A newspaper article written in 1926
By our occasional correspondent, returned from a strange affair the likes of which neither telegraph nor steam engine can explain.
It is with a trembling hand that I put pen to paper, for I have seen a society so far ahead of our time that even reason at first resisted. Nevertheless, I must report, as a good journalist should, on the remarkable “now” I was allowed to enter for a single day, before I was thrown back into our own safe twentieth-century rhythm of trams, newspaper shouts and sooty chimneys.
The city: cleaner, higher – and quieter
I stepped out into a city that was related to ours, but which had grown up like a boy with too much milk: tall, shiny and austere. The houses seemed to rise without shame, as if the builder had been given courage in the same measure as steel. The streets were there – but the air was strangely clear. You could not hear the clattering hooves of the horses, not the creaking of the cabs. Instead there was a hum, a soft hiss, as if from an invisible force.
Vehicles glided along without visible smoke, without being pulled by animals. I saw carriages without drivers, obeying a kind of invisible discipline. People seemed to trust this with a self-evident certainty, as if they had been taught since childhood that machines could behave like proper citizens.
Man: always connected, but rarely alone?
The most strange thing was the relationship of people to a small black tablet they carried in their hand, like an enchanted pocket almanac. In it they seemed to keep their entire world: letters, newspapers, maps, portraits, music – yes, even conversations with people who were not present.
They did not always speak aloud. Sometimes they seemed to speak to the tablet itself. I recoiled, because at first I thought this was a new kind of solitude, a mass folly. But soon I understood that they were in fact conversing with distant friends. Distance – this old tyranny – had been almost abolished there. As if every home had its own telegraph operator, but without wires, without an office, without waiting.
However: I also saw couples sitting opposite each other in a café, and instead of meeting each other’s eyes, they read in their small tablets as if they were two passengers on the same train, each in his own compartment. It is possible that the future has won the world – but risks losing the moment.
Work: an office without an office
I asked a gentleman about his occupation, and he replied that he “worked from home”. I then expected him to be a carpenter, a seamstress or possibly a bookkeeper with his own office – but no: he wore a suit, talked about business and meetings, and yet he was sitting in his kitchen.
He showed me how he could summon a whole group of colleagues through his tablet – faces in small squares, like living photographs. No trains, no hotels, no cigar-smelling meeting rooms. The world seemed to have made the room itself less important.
Whether this is freedom or enslavement I leave unsaid. For when work can follow a person everywhere, who dares to close the door in the evening?
Health and welfare: a people who live longer
I was told that people in this day and age live considerably longer than we do, and that infant mortality – that sad shadow over so many homes – has been greatly reduced. People spoke of medicines, vaccinations and procedures that had previously been considered miracles or horrors.
But I found a new kind of worry: people were suffering from a fatigue that did not come from physical labor, but from a constant flow of impressions. As if their nerves were never allowed to be out of service.
Knowledge: the library in your pocket
A young woman demonstrated to me something that must be called an encyclopedic miracle. She wrote a word on her tablet and immediately got answers, pictures, maps, historical dates – more information in a minute than our city librarian can gather in a week.
It was utopian, yes: the gates of education stood wide open. But I also sensed the danger: if everything is available immediately, who will exercise patience? And if every person can find their “truths” at the touch of a button, who will decide what is true?
Inequality: a future with both light and shadow
I was told that poverty and need still exist, both in this city and outside it. Thus: the future has not abolished man’s old shortcomings. But I also saw how many people had access to goods and comforts that in our country were reserved for the very richest: warmth, light, food from distant lands, clothes that seemed to be mass-produced with almost magical speed.
It was as if abundance had become everyday life – and in such everyday life new kinds of desires arise.
The great dream: humanity as one city
What I carry with me, most strongly of all, is the feeling that the world has become one big city square in this time. News from faraway places came like shouts across the street. Crises in other countries shook people’s minds here. You could help, donate money, write words, protest – all with the little plate.
I thought: this is a utopia in its beginning. Because if people can really see others, hear others, understand others – then perhaps they can also act decently towards others. At the same time: if every tragedy reaches us at the same time, the heart will eventually become numb.
Final words from a shocked but hopeful traveler
When I returned to our time, to the creak of the tram and the familiar smell of coal, everything felt still – almost solemn. The future I saw was not a perfect garden of Eden. It was rather a powerful machine: marvelous, fast, useful – but demanding.
It is a world where man can speak to the whole earth, but must learn to also speak to the person sitting opposite. A world where knowledge is everywhere, but wisdom still has to be cultivated slowly.
If I may allow myself an old-fashioned newspaper-style prophecy, it is this: the future will not be saved by machines, however wise they may become, but by man’s ability to remain man.
Important information!
This is a fictional article created with AI by ChatGPT after the following prompts.
Article prompt: Describe utopian and futuristic views of today’s people and society as if you were a person from the 20th century who traveled in a time machine and saw today’s society for a day before the person came back to the 20th century and wrote a newspaper article written in the 20th century.
Image prompt: Landscape image where the author stands surprised with 20th century clothes and ink pen and paper in the middle of a modern city center with very stressed people in motion blur scrolling mobile phones as they half-run to their jobs and electric cars in line, large bright advertising signs on high-rise buildings, small cleaning robot sweeping the sidewalk, hazy