The seeds were planted earlier than you might think.

While on vacation last week at the Outer Banks I took time to duck into one of my favorite bookstores, the Roanoke Press-Croatan Bookery (which once also housed the remnants of a printing museum). I didn’t find much, but the one thing I did take home made it worthwhile: a copy of Smithsonian magazine from July 1976, featuring “A look into our third century.”

There are several fascinating articles, including one about the impending food crisis and one about genetic profiling as a means of preemptive medical treatment. The most amazing article, however, was one called “So you think TV is hot stuff? Just you wait.”

Developments in telecommunications point the way to a wired world with no need for commuting or shopping at supermarket.

Predicting the future is a dicey business, filled as it has been in the past with wild-eyed visions of flying cars and space colonies. Historian Erik Barnouw’s piece, though, is an eerily accurate description of many of the things we now take for granted.

He begins by discussing how advances in cable TV technology “may soon offer a choice of hundreds of channels, along with another dramatic option — two-way communication, the chance to talk back.” He describes how some people at the time saw the potential of “a breakthrough for minority interests of all sorts, offering them a diversity of special channels.”

In various ways the article goes on to predict email, telecommuting, videoconferencing, on-demand entertainment, and the very notion of what we now call “online” (though he doesn’t use that term). He discusses the potential benefits for government, education, medicine, commerce, and the culture as a whole — all with uncanny accuracy. It’s a truly amazing read.

I could quote the piece for hours, but that’d be a lot less enjoyable, I think, than just letting you read it for yourself. So I’ve scanned the pages (including the magazine cover and a splash illustration) and made them available by clicking here to visit my Flickr page. The text is easily read at both “large” and “original” size.

What really amazes me about this is the possibility it suggests for the future we don’t know. If daily life in the first decade of this century was already on its way in 1976 — when, let’s face it, this article would have seemed insane had it appeared in Newsweek — then what should we be looking at now to predict 2020? Or 2050?

That’s another post, for sure. In the meantime feel free to post your own ideas in the comments.