According to the bio of the famous kids show character, he was born August 27th, 2022. Meaning, doing the math, his parents are getting it on this weekend.
Which amusing enough, the Jetsons came out in September of 1962, meaning it’s been 60 years since the creation of the show.
George was also 40 in the show, setting it in 2062.
Everyone knows the Jetsons as a kids show designed to create a vision for the future. It also being a kids show created a lot of people’s visions for how the world would look in 100 years.
So wanted to list some tech the show got right, some tech we’re actually ahead of them on and somethings we’re just far behind on.
First up, things the Jetsons got correct.
Video calls
While not used as much as the Jetsons predicted, because people are too messy, they are actively used today and no technical limit there.
Amusing thing here is Zoom has a market cap of 60 billion and AT&T today is 170 billion. Meaning the largest video conference software is worth about a third of the largest phone company.
Robotic vacuums
iRobot has sold 30 million roomba’s to date and the company said 20% of vacuums are in some form a robot.
Smart watches
The Apple Watch currently makes more revenue than Rolex and the top 10 largest watch companies combined.
Computer legal aids
In the Jetsons, it shows a court run by a system of computers as the jury.
While this doesn’t exist, many pieces of software like DoNotPay exist and have saved millions of dollars for fees like parking tickets.
The company along with others also believes it can completely automate common legal cases for things such as traffic violations and more.
Robots to pet dogs
Creepy as hell, but it does exist today.
Those are somethings we’re tied on, but here are a few things we won on.
Smart phones
Amusing thing is the show never really showed cell phones, with all phones connected to the home, office or cars.
There was no vision for a thin rectangle that fits in people’s pocket and is a camera, phone, gaming system and more.
Plasma screen TV’s
The show did have flat screen TV’s, but just looking at the animation, ours are much flatter today.
This is sort of simple, but was something we have an edge on.
The internet
The Jetsons predicted a lot of things, but the internet wasn’t really one.
The show still featured things like libraries and social media, search engines and things like fortnite just don’t exist.
This is a case where from a software perspective, the actual future beat predictions for the future.
Robotics
Every robot in the Jetsons operated with wheels or had extremely clunky designs for walking.
Funny enough, we do have some robots in testing now, like the ones Boston Robotics are developing, which do have legs and can move fast.
Obviously, we don’t have humanoid home robots just yet, but this show was set in 2060 and I’d be extremely confident that happens in the next 38 years.
And finally, where we fell behind.
On the software/computers front, we beat the Jetsons.
Communication
Gaming
Knowledge access
Entertainment
Certain elements of robotics
We won.
The big thing we lost on is the obvious and that’s we don’t have flying cars or easy space access.
That’s obvious to see, but question is why are we so far behind there.
Less investment in NASA.
In the 60s, NASA was 3-4% of the federal budget and is now .4%.
NASA has actually lost funding adjusted for inflation, but if it held at 4% of the budget, it’d be hundreds of billions now.
While I don’t think we’d have rockets like the Jetsons, we’d have much better tech for planes, cars and obviously rockets if we held that funding standard.
Rebelling against nuclear energy
The Jetsons mentioned over and over again that nuclear energy was used in jets, homes and even robotic dogs.
Big oil hated nuclear.
Environmentalist hated nuclear.
Nuclear didn’t happen and the future people predicted for things like fusion, which would lead to a 100% electric economy and cheap one never happened.
If the US and world kept funding nuclear/allowed it to be built, we’d have a cleaner and more advanced world now.
It was a cartoon.
This being the most obvious, but the show at the end of the day is just a sci-fi/fantasy series.
There were always going to be mistakes, but looking back, it’s actually kind of cool what 60 years later, the world got right and wrong.
And the most important thing to remember is we still have 40 years until the age of the Jetsons hits.
I wouldn’t be shocked if this decade with Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos grants a high school science club the first field trip to space.
I also could see in 40 years, a realistic chance Uber for drone helicopters are a thing and it’s not extremely expensive to charter one from a phone.
Plus, a lot of tech might exist the past didn’t think about much.
- Self driving cars
- Advancements in biotech to cure/reduce aging.
- AI which is smarter than humans.
It’s something cool to think about.
Also final thing, if someone knows anyone with the last name Jetson. Please tell them to not use protection this week.