When ordinary scenes become extraordinary
And so this morning when I read an email from my top history detective adventurer, who oftens helps me puzzle out old photos, which asked if people in the future will be as fascinated by an ordinary photo, it gave me a lot of food for thought. So I thought that it might be fun to time-travel 100 years into the future. Let's go to 2121, and look back at an ordinary photo of an ordinary corner. I'll see if I can explain it the way that I try to explain mysterious objects in old photos. Keep in mind that 100 years from now I'll be 162 years old, so if I get off track, or doze off, just give me a prod in the ribs, and I'll get back to it.
OK, it's March of 2121, and we're looking at a photo taken way back in March of 2021, 100 years ago. You younger people may be puzzled by some of the objects, so I'll see if I can explain. First of all, the object in the foreground was called a "trash can", where you were expected to dispose of things such as empty coffee cups, candy wrappers, that sort of thing. At the time there were two ways to dispose of things, and this was just one of them - the other was called "recycling" (you can see a poster back there). What was to be placed in trash cans, and what was to be recycled, depended on the local regulations, which people were expected to know.
The structure there was called a "bus stop", where people would sit and wait for a large vehicle to pass by. They would then get on that large vehicle, along with a lot of other people, and it would stop every block or two, where people could get on and off. The mysterious orange writing on the concrete I've never been able to decipher, but apparently it was a special code that was readable by people who understood it at the time doing construction, and maintenance of underground systems. The average person just ignored it.
The building in the background is a bank. People would go into these buildings, or use a machine built into the wall, to get pieces of paper which in turn they would give to other people as a way of exchanging money. Yes, digital transactions were already happening back then, but the old system persisted for quite some time. The strange things on the roof were solar panels, which gathered electricity from the sun.
The cars there, by the way, were all driven by people, the same way that old elevators had operators in the early 20th Century. The red sign there that says "Stop" is one of hundreds of rules and regulations that people were expected to learn to operate these vehicles, such as staying on the right side of the road, staying between lines, that sort of thing. This was so confusing that people often ran into each other, and the cars were equipped with interesting safety features, my favorite being "airbags", which actually inflated when the car hit something hard enough. Yes, they were called airbags - back in 2021 you could "Google it", which meant looking up information on what was called the "internet".
These traffic rules and regulations were so complex, and so easy to get wrong, that an entire industry sprang up around them, which included "parking tickets", "speeding tickets", and the worst of them all: "drunk driving tickets". None of these things have existed now for years, but back then it was a constant worry. And anyone could get what was called a "driver's license", with only a brief test, and then for years afterwards only an eye test. Of course then, as now, there were highly skilled drivers who could handle these machines, which required something called, appropriately enough, an "Operator's License". Remember the elevator operators?
One hundred years really isn't that long ago, or in the future, is it? Thank you for time-traveling with me!
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