Electrical futures past

Futurist writing about technology emerged in the late 19th century at the same time as new kinds of electrical technology were making utopian futures seem practically attainable. Electrical writers and novelists alike thus borrowed from the popular ‘science’ fiction of Jules Verne, Edward Bellamy and others to try to create self-fulfilling prophecies of a future in which electrical gadgets and machines met all major practical needs of civilization. To the extent that many parts of our world are populated by the hardware that they forecast, they succeeded in their goal.