EXPIRES: 1934

WRITTEN: 1914

So, one after another, either as pilots or passengers, will the members of the club ascend; and before the sheds are closed and the aerodrome deserted, each and all will have soared in flight, and tasted that thrill and exultation which comes of a rush in a plane through the cool of the evening air. But today, if we try to grasp such a notion as this, our state of mind is very like that of our grandfathers had some prophet dared tell them the day would dawn when, seated comfortably at dinner in a car on wheels, men would be drawn by an engine at 60 miles an hour: and yet the man or woman who has not, say twenty years hence, made a journey through the air, will be in exactly the same position as one who, at the present time, has never been by train.

Claude Grahame-White

The Aeroplane

Written: 1914

Addressed to: 1934

Source: The Aeroplane

Author: Claude Grahame-White

Category: Culture & Society

Annotation

2000

In the three short decades between now and the twenty-first century, millions of ordinary, psychologically normal people will face an abrupt collision with the future. Citizens of the world's richest and most technically advanced nations will find it increasingly painful to keep up with the incessant demand for change.

Alvin Toffler

2014

Indeed, the most somber speculation I can make about A.D. 2014 is that in a society of enforced leisure, the most glorious single word in the vocabulary will have become work!

Isaac Asimov

1975

There is a quality even meaner than outright ugliness or disorder, and this meaner quality is the dishonest mask of pretended order, achieved by ignoring or suppressing the real order that is struggling to exist and to be served... Low-income projects that become worse centers of delinquency, vandalism and general social hopelessness than the slums they were supposed to replace.

Jane Jacobs