Citation Needed - The World of Tomorrow

Episode Date: August 16, 2023

The 1939–1940 New York World's Fair was a world's fair held at Flushing Meadows–Corona Park in Queens, New York, United States. It was the second-most expensive American world's fair of all time, exceeded only by St. Louis's Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904. Many countries around the world participated in it, and over 44 million people attended its exhibits in two seasons.[2] It was the first exposition to be based on the future, with an opening slogan of "Dawn of a New Day", and it allowed all visitors to take a look at "the world of tomorrow". Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here.  Be sure to check our website for more details.  

The movie manages to make learning physics interesting. How could you not like that? Because learning is boring, Noah. Learning is boring. Ah, he's got you there. Got you there. No, no, he doesn't. He does not have me there. Oh, what? Never in the studio.

Yeah, you, I did you do this. Not me. This is way too barren for my before-show shenanigans. Halt! Who goes there? Cecil, it's us, man. Oh, oh, hey guys. At a Harpoon gun? What is all this? Oh, this is Tom's before-show shenanigans.

I don't get it. Is this about how we've imagined future technology, right? Yeah, well, I guess this is how Tom imagines the future, you know climate change nuclear war that sort of thing right right got it It's kind of a bummer here. Yeah, well it is it's Tom's imagination. Yeah sure. Oh, hey speaking of nuclear war It's a boring movie no one no one liked to put you everyone liked it but you I like it! See Tom liked it. Hello and welcome to the Citation Needed Podcast, where we choose subject to read a single article about a Wikipedia and pretend we're experts because this is the unit, and that's how it works now. I'm unemployed.

I mean, I am now a full-time podcaster, and this is my job from now on. And I'm joined by other people who exist at various levels of employment Tom Eli knowing he Yeah Dead said last words I'm doing that I'm doing the First part I'm sorry, but Cecil's been homeless for a full week now and he is still talking about it. Like, when are we going to be? Oh my God. Done. It's awesome.

I still have a day job, but I'm still not very good at it. So, you know, there's, oh, there you go. Non patrons, do you know what a gap in a resume means? Do you know what that means? Well, I'm about to find out. If you'd like to make sure this doesn't sting as bad as I think it will, be sure to stick around until the end of the show and learn how to become a patron. With that out of the way, tell us, Tom, what person-placed thing concept phenomenon or event

will be talking about today? The world of tomorrow! Hey, will you obviously visit yourself researching prophetic cartoons? So tell us about that. Okay, all right. Listen, my wife and I were excited. You're going to have to hurry to Jackson. I do like the Jackson. Me too. All right, alien, I were excited when we recently learned that Futurama had returned yet again to television with new episodes.

And this has been a while since we'd watched the old ones. We decided to watch the series from the beginning. And I knew immediately that I had hit citation-needed painter. I mean, our desire to imagine the future, not just to invent, but to dream of what could be invented, and then to imagine a world not just populated, but defined by these creations, is it once so delightfully optimistic and hopelessly naive that I am fascinated not so much by what they suggest about the future, but what they tell us about our present. And so it seems clear to us

all that we're living in a simulation currently being run out of very glitchy computer. Now seems like a good time is any to point to ourselves and laugh while there's still a future to imagine. Is there a is there a doc in your TV room or do you have to get in a car to stare longingly in the sunset over waves, Tom? Yeah. How's both solval out of those problems, Susan? Like you're just, oh, very insensitive response to the homeless. Yeah.

Unhoused. No, I'm not. We gotta get you a cup. Oh, yes, a cup. I'm paying it 10. All right, so let's start with Futurama and the suicide booth. The suicide booth is as you might

suspect a phone booth ask street corner contraption where in the show for a quarter, users can shuffle off this mortal coil while the suicide booth is not in fact in use and available with street corner ubiquity. It is not not available.

Yeah, I mean, if you jump the turn style of the New York City subways are free, they just whamble. This is it. In 2021, a Swiss company invented a 3D printed suicide pod. It is about the size of, well, a phone booth, although someone less boxy in design. The suicide pod allows its users to enter and then, when they're ready, blood the chamber with nitrogen, and to of course die as a result. The pod is not without controversy.

As noted by Kirsten Noel Vickinger, a doctor, lawyer, and professor at the University of Zurich, quote, and I love this quote. Medical devices are regulated because they are supposed to be safer than other products. Just because a product is not beneficial to health, does not mean that it is not also affected by these additional safety requirements.

And quotes. I feel like Gappel's probably already trademarked suicide pods. I should, they love Musk, gonna rename Twitter that next week. Yeah, sure. And besides, by the time you finished 3D printing something the size of a phone booth, you'd be dead of old age anyway.

So it's all kind of pointless. Yeah, really? Yes, no, but let's not overlook the obvious here. What does a safe suicide pod look like? First and smile. It's got caution tape. I gotta get OSHA in here. with the obvious here, what does a safe suicide pod look like in person's mind? It's got caution tape. I got to get ocean in here to check this. This is a sharp edge right on this thing.

The couple railings. Owie. Yeah. Seriously. You come out of it because it didn't work. You're like, I survived. I can sue somebody. And of course, both the Jetsons and Futurama and the fifth element and just about every

cheesy, imagine the future TV or movie trope has embraced the flying car. And in all of flying cars are operated without the bothersome use of wings or rotors or any other visible means of propulsion. Though I will say it was only in the Jetsons that the car also folded up somehow into a nice briefcase. So cool. So cool. And although they don't fit into briefcases and we're not yet bounding about the skies in our flying cars, we may be terrifyingly getting closer.

Just this year, the FAA cleared yet another California startup company's stupid, stupid flying car. Okay. I feel like Tom's just mad because they're not bringing back that exploding air balloon bench jumpy thing. It's all bad. Yeah. Forgotten sports episode.

I am, man. It's not the only reason I'm like, I don't know about that, too. It seems super fun. I agree. Now flying cars are also called of V-talls or vertical take-off and landing vehicles.

The idea is that you can just drive them around like a car or fly them about like a sort of helicopter airplane drone sort of a thing. And while the tech is admittedly pretty cool, consider this, cars, just regular cars, typically get to drive on marked roadways that you can see and that which have things like stop signs and traffic lights And I mean cars really only go forward backward and left and right and still in 2022

46,000 people died in car accidents and that's without a single one of them plummeting from the sky after a fender better It's still the future is, whether we like it or not. I think you'll all be excited to know that Uber Elevate launched in 2019 to begin building the infrastructure to exploit its workers not just on land, but also in the air. So, next time you're drunk and looking for a ride, you can a shoe piling into a car with a stranger who totally pinkie swears that he will not murder you, that you can stagger into a privately owned and maintained helicopter that you micro-rented with a free cell phone app, and then huk out the window onto pedestrians.

That's good or bad. Like I'm genuinely not sure what Tom's position is right now, bro. I feel like he might be against flying machines in general. Just flying? Oh, I don't. I don't think they have to. I feel like he might be against flying machines in general just flying Oh, I don't I don't think The Jetsons also imagined a future with a robot made to clean the house Which I totally understand though looking back I have deep misgivings about the apron and maids cap that they insisted on dressing the robot in.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't, at all. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't.

I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't.

I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. anthropomorphized robot women keeping house for us, we do have the Rumba, which shouldn't be anywhere near as interesting as it actually is. The Rumba, that like anemic little disc that gets stuck under your couch and scares your cat while pretending to vacuum, that fucking thing is based on technology made to clear mind fields. You know what time you think the made-out for this bad summer in the world. There's a fleshlight taped to a Rumba and that is a dark alley you do not want

It's just a roomba Cecil and some people I've either way at Bubsin to shit. It was just begging for that of us I was it was not in favor until I found out the pun name and now I'm 100% of it. And now how fuck that robot? Gotta do something with a sign. I had a nama so I won't and now I'll fuck that robot. I know I promise I won't go too far down a Rumba rabbit hole. That's what Cecil said. Kelly, I just get stuck endlessly bumping back and forth by tried, but Kelly, and the history of this consumer product is worth a quick diversion.

The company I robot was founded in 1990 and like I said, they were originally building robots for defense contracts. That algorithm that lets your room but hack to and throw building a digital map of where it's going and where it's been, that was designed to automate the clearing of minefields. The iRobot guys though wanted, they actually wanted to build the robot vacuum, but the tech was too expensive and complicated, and it was just much more profitable for them to develop robot tech and sell it to the military. So the Rumba in your living room began its life as a terrestrial minesweeper that evolved

into underwater, like walking crab robots detecting mines in the surf zone, and they have it another version, the pack bot, which searched the ruins of the World Trade Center towers for survivors, but believe it or not, their goal from day one was always to develop just a consumer vacuum cleaner. Also naming the Rumba was more difficult than the imagined process,

and the Rumba came perilously close to being named cyber suck. Well, that'd be infringing on Tesla's trademark though, I think. Yeah, no, they don't want it. So, while I can't promise you a world of tomorrow, listener, I can promise you a conclusion of this essay after the break. Can't believe Eli has a time machine. Yeah, well he's got a guy. I got a guy, yes, sure. We fell as welcome.

Wow. Eli, you are so old. I know, I sure am, Tom. So, what do you guys have here in the future? Like flying cars? Yep, yep, got flying cars. Nice, you got the cure for cancer. No, yeah, baby. Big time.

Well, let's see it. Oh, you wanted to see it. Let me just call a flubber here. So, a flubber? Oh, yeah, there's no private car ownership anymore, but the flubbers are actually pretty affordable if you don't use them too often. Look at that, there'll be one here in nine minutes. Oh, okay. So, how do they cure the cancer?

They do that. Right, cancer, yeah. The whip did right up as what they did, and then as long as your prime of life subscription is up to date, you're set. They'll just give you the old shot. Five, five, uh, prime of life. Oh, it's an Amazon product.

Oh, shit, our bluebird canceled because he got replaced by an AI and they mulched him. Does it happen a lot? Oh, it almost never doesn't happen. I thought we just got lucky this time. Wow. Gotta tell you Eli, he seems kind of lame.

Yeah. Super disappointing, bro. Do not like, I mean, I mean, it's not all bad. It's not? Yeah, I mean, chat GPT can make you any porn movie you ask for in like two seconds, you guys wanna see? Yes, I do wanna see that. Yeah, I mean, chat GPT can make you any porn movie you ask for in like two seconds. You guys want to see? Yes, I do want to see that.

Yeah, absolutely. Yes. Elizabeth Warren, sexy none. You got to wait till we get to the thing, man. Well, tell me that next time. We left off. Tom was telling us about a cartoon. No one under 40 remembers. So Tom, what, what part of Thundard the barbarian are we on? The other way you get Captain Caveman, yeah. All right, listen, what I really wanted to tell you guys about was some of the future forward

exhibits at the 1939 New York World's Fair. This exposition was slogan dawn of a new day and an encouraged visitors to take a look at the world of tomorrow. As Quaint is this may seem, we do exactly this every year all over the world. Technology exposition showc showcase new technology, from Vegas to Tokyo, and really, they're all engaged in the same kind of showcasing and dreaming as that 1939 world of tomorrow.

The only difference really here being a touch of hindsight. Well, that said gentlemen, sit back and enjoy because the world is dreamt by the visionaries of the late 1930s is patently insane. Yeah, and if you wanna know how insane, let me remind you that they're hosting their 8th, the future Bright Conference, eight years into the Great Depression on a few months. Try out a second world fucking war. Okay, but they nailed automatic toasters, you guys.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, They need it. We all have it now. They need it. They all have one. All right, so let's take, for example, this exhibit, Electro the Motomatt. This was built by the Westinghouse company. Electro was a seven foot tall, 265 pound robot.

The wiki describes this thing as humanoid inappearant, but I'm gonna drop a picture here and let you guys decide on that humanoid thing. Now the big brains at Westinghouse really tricked out old electro be as close to human as they could, but it was 1939. So it's not super close at all.

Most impressively, Electro did respond to voice commands to walk. He had about 700 words. He can speak powered by fucking love this. A 78 RPM record player inside of his body. That's awesome. It's like a huge. His photo electric eyes could differentiate between red and green light.

So what utility that trick offered, I cannot possibly imagine. Well, I mean, Tesla autopilot, maybe take a page at a certain level. He could move his head and arms. He could blow up a balloon, though undoubtedly he could not buy a knot in it. And the cherry on top, but I love this is that he could of course smoke cigarettes. Kick it smoke cigarettes. He had a 78 RPM record player and only understood 700 words. If this thing could trick a 12 pack of old Milwaukee in three hours, it was my dad. It was my dad 100%.

But, wait, uh, listeners, Heath was not worried about AI taking his job until he found out they were making artificial tall people. And now I think he's. Shaventell found out they were making artificial tall people and now they're frightened. Now, also on exhibition at the fair was the world premiere of the fabric nylon. A, and this is a quote, a streamlined pencil sharpener, which drew quite the crowd. Of course, the view master here was also introduced to the world. But my next real favorite was the introduction of sent-o vision.

The precursor to smell-o vision. Of course. The smell-o vision is exactly what you think it is. So imagine it. You're watching a movie and while the sights and sounds immerse you in a world of make-believe, and something's missing, what you wonder would the world of, say, middle earth smell like? Well, with sentivision, you'd wonder no more. As up the 30 different cents,

could be programmed to be sprayed and then presumably linger and then mingle in the air and combine with the action of the film. Bad idea. It's like doing all the sodas from the fountain thing. It's not going to be good. It always lands on sex old people in Apple juice. That's a combo of those things every time. I think maybe old people were just fucking at your soda shop. I don't better not identify with that. That's what I said. Now, this idea was so awesome. Actually, that there wasn't just sento vision out there, but also the more refined

smell of vision general electric version, which they called smellorama and competitor systems. I love saying this one aroma ramah. This insanity actually held on and John Waters released his film polyester in 1982 using his own stink technology called odor Rama. Though this was somewhat less high-tech, audiences enjoying the sense of Polyester, the movie, were given a scratch and sniff card and queued by the film to take a whiff at appropriate moments. Otters included pizza, glue, gas, and feces. What?

Among other. Admittedly, sniffing glue would probably make every movie you guys cover on your other podcast more enjoyable. So, I can confirm it. So, and by the way, whenever you meet a fucking simp for capitalism and they start giving you the efficiency line, remind them that there used to be five companies competing for the non-existent smell your movies. Of course, I would be remiss given our intro here not to include the general motor is exhibit called your trauma.

The idea was to showcase a model city 20 years from 1939, a world characterized by fast highways and suburban sprawl. And well, it's easy to kind of laugh that this was something new or even desirable, this really was a moment of true innovation. The idea to create a network of highways and expressways was integral not just to the sale of cars to the general public, but as we all know, came to define the American landscape. They also envisioned some true innovations in cars themselves, with features like blind spot and lane change assistance.

And also automated lane centering, a great feature that allows you to wrestle with your car's steering wheel rather than just smoothly pilot the goddamn car yourself. I told you they didn't have to fly Eli. Yeah, no, that's 20 bucks, 20 bucks. The exhibit was a huge and I mean huge scale model of nearly every type of terrain in America, all showing a web of interconnected roadways connecting all parts of the country to one other. The highway system of the exhibit alone was spread out across an acre of space.

Wow. There were over 500,000 individually designed buildings. There were a million trees of 13 distinct species. There were 50,000 cars. To see this exhibit, visitors took an 18-minute automated ride on a simulated airplane flying above the exhibit on a conveyor that seated 552 visitors at one time. 30,000 people a day saw this exhibit during the course of the exhibition. The goddamn thing sounded incredible, and GM got a lot right with it, though it was obviously again,

nothing compared to the streamlined pencil sharpener. There was also at the fair, the first fully constructed computer game, the Nimitron. The Nimitron was a non-programmable digital computer that responded to players' choices using electro-mechanical relays in a dozen different pattern. The thing literally weighed a metric hunt. It weighed a metric and it displayed four lines of seven light bulbs.

Players took turns with the machine removing lights until all the lights were off. I don't understand how that's a game, but it was 1939 and fun hadn't been invented yet. And I guess Noah, you can go ahead and correct me on all the details now in three, two, one, go. And so the game is called NAM, it dates back to at least the 1500s. So it's probably worth noting that fun is a relative term and games just had to be more fun than dying of the plague

to survive back then. Other than that, though, I think you pretty much know. I know a lot of historians would argue that it was truly a computer game, but yeah. Now the cut to Eli Visley searching eBay for an intact Nimitron for a Christmas gift for him. Okay. Well, it's the past years that'll be a broken Nimitron

paid for with Western Union Eli last night. I'm sorry for loving too much. If I'm, let me apologize for loving too much. I love that broken Fairchild Channel F Eli. I like it a lot. Thank you. That's what it was. Now, there is also the Bell Labs voter.

The idea here was have a machine recreate the sounds of a human voice by breaking the voice down into its specific acoustic components. The thing was pretty limited by all accounts, and that makes sense, given how awful lots of modern computer-generated speech is even now, and the machine's operation was ridiculously complex. A trained operator might, after months of practice, produce recognizable speech, but nobody was fooled into thinking they were like

chatting with a person when they really weren't. And this technology was actually intellectually foundational in the kind of automated speech processes that have given us automated voice answering systems and YouTube AI voiceovers. So can go straight down. Tom, I'm late coming to the notes this week, but I want you to know that if I had the time, I would clone your voice and have you apologize to the computers right here. Just, you know, if I had the time.

Now, a quick aside here as well, I think we're very often tempted to think of people being really prudish in the 1930s, but there was just like a lot of nudity at this exhibition. Like a lot. Really? There was a topless woman on display at the Frozen Alive Girl display. It doesn't describe by the way what the Frozen Alive Girl display was

except for that there was a frozen alive girl. There were women, poplis, and in very revealing costumes at Salvador Dali's attraction, which contained nearly nude performers posing as statues. And at the Bendex Lama temple, they were having a hard time drawing an audience, so they just added in a show detailing the erotic temptations of a young Buddhist priest, which featured a number of fully nude women in the show. Future atheists want. I think they nailed that one.

Yeah, they got it. Got it. Good. Attendance did in fact go up. Things got really crazy when they taped that fleshlight to the electro, the moto man. It turns out balloons weren't the only thing you could blow. Yeah. Serious were the only thing you could blow. Yeah. Serious. Really. I think you can suck. You know, that's what it was. They were making a blowjob

machine. And he goes, and this is for cigarettes. Uh, boss. It's why is it shaped like your dad? Because. A finely Westinghouse also had an exhibit that you can still see today. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie.

I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie.

I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. That's optimistic. Inside of it are writings by Einstein and Thomas Mann, copies of Life magazine, but no serial, a Mickey Mouse watch, a Gillette safety razor, a cupidow, one dollar in coins,

a pack of Hamil cigarettes, and some microfilm with a bunch of shit on it that is certainly corroded into nothing. This capsule of trinkets and junk is buried 50 feet in the ground and marked by a small stone plaque. The coordinates are known and published. So if you wanted to, you could go visit it right now. Otherwise, you'll need to wait 5,000 years into the future to be disappointed. All right. If you had the summer, you learned one sentence, what would it be? That I need to be careful not to Eli get a 3D printer, where I'm gonna have to learn how to write skips.

I'm ready for the quiz. Absolutely. All right, Tom, according to drawings by futurist artist John Mark Cote at the 1900 World's Fair, which of the following would be true in the year 2000? A, firefighters would fly around with bat wings. We're going to train whales and sea horses in order to travel underwater.

How stupid is that? How stupid is that? How stupid is that? How stupid is that? How stupid is that? How stupid is that? How stupid is that? How stupid is that?

How stupid is that? How stupid is that? How stupid is that? How stupid is that? How stupid is that? It's not, maybe we're shrinking, no, maybe we've got a bad way. Yeah, it might be that they shrunk us or maybe they're seahorses. Based on these drawings, he had never seen a seahorse. Right. There's only one. Option C, we're finally going to be able to hunt and kill seagulls by scuba diving and then reverse fishing for those birds from underwater with our lines going up to the surface of the water and then the seagulls will grab it and then, huh, we got them.

Also, we invent scuba to do that too. Or D, all of the above. Oh, God. Well, I mean, you were kind enough to include images here and I know those are leading you off track and I just made those possible. Oh, yeah, Well, I mean, you, you weren't kind enough to include images here. And I know those are leading you off track. And I just made those. Oh, maybe he threw those. I mean, I don't like. They're me journey. I want the answer to be C, but I believe that it's D. All right. You cracked my double bluff code. It was D.

All the. All right, Tom. What's the best porn movie about an Android? Hey the sperminator B Pacific Rim job C By robot nice or D

The dirt devil and Mrs. Jones Right, you like that That was excellent punish. Thank you. Oh, see. So that it. I feel like. I feel like it's got to be Pacific Rim job. Oh, I agree.

Yes. Correct. All right. I have one last question for you. Tom, what actual thing do we have now that's at least as stupid as anything 1940s futureists had in mind? A, crox, B. I have crox, B.

So everyone needs to read. The question stands, I'm just going to stand here. Be crypto. See earbuds that turn themselves on and off pretty much whenever the fuck they feel like so I said to burden you with the trouble of discrete fucking buttons on the side of them. Or DE Elon Musk. Did I write this question? I feel I've never felt so close to you like I've never felt so close to you.

I've never felt so close to you, Noah. It's, it's a stupid E.E. They're all stupid. It's all trash. The future has trashed the now is trashed. It's. All right, well, I feel like I want just because I mean, I don't know if I'm going to get an answer or there was an answer and there was a thing I don't know I just like that that somehow Noah compared Crocs to crypto is like

crypto is like Crocs of currency that's just amazing Yeah, all right Noah you're the way Awesome, well you get to be the essay. That's nice sweet. All right. All right, no, you're the winner. Exactly. Awesome. Well, you get to be the SAS next week. Sweet. All right. Well, for Noah, Eli, Heath, and Tom. I'm Cecil. Thank you for bringing out what's today.

Back next week, and by then, I will be an expert on something else. Between now, and then you can listen to Tom and I at Cognitive Discs or Eli, knowing Heath on God-Off and Movies. And if you'd like to help keep this show going, you can make a per episode donation at patreon.com slash citation pod.

Because that's my job now. Or you could leave it to five star of you, ever where you can. And if you'd at patreon.com slash citation pod. That's my job now. Or you can leave us a five star review every weekend. And if you'd like to get in touch with us, check out past episodes, connect with us on social media, or check the show notes. Be sure to check out citationpod.com. How that AI porn stuff was great. Unbelievable. Right?

Hey, where's Heath? Oh, he's still, you know, in there. I Would like to hear more about proper taxation and a healthy capitalism. Absolutely Should I get it? Don't That's the door No, yet you're right. That's fair. Don't touch it Oh, la, la, la.