Thursday
Jan312008
Learning in 1999 A.D. (1967)
Thursday, January 31, 2008 at 5:50AM 
Today, we have more from the 1967 film 1999 A.D. This clip shows the way children of the future will learn. The personal computer, audio lectures and computerized testing are demonstrated. The concept is strikingly similar to the "Answer Machine" of 1964 we looked at a while back.
You can find 1999 A.D. on the DVD Yesterday's Tomorrows Today, released by A/V Geeks.
See also:
1999 A.D. (1967)
1999 A.D. Intro (1967)
Online Shopping (1967)
1999 A.D. Controversy
Hawaii as Educational Resort (1970)
The Answer Machine (1964)
Homework in the Future (1981)
The Road Ahead: Future Classroom (1995)
Closer Than We Think! (1958-1963)
Connections: AT&T's Vision of the Future (Part 7, 1993)
Project 2000 - Apple Computer (1988)
Reader Comments (11)
Apparently ergonomics and posture have no role in the miraculous world of the future. (Especially love the couch - harsh angles, no padding, and a hard shelf behind to whack your head on!)
I like the fact that in spite of the awesome teaching machines, the kid is still dumb as a bag of rocks.
He really looks bored. And lonely. I'm not sure that he wants to learn this stuff.
Isaac Asimov's "The Fun They Had".
Check the Wiki for it.
Clearly, they were off the mark. In today's society, he wouldn't "flunk". He would just be encouraged to examine what he answered correctly and spend the rest of the day at his "self-asteem" class.
Don't you love the question about who ground the first telescope? Both choices are wrong. The first telescope was made by Hans Lippershey.
http://www.scienceclarified.com/scitech/Telescopes/The-First-Telescope.html
Why are there 12 identical buttons, all labeled X and Y?
And why does 'y' come before 'x'?
And why does 'y' come before 'x'?
More 1967 gender inequality?
This clip is hilarious. The child actor acts as if he's going to get a beating from his overbearing stage parents as soon as the shooting stops. I've seen prisoners sentenced to death who looked happier. And the images he's looking at as he learns about the weight of air looks as if he's found 60's-era Hanna-Barbera cartoons on YouTube.
Jayessell mentions "The Fun They Had," which I remember from my fifth grade reader, an anthology of a variety of stories. Strange that I thought of this story too when I watched the kid getting quizzed by the machines
I remember back in grade school thinking how great it was that I was having "the fun" of a traditional classroom and hoping that 21st century kids wouldn't have to go to school like this. Glad the future doesn't always turn out like these paleo-futuristic films!