How the future looked

The introduction of new media technologies have always been accompanied with high hopes and widespread fears. Here are some quotations (there are more in the article) from a piece by Peter Edidin in today's NY Times giving examples of early responses to radio and television (the NYT site also has some multimedia samples, and at the end of the piece is a list of sources for the quotations):

RADIO

1921
Velimir Khlebnikov, Russian poet, "The Radio of the Future."
The Radio of the Future - the central tree of our consciousness - will inaugurate the new ways to cope with our endless undertakings and will unite all mankind.
The main radio station, that stronghold of steel, where clouds of wires cluster like strands of hair, will surely be protected by a sign with a skull and crossbones and the familiar word "Danger," since the least disruption of radio operations would produce a mental blackout over the entire country, a temporary loss of consciousness.

1922
Bruce Bliven, "The Ether Will Now Oblige," in The New Republic.
There will be only one orchestra left on earth, giving nightly worldwide concerts; when all universities will be combined into one super-institution, conducting courses by radio for students in Zanzibar, Kamchatka and Oskaloose; when, instead of newspapers, trained orators will dictate the news of the world day and night, and the bedtime story will be told every evening from Paris to the sleepy children of a weary world; when every person will be instantly accessible day or night to all the bores he knows, and will know them all: when the last vestiges of privacy, solitude and contemplation will have vanished into limbo.

1923
J. M. McKibben, "New Way to Make Americans."
Today this nation of ours is slowly but surely being conquered, not by a single enemy in open warfare, but by a dozen insidious (though often unconscious) enemies in peace. Millions of foreigners were received into the country, with little or no thought given to their assimilation. But now the crisis is upon us; and we must face it without a great leader. Perhaps no man could mold the 120 million people in a harmonious whole, bound together by a strong national consciousness: but in the place of a superhuman individual, the genius of the last decade has provided a force - and that force is radio.

1924
Waldemar Kaempffert, "The Social Destiny of Radio."
It so happens that the United States and Great Britain have taken the lead in broadcasting. If that lead is maintained it follows that English must become the dominant tongue. Compared with our efforts at mass entertainment and mass education, European competition is pathetic. All ears may eventually be cocked to hear what the United States and Great Britain have to say. Europe will find it desirable, even necessary, to learn English.

TELEVISION

1939
David Sarnoff, the chairman of RCA, at the televised opening of the RCA Pavilion at the World's Fair in New York.
Now we add sight to sound. It is with a feeling of humbleness that I come to this moment of announcing the birth, in this country, of a new art so important in its implications that it is bound to affect all society. It is an art which shines like a torch in a troubled world.

New York Times editorial
The problem with television is that people must sit and keep their eyes glued to the screen; the average American family hasn't time for it. Therefore the showmen are convinced that for this reason, if no other, television will never be a serious competitor of broadcasting.

1946
Thomas Hutchinson, "Here is Television: Your Window on the World."
Television means the world is your home and in the homes of all the people of the world. It is the greatest means of communication ever developed by the mind of man. It should do more to develop friendly neighbors, and to bring understanding and peace on earth, than any other single material force in the world today.

The predictions are fascinating, not just in the sense that we can say now which ones were right and which ones were wrong, but also because of the awareness (sometimes inflated!) that the "prophets" had that new technologies would have an impact on the ways in which people live and think. Another point to keep in mind here: many if not most media technologies were developed for a purpose other than the one for which they eventually came to be used -- telephones were thought of as a broadcast technology, the phonograph as a medium for dictation and, famously, the internet as a means for government officials to communicate in case of a disastrous war.