Past predictions
Suitable for Year Levels 5–10
Can we predict the future limited by the knowledge that we have in the present?
In the early 1900s a group of French artists including Jean-Marc Côté produced a series of futuristic pictures showing how they imagined the world to be in the distant year of 2000. The artists made their predictions of the future based on what already existed when they were alive. There were many drawings with propellers, canvas wings and blimps - cutting edge technology of the time - and people in distinctly 19th-century clothes.
Task
We’ve picked out four images for you to think more deeply about. If you like, discuss these with a friend.
- Describe what is happening in each of these images.
- What was the problem being solved and what was the solution imagined? What exists today to help this problem?
- Pick one of the images and sketch your imagined solution to this problem 100 years from now. Are there any technologies still being developed that might change your prediction?
Images
Victorian Curriculum Links
Design and Technologies Levels 5–10
Technologies and Society
- Examine and prioritise competing factors including social, ethical, economic and sustainability considerations in the development of technologies and designed solutions to meet community needs for preferred futures (VCDSTS043)
- Investigate the ways in which designed solutions evolve locally, nationally, regionally and globally through the creativity, innovation and enterprise of individuals and groups (VCDSTS044)
Creating Designed Solutions, Generating
Critical and Creative Thinking
Meta-Cognition Level 7 & 8 (VCCCTM040)
Questions and Possibilities Levels 7–10
- Synthesise information from multiple sources and use lateral thinking techniques to draw parallels between known and new solutions and ideas when creating original proposals and artefacts (VCCCTQ034),
- Suspend judgements to allow new possibilities to emerge and investigate how this can broaden ideas and solutions (VCCCTQ044)
Science Levels 5–10
Science as a human endeavour
History
Historical sources as evidence Levels 5–10
- Analyse different perspectives
Historical knowledge Level 9–10
- Industrial Revolution
Digital Technologies Level 5 & 6
Data and Information
- Plan, create and communicate ideas, information and online collaborative projects, applying agreed ethical, social and technical protocols (VCDTDI029)