.

"The Shanghai maglev is the world's first commercial high-speed maglev ... Prior to May 2021 the cruising speed was 431 km/h ..."

Ah, just saw that the author has included the original text as PDF so don't have to speculate about original intent after all

Does seem to mostly be "here are some people in touch with current developments happening in the world thinking about their next phase" more than full-blown futurism - but still super interesting to read (if only to see the vestiges of tech optimism pre-dotcom-enshittification)

A few things which leap out that weren't included in the original post:

- "everything will be smart - that is, responsive to its external or internal environment"

Predicted the glassy eyed dream at the time, but not the more cynical reality we got where that smartness more often benefits the seller than the consumer

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- "in-depth personal medical histories will be on record and in full control of the individual in some form of medical smart card or disk"

Another fun combo of rarely safe prediction based on developments of the time mixed with (in hindsight) overly optimistic assumptions about commercialism

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And the bit summarised as purportedly predicting "(the internet)" actually has a pretty neat bit which was missed

"face-to-face, voice-to-voice, person-to-data, and data-to-data communication will be available to any place at any time from anywhere."

Predicting Skype/zoom seems a tad more interesting (even though things like Dick Tracy or 2001: A space odyssey had long had us wishing for it before 1995)

The preceding bit aged less well

"...broadband network of networks based on fiber optics; other techniques, such as communications satellites, cellular, and microwave will be ancillary."

Interesting that they appeared to be emphasising an _increase_ in wired data transit

But not surprising, as back then any cellular comms were far from impressive in comparison to the big-ass wired links you could use from universities

(That said, even back then we had microwave links acting as secondary high speed links for campuses which didn't yet have fibre or coax installed)

Yes, the speed is fine but it only exists on one commercial route. Something is holding up mass adoption. Likely the cost.

This sort of technology would be significant if widely adopted.

CA HSR is likely to have at least one section open by then just proving you are wrong.

That I'm only willing to predict one section and not the enough to be useful proves your analysis of why is correct.

Eminent domain, not imminent. There's no connection to time, but the state has the absolute power to seize property; in many countries (including the US) this is limited by constitution and regulation to specific purposes and to require just compensation.

Another factor in the US is that our railroads are generally freight oriented. Routing to have three ground based networks is challenging (road, freight rail, passenger high speed rail), especially in urban areas where right of way is expensive and also over mountain passes. A lot of urban freight rail lines are currently unused; some of them become greenway rail trails, others sit unused and may be at risk of encroachment, but often the alignment isn't useful for high speed rail anyway.

I'm Canadian and remember repurposing AOL floppy disks that came in the mail circa 1996.

Never used the service though.

I think it mostly estimates the wrong changes. Sci fi from the first half of the twentieth century overshot in its predictions of universal flying cars and interstellar travel, but generally missed the internet or the idea that women would be in any way involved in the science. And it's amazing just how many plots up until the end of the last century assume mobile communication isn't routine

Yeah. I think it is because most SF is not actually about predicting the future, but analyzing modern society. So, they take modern society and make one or two big changes that allow the author to discuss their thing.

If they correctly account for long term change, especially after introducing their big twist, then they won’t have a society that reflects modern society, it will just be totally alien.

Sometimes. A lot of SF assumes FTL travel, which we have no reason to think will ever be possible (and even less possible when you realize they also are assuming to time dilation effects).

IIRC Alain Dalmasio talks about this a lot and tried to readjust how his SF anticipates changes.

There is actually an expectation that any movie that happens in the future to be a SciFi one. I we _do_ expect some sort of change from today. Either mad max style, terminator style or expanse style other more positive ones, you name it. But would be quite unexpected to make a movie, set to 2094 and everything looks the same. We just know, as a civilization, that something changes.

But I expect in 2094 we still live in the same houses, work on the land, enjoy sun and the sea, maybe still employed, but some change will be happening.

But, but, but! Triangulation by infiltrated and gag-ordered by corrupted government carrier/ISP! End to end encryption! Trojans! Malware! Hacked Wi-Fi! Burner phones! Bought with anonymous and forbidden cash, or even stolen! War driving! The possibilities are endless!

Bad Religion had a song Ten in 2010 that predicted 10 billion people by 2010. Not only were they wrong about the total population, they were overly pessimistic about the ability of societies to feed and support that many people.