All things considered, we live in an amazing time. Just look at our homes. All sorts of creature comforts, labor saving devices, and cool entertainment options. Meals in moments, climate controlled, access to just about any film, music, or book that exists. It’s a far cry from what home living was like in say, 1967.

But that year, television anchor Walter Cronkite, “The Most Trusted Man in America,” speculated what the home would be like in 2001. Does anybody remember when the coming millennium was a big deal? That was two decades ago. 

So get a load of how people in 1967 envisioned what the home would be like in 2001.

In the kitchen of the future, by 2001 we would be typing in meals and letting a completely automated chef prepare a full meal for us and serve it on freshly molded plastic dinnerware. That last part doesn’t sound very appetizing, but the whole concept pre-supposes 3D printing, which is now a serious manufacturing tool.

In the living room, Cronkite points out a large console that will control all variety of entertainment and room comfort settings. And there is even a small robot maid to clean up after all the slobs who came over to watch the game.

The home office allows you to check the weather, tune in to other rooms in the house, get real times news and download the newspaper via satellite. You could also print it out like Cronkite did, but we simply don’t do that anymore.

We’re about two decades on the other side of 2001, and some of the technological predictions Cronkite shared never came to pass. But he was spot on about one observation in particular.

“With equipment like this in the home of the future, we may not have to go to work. The work would come to us. In the 21st century, it may be that no home will be complete without a computerized communications console.”

Charming isn’t it, to look into the past to see how people viewed the future?