What did people in the 20th century think the future would look like?

He envisioned instantaneous communication with friends and colleagues that would facilitate remote work – the ability to ​“conduct your business from Tahiti or Bali just as well as London”. He predicted servant machines, remote descendants of the computers of his day, ​“that will start to think and eventually outthink their creators”. Advances in robotics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) seem to bring that day ever closer.

Let’s look at some of his other predictions, and a few of those made by the BBC’s ​“Tomorrow’s World”, to see how they’ve turned out.

Health, medicine and wellness

In ​“Horizon”, Clarke noted that our bodies would last longer, saying ​“after all, it’s only in this century that a patient has a better than 50% chance of improvement when treated by his doctors”. 

Advances in healthcare, antibiotics and vaccines in the 20th century have been hailed as medical marvels, drastically reducing deaths from many diseases and contributing to the continued rise in global life-expectancy. According to United Nations data, the average person born in 1960 could expect to live to about 52. In 2022, it’s up to 72, and in the UK it’s even higher, 82 years of age. Penicillin alone has saved hundreds of millions of lives.

New vaccine technologies, such as the mRNA vaccines, the development and production of which accelerated during the COVID pandemic, could pave the way for ​“universal” vaccines to combat influenza and the common cold, and faster, more comprehensive global vaccination campaigns. Innovative therapies could turn the tide against the rise of antibiotic resistant diseases, which were predicted by Sir Alexander Fleming himself.

We can also increasingly take charge of our own health. Not through under-the-tongue biosensors and indicator ties as ​“Tomorrow’s World” thought in 1987, but through sensors and apps on our smart phones, watches and even rings. According to YouGov polling, 45% of Brits own one of these devices, and 35% of Brits actively use them to track their health. 

Technology is also transforming our hospitals. As Arthur C. Clarke almost clairvoyantly predicted back in 1964: ​“One day we may have brain surgeons in Edinburgh operating on patients in New Zealand”. The first truly remote robotic surgery took place between New York and Strasbourg in 2001. The longest one occurred over 12,000km between China and Morocco in 2024. 

Together with 5G technology and the Internet of Things, we are becoming increasingly connected to the healthcare system — something CPI is helping accelerate through our 5G testbed.

These advances in connected, digital technologies, wearables and other HealthTech could enable us to live even longer and healthier lives. The question remains though, just how long is plausible?

Energy efficiency and sustainable materials

In 1989, Tomorrow’s World presciently predicted many aspects of the future home that we see in our current lives, even if they didn’t all turn out quite as the presenters imagined. 

They envisioned ways in which we could cut home energy costs using materials like honeycombs and aerogels to trap daylight. Coupled with a heating system that would learn your daily patterns, the presenters predicted that the technology could theoretically reduce heating bills to almost zero. 

Insulation and building materials have improved vastly. Combined with innovative architectural design, they can make buildings much more energy efficient. However, materials like aerogels are not widely used due to production complexity, brittleness and high cost.

Connected digital technologies and the IoT have made it possible to have more control over many aspects of our homes. WiFi-connected smart thermostats, lighting, entertainment and security are all available now, often linked to voice control or remotely controlled via apps. 

This has unfortunately not yet cut utility bills as drastically as hoped. Combined with the energy pressure to cut fossil fuel consumption, this has driven demand for alternative sustainable fuels and renewable energy sources. Wind and solar overtook fossil fuel energy production in the EU in 2024. The electrification of our energy system also requires vastly improved batteries, produced at scale and with capacity to store more energy, last longer and charge faster. CPI’s expertise in next-generation battery technology is at the forefront of these advances and will be further boosted by the new Advanced Materials Battery Industrialisation Centre.

The 1965 edition of ​“Tomorrow’s World” also thought paper and plastic clothing would be all the rage. Synthetic clothing did take off as nylon fibre production advanced, which the 1987 programme thought would evolve into engineered synthetics ​“even better than natural fabrics”. This paved the way for fast fashion. But the environmental damage caused by the clothing industry means there is a growing movement towards recycling and repurposing clothing, through the efforts of companies like CPI partner Stuff4Life, as well as developing sustainable materials for packaging as part of a circular economy.

An intertwined technological future

Technology is advancing at an ever-increasing pace.

What these predictions and our current reality make clear is that science and technology are at the heart of innovation – from remote cardiac surgery to more energy-efficient homes. The world will continue to change through invention and innovation, with new disruptive technology or incremental improvements of what we already have. 

But, whilst it is fun to look into the future, we can’t always predict what will come to be or how rapidly things can change. The idea for an invention or innovation can come from anyone, anywhere, and requires courage of conviction to overcome and learn from the inevitable failures along the way to see it become a reality. It’s that journey from idea to impact that we support innovators to make here at CPI. 

What new innovations in science and technology could we see over the next 60 years?