“The capacity for hope
is the most significant fact of life.
It provides human beings with a sense of destination
and the energy to get started.”
Norman Cousins
Hope is the most important pillar of a person's life which should never be lost, otherwise the strength to cope with victories and defeats, falls and leaps will fade away.
The hope for a bright future has inspired people throughout the years, giving them strength to fight for their rights and achieve goals leading to our world’s development. Back in time, people sought to improve society in all possible areas, with the aim of making human life on Earth comfortable and secure.
In the last century, large changes affected the field of technology. By transferring their ideas to paper, people managed to secure and pass on to future generations the type of world in which their ancestors had hoped to find themselves. It was their hope for the future that became the driving force for achieving such outstanding results.
This article will show the world familiar to a modern human through the eyes of people living in the early 20th century.
In 1955, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce put together a slideshow film entitled “People, Products and Progress: 1975” to show off what American industry had in store for the technologies of the future. The audience was presented with illustrations representing life 20 years into the future.
1. The Supermarket’s Electronic eye
One of the illustrations showed the supermarket of the future. “When milady goes food shopping in 1975, there’ll be no lengthy waiting at a check-out counter,” the slide read. “The improvement, pictured here, will be an automatic computer that will price all the items as they pass under an electronic eye.”
Despite the fact that such a forecast was made for 1975, the world's first store with self-service checkouts began to operate in New York some time later, in 1993. Since then, more and more self-service machines have appeared all over the world.
Nowadays, self-service stores are continuing to change and develop. The development of technology and online shopping has allowed large online retailers to open their own self-service outlets. Many self-service stores make use of automated checkouts, allowing shoppers to scan, pack and pay for their purchases on their own.
2. Double Decker Communication Train
The round streamlined shape inherent in this train was associated with the future and inspired many people.
Some time later, in 1964, the four experimental double-deck power cars entered service in Sydney, Australia, enabling the operation of the first fully double-deck Electric Multiple Unit passenger train in the world.
3. Shopping Via Phone
Household work would become much easier because of the arrival of online stores, and all the necessary items could be purchased directly through the phone, people believed.
The history of online shopping started in 1979. By connecting a TV to a computer via a telephone line, Michael Aldrich invented a system that later became the foundation for online shopping. In 1992, the first online store for books, “Book Stacks Unlimited”, was created and three years later, Jeff Bezos launched Amazon as an online book retailer. Within 30 days, the company was shipping internationally to 45 different countries.
Nowadays, it is difficult to imagine life without the ability to order goods online. We have access to all the goods from different regions, countries, continents. This possibility is the attribute of the modern world, and if it had not been for the hope for a happy future and the hard work of the people of the last century, we would not be able to be content with this now.
Using these three illustrations as an example, one can reasonably assess how strong the changes are in the modern world and what advances in technology and gadgets have been achieved by scientists. There are a lot of similar illustrations, as people throughout the years have motivated each other with their dreams and goals, their hope for progress.
Hope evokes all the best qualities in a person, sometimes making them find a way out of the most hopeless, at first glance, situation. And even when something turns out to be impossible to achieve or overcome, still, hope remains with us until the very end, warming our tired wounded heart with a warm gentle light.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Ang, C. (2021, July 5). Timeline: Key Events in the History of Online Shopping. Visual Capitalist
Dalal, K. (2020, September 19). Double-deckers: Twice the joy. Peepul Tree
Lufkin, B. (2020, July 27). The Curious Origins of Online Shopping. BBC
Murphy, A. (2020, April 5). Self-service: a short history of supermarkets. Europeana Foundation
Novak, M. (2022, June 11). How People From 1955 Imagined Technology of the Future. Gizmodo
U.S. Chamber of Commerce. (n.d.). People, Products and Progress: 1975. Hagley Digital Archives