1958 Disney animation predicting the future
An excerpt from the 1958 "Disneyland" TV Show episode entitled "Magic Highway USA". In this last part of the show, an exploration into possible future Transportation technologies is made. It's hard to believe how little we've accomplished on this front since 1958, and how limited the scope for imagining such future technologies has become. Witness an artifact from a time where the future was greeted with optimism. Note the striking animation style here, achieved with fairly limited animation and spectacular layouts. From YouTube.
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4 
ok, i guess they didnt think about the necessity of excercise, which america has very well adopted (thats why were all fat disgusting slobs).
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4. LightAng3l 5 years ago
why the hell is it all about transportation ? ...did they think moving around is all we do in "the future" ... 
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5. amnydhrreew 5 years ago
funny! i especially like the part about keeping snow and ice off the motorways by heating them! you guys won't even be able to afford to heat your own homes pretty soon, let alone miles of concrete!
happy motoring america!
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Things like the punch cards was what they could relate to back in the 50's when punch cards was the input/output card format of choice.
The Ideas of those days seems pretty far fetched, even silly. However things like backup cameras, Information signs on highways and other things have come to pass.
This sure paints a rosy outlook on the future. I guess they never could visualised $ 4.00 gas. Those days you were paying .18 to .20 a gallon and most cars got 8-10 miles per gallon.
People did not travel very far.
Oh, well our future looks pretty bleak. If the goverment destabalizes the middle east you won't have to worry about $ 8.00 a gallon gas, it won't be avaiable at any price. Food, grocery stores will be empty as they were on Thursday just before Hurricane Rita hit the upper Texas coast. The only things on the shelves was salt and papper and pickeled pig's feet.
Sounds like the beginning of the 7 years of Tribulation the scriptures talk about.
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they werent thinking of crbon back then either. jets, heated road = super high carbon output
im not an enviromentalist or anything either, but we all know its bad
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11. Hellion1982 3 years ago
Today's Science Fiction is Tomorrows Science. It might not happen overnight, but we'll start implementing these ideas slowly. We'll even improve on them.
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HMMM LOOKS LIKE WE ARE ALL GOING TO BE LAZY 
!!!! Some good Ideas but others are trusting too much in technology... OMGoodness People get out and WALK, JOG, RUN.. 
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13. Forcemaster2000 312 days ago
What a bunch of hogwash propaganda! This cartoon came out in 1958, America's "super-hiway system" was born in the post world war II era. Funding for the highway's was drying up and propaganda like this was produced to get Americans excited about how the government wanted to spend their tax dollars. People today take for granted the highways they have to traverse this country. Before W.W.II traveling cross country wasn't just a trip, it truly was an adventure, what today can be done in a couple of days of non-stop driving, back then, took literally weeks!
(51 votes)
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1. dave9191 5 years ago
well 50 years later we have quite a few of those technologies, but they are either impractical or too expensive, and we have the joy of traffic and overcrowding and lots and lots of red tape.
But you gotta love the punch card system for programming the car