I was born in the age of the television, essentially meaning I grew up with the likes of Disney Channel legendary hits, such as That’s so Raven, Kim Possible, and The Proud Family. In addition to the regular shows on Disney Channel at the time, I often found myself watching the old black-and-white TV shows. The throwback channel when I was growing up had The Flintstones, I Love Lucy, and Bewitched. One show that was on occasionally was The Jetsons.
 
Set in the year 2060, the Jetsons were a family of the future. They drove around in spaceships, had futuristic robot maids, and lived in a world knee-deep in technology. Now in 2021, it is nearly 40 years away from the time they predicted, and there are a number of things that have proven true. For example, computers rose to popularity significantly in the 1970s and have since been staples in our homes. Like the TV show predicted, you can call people and see their face over the phone – think FaceTime, Skype, or Zoom. However, not all things have come to fruition; we are yet to have flying cars that can condense themselves into the size of a briefcase.
 
If there was going to be a new version of The Jetsons, set 100 years from today, what would the world look like? Just by taking to a few moments to search the web and consume popular media, there appears to be a fairly grim picture of what the world will look like. Quite a few predications have been made.
 
Some people think the U.S. will break apart, separating into countries that share the same ideologies or political beliefs as seen in the novel by David French, called Divided We Fall. Others see a resurgence towards the hippie days of the 70s, with a revitalization of free love and environmental conservatism. And if the new green movement does not occur, a potential Wall-E scenario may occur, where the earth is covered in so much trash that humans all leave the planet and live in a spaceship instead. Yet another option is the outbreak of another world war, destroying the planet, making it uninhabitable like in the TV show The 100.
 
Because I am a science person, my brain also jumps to advancements in medicine that could be seen in a century. While remote surgeries occur fairly regularly today, whereby doctors use robotics to perform delicate procedures, in the future, maybe there will be no need for doctors. An artificially-intelligent machine will see you whenever you have an ailment, diagnosing you by scanning your body. Imagine Baymax from the movie Big Hero 6 helping you take medicine. Perhaps childbirth will no longer be a guessing game between traits and Mendelian genetics. One simply has to take a pill to change the color of a child’s eyes in utero, or receive a shot to make their child 6-foot-tall versus 5’8,” and all genetic diseases and ailments will be eradicated somewhat similar to the James Patterson mystery thriller Perfect People.
 
I imagine a potential world 100 years from now where everyone has the same proportions. Plastic surgery is common, and everyone looks essentially the same. All fitting into the mold of what is considered beautiful at that given point in time like the novel Uglies. Perhaps there will be robots living among us that people build emotional relationships with or something like that because no human communicates with each other in the same way as they do now. Therefore, they no longer have the emotional capability to interact leading to a takeover of technology as in the TV show Black Mirror. Or the robots simply turn against humans like in the dystopian film I-Robot.
 
The only truth that can be garnered from the myriad of scenarios I presented, is that the future is a mind-boggling thing to predict. The future is unexpected in every way imaginable. Even though we hope it may turn out one way, we never know until the future is the present. While The Jetsons predicted some of the advances in technology seen today, there is no shortage of options through popular media of what the future may hold for us now. Will we be flying in cars, maybe? Will the entire world be uninhabitable, or will technology rear its ugly head, perhaps? Any of these situations may come true or may not. Regardless, I cannot wait to see it in real life, not just through the lens of a television screen or a novel’s pages.

– Vanessa Davis

Vanessa is a master’s student at the Bush School of Government and Public Service.