A Future With Indoor Smoking Might Be the Oddest Choice in the New Movie 'Civil War'

A Future With Indoor Smoking Might Be the Oddest Choice in the New Movie 'Civil War'

Matt Novak
1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, 2020s

There’s a scene early in the new film Civil War that probably won’t strike many people as weird, but it stuck out to me like a sore thumb. Journalists are sitting in the lobby of a New York hotel talking about their plan to leave the city and viewers see one of the reporters is smoking a cigarette. Indoor smoking in most states within the U.S. is a big no-no here in 2024 and this choice was probably made to establish just how far things had crumbled within American society. But it got me thinking about not only whether this was a realistic prediction. I started looking back at how many other times indoor smoking has been represented in movies about the future.

Scientists of 1941 Predicted We'd Be Watching the Eclipse From the Moon With Atomic-Powered Spaceships

Scientists of 1941 Predicted We'd Be Watching the Eclipse From the Moon With Atomic-Powered Spaceships

Matt Novak
1940s

The January 5, 1941 issue of American Weekly magazine, which was included with the Sunday edition of many newspapers across the U.S., made a pretty bold promise about how people of the 21st century would watch the eclipses of the future. Specifically, the magazine imagined the people of 2033 would be watching the eclipse from the Moon. And if that’s going to happen in just nine years, we’re going to need NASA to speed up quite a few things.

The Movies U.S. Politicians Really Didn't Want the World to See in the 1950s

The Movies U.S. Politicians Really Didn't Want the World to See in the 1950s

Matt Novak
1950s

From the perspective of 2024, The Case Against Brooklyn (1958) isn’t a particularly scandalous movie. But it was so hated by American politicians that they wanted to make sure people outside the U.S. wouldn’t be able to see it. How do we know this? It comes from congressional testimony I recently found about the kinds of movies the U.S. government wanted to help spread around the world.

RIP Vernor Vinge, Sci-Fi Writer Who Popularized the Tech Singularity in the 1980s

RIP Vernor Vinge, Sci-Fi Writer Who Popularized the Tech Singularity in the 1980s

Matt Novak
1980s, 1990s

Vernor Vinge, a sci-fi author and former math professor at San Diego State University, died on Wednesday at the age of 79. Vinge will be remembered for his sci-fi novels, including Fire Upon the Deep (1993) and Rainbows End (2007), but the man will also be etched into the history books as a visionary thinker who famously helped popularize the concept of the technological singularity.

There's No Guarantee That 'News' As You Know It Will Exist in the Future

There's No Guarantee That 'News' As You Know It Will Exist in the Future

Matt Novak
1900s, 1910s, 1920s, 2020s

What happens to news in the future if all the media outlets you used to watch, read, and listen to go away? What will replace the newspapers and the websites and your local TV channel? Those are the questions facing a lot of people who are witnessing an upheaval in media that feels enormous. And the answer, if history is any guide, is that it’s entirely possible nothing could replace them. The future might just be filled with a lot less news and in a form you don’t necessarily love.

Every American Will Be Independently Wealthy: Overly Optimistic Predictions From Experts of 1966 About the Year 2000

Every American Will Be Independently Wealthy: Overly Optimistic Predictions From Experts of 1966 About the Year 2000

Matt Novak
1960s

The February 25, 1966 issue of Time magazine included predictions for the year 2000. And with the benefit of of some distance, the article is an incredible artifact of prognostication. The predictions came at a time when the U.S. was experiencing a prolonged period of unprecedented technological and economic progress. And they had no idea that the postwar growth they’d been seeing since 1950 would start to find harsh limits in the 1970s and beyond.

The Movies 100 Years From Now, According to Director D.W. Griffith in 1924

The Movies 100 Years From Now, According to Director D.W. Griffith in 1924

Matt Novak
1920s

What will movies be like 100 years into the future? That was the question tackled in 1924 by D.W. Griffith, the director of Birth of a Nation (1915), a movie that was both a huge hit in the U.S. and a controversial one, given its celebration of the Ku Klux Klan. Griffith published his thoughts on the subject of tomorrow’s movies in the May 3, 1924 issue of Collier’s magazine, which was trimmed down and republished in the June 1924 issue of Reader’s Digest.

Can It Be Done? This 1930s Comic Strip Imagined a Gadget-Filled Future

Can It Be Done? This 1930s Comic Strip Imagined a Gadget-Filled Future

Matt Novak
1930s

In the mid-1930s, inventor Ray Gross wrote a newspaper comic focused on gadgets of the future titled Can It Be Done? And while its vision was decidedly more humble than the flying cars and jetpacks imagined in comic strips that would come later—like Closer Than We Think (1958-1963) and Our New Age (1958-1975)—it’s still an interesting artifact of retro-futurism filled with some clever ideas for tomorrow.

The Guy in 1917 Who Used the Latest in High Tech to Hear Both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans at the Same Time

The Guy in 1917 Who Used the Latest in High Tech to Hear Both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans at the Same Time

Matt Novak

New technologies can literally change the world. The railroad opened up America’s economy to the west, digital photography gave virtually everyone cameras in their pockets, and the atomic bomb ended World War II. But new technologies aren’t necessarily always used for the most practical or world-changing ends. And I was reminded of this while flipping through an old magazine recently.

Jetpacks, Mobile Phones and the 30-Hour Workweek: Isaac Asimov's Predictions For Life in the Futuristic Year 1990

Jetpacks, Mobile Phones and the 30-Hour Workweek: Isaac Asimov's Predictions For Life in the Futuristic Year 1990

Matt Novak
1960s, 1990s

The August 1965 issue of Science Digest magazine included predictions from the sci-fi legend Isaac Asimov, who by that time had written such classics as the Foundation series in the 1940s and ‘50s and I, Robot (1951), establishing himself as a household name in looking at possible futures. But Asimov’s predictions in this article, like so many of those we explore at Paleofuture, were completely earnest.

America's Moon Base For World War III, Imagined Just After World War II

America's Moon Base For World War III, Imagined Just After World War II

Matt Novak
1940s

Why don’t we have a base on the Moon yet? As I’ve written before, it’s largely because you don’t need one to nuke Moscow—the primary reason we did pretty much anything during the space race of the 1960s. But back in the late 1940s you could be a little more honest about why the U.S. might want a base on the Moon. And the April 1948 issue of Mechanix Illustrated magazine did just that, complete with incredible illustrations.

Three Major Cities Were Supposed to Be Destroyed In Nuclear War By 2024, According to JFK's National Security Advisor

Three Major Cities Were Supposed to Be Destroyed In Nuclear War By 2024, According to JFK's National Security Advisor

Matt Novak
1970s

Back in 1974, a major magazine asked experts from around the world what life in 2024 was going to look like. And one expert with extensive experience at the White House influencing policy was certain about the future of nuclear weapons. Specifically, he believed three major cities—one in the U.S., one in Russia, and one in China—would all be destroyed with nuclear bombs. And given everything we know about nuclear close calls during the Cold War, it’s a miracle his prediction didn’t turn out to be correct.

Electric Ambulances Are Way Older Than You'd Probably Guess

Electric Ambulances Are Way Older Than You'd Probably Guess

Matt Novak
1890s, 1900s, 1910s

When the health care company DocGo announced in 2022 it would be rolling out a new all-electric ambulance for transporting patients, promotional materials billed it as America’s first electric ambulance. And while that assertion wouldn’t necessarily seem immediately suspect to anyone alive today, since our lives have largely been dominated by the internal combustion engine, that would certainly be news to people at the turn of the 20th century. Because the electric ambulance is probably way older than you’d guess.

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