From 1966 to 2013 A Prediction of American Lifestyle

American Home September 1966

Home Learning Room

I brought home an "American Home" magazine to read from September 1966. The issue is devoted to predicting what our future will be after the year 2000. Here's one of their many predictions. "By the turn of the next century only 10 percent of us will be engaged with 'work'. The computer and automation will relieve us of the drudgery and allow 90 percent to spend time on whatever pleases them. The machines will do the work, create the wealth which will allow every family to follow the leisure path." 

Here is a quote I thought some of you might enjoy. "Furniture as an art form. Only a favored few used to be able to indulge a taste for furnishings that were more than merely functional. Because the future holds more for us in terms of education, income, and leisure our taste levels are bound to rise and we shall find furniture and other furnishings that are also an art form. This handcrafted metal cabinet is an example." The cabinet pictured is by Paul Evans. What they didn't know was that we'd find the furniture that was created during that time period to be a valued art form today.

On education, "Ph.Ds will run in families; everybody will be taking courses on the computer". " "The entire emphasis on learning has changed. We use to think that a learned man was one who had all the facts in his head. Today we have the facts accessibly stored in computer memories, microfilm in libraries, and other repositories of knowledge. Learning is knowing how to gain access to these stored facts and organizing them once you find them" Dr. Lee Goldman Carnegie Institute of Technolgy.