A historian explains how people of the past imagined the future
People have always imagined the future, but starting in the 20th century, these visions involved more and more technology. So says science historian Peter Bowler, author of A History of the Future: Prophets of Progress from H.G. Wells to Isaac Asimov.
The Verge spoke to Bowler about the idea of progress and predictions of the past. This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
You write that a lot of the novels and popular science writing during the early 20th century were concerned with the “idea of progress.” Can you expand on that?
During this period, “progress” was increasingly being seen in terms of technology. Throughout the 19th and 20th century, industrial progress was seen as very important and the sense of the future was...