The dark side of 2007

Pro

A startling bit of Net trivia has been doing the rounds. A recent e-mail from a Silicon Valley CEO buddy with the subject “The year is 1906” gives a startling view of life just 100 years ago. On the doorstep of the year 2007 it is a bit disturbing that in 1906 the average life expectancy in the US was 47 years.

Only 8% of the homes had a telephone – and who could afford to use them? A three-minute call from Denver to New York City cost $11. Thanks to VoIP today, a three minute call from Dublin to Timbuktu has a marginal cost of nada, though sometimes the call quality approaches the cost figure. In Finland, there are more mobile phones than the human population.

There were only 8,000 cars in the US and only 144 miles of paved roads. The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph. In 2007 Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic will be warming up to take tourists into space from a Space Port in New Mexico. 
Today’s largely rural states of Alabama, Mississippi, Iowa, and Tennessee were each more heavily populated than California, now the Union’s most populous state and source of much nifty biz tech. With a mere 1.4 million people, California was only the 21st most populous state in the Union. Las Vegas, lately the fastest growing US city, had a population of 30 in 1906.

More than 95% of all births in the US took place at home. Ninety per cent of all US doctors had no college education in 1906. Two out of every 10 US adults could not read or write. In early 2007 no one will be able to easily do in Vista what they did in 2006 in Windows XP… a kind of temporary functional illiteracy. Five leading causes of death in the US were pneumonia and influenza, tuberculosis, diarrhoea, heart disease and stroke – and this in a population that on average died before they were 50.

Life sure was different when the Yanks 100 years ago weren’t busy dying. Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and ice tea had not been invented then. The great social experiment of Prohibition hadn’t yet begun and marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at corner drugstores.
And what of a hundred years on in 2107? To paraphrase the sage Robert Zimmerman, you don’t have to be a weatherman to know its downhill from here. We may still be using controlled substances to ensure a well-regulated stomach and bowels (and other aspects of a healthy and entertaining life), though.

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