Curly-Haired Men, 4-Hour Workdays — Here's What Experts In 1923 Predicted Would Come True By 2023

Paul Fairie, a researcher and instructor at the University of Calgary compiled the projections based on newspaper clippings from various experts' forecasts for 2023

Scientists and sociologists dare to predict 100 years back how the world would unfold in 2023. The projections based on newspaper clippings reveal interesting trends starting from curly-haired men, four-hour workdays, 300-year-old people and ‘watch-size radio telephones’ in 2023. 

Paul Fairie, a researcher and instructor at the University of Calgary compiled these projections based on newspaper clippings from various experts' forecasts for 2023.

The forecast, which went viral after the projections were shared on Twitter, talked about various aspects spanning from population growth and life expectancy to trends in personal hygiene to advances in various industries from travel to healthcare. And not to forget the future of journalism itself.

In an interview with US media organisation National Public Radio, Fairie said he enjoyed tracking old newspapers, first for an elementary school project (on microfiche), then as a political science Ph.D. student, and now in his pass time.

One newspaper claimed that by 2023 the average lifespan would reach 100 years of age. Another cited a scientist who put the average at 300 years.

Several others hoped for a future full of beautiful, healthy people. Beauty contests will be unnecessary as there will be so many beautiful people that it will be almost impossible to select winners,” the article predicted. “The same will apply to baby contests.”

One of the hilarious predictions included an anthropologist who predicted the masculine and feminine styles and predicted “curls for men by 2023” as one of the hottest fads in the successive years. “It is now predicted that by the year 2023 — only a mere little stretch of a century ahead — women will probbaly be shaving their — heads!” the article claims.

In another positive outlook, mathematician and electrical engineer Charles Steinmetz forecasted that people would spend even less time working ("No More Hard Work By 2023!" that headline blared).

“Also the maidens may pronounce it the height of style in personal primping to blacken their teeth. Won’t we be pretty?”

One writer predicted in 2023, “watch-size radio telephones will keep everybody in communication with the ends of the earth.”

Meanwhile, another prediction focused on the newspaper industry said the newspaper would have been out of business for 50 years.

Another prediction talked about radio being replaced by gasoline. Aviation pioneer Glenn Curtiss predicted that by 2023 "gasoline as a motive power will have been replaced by radio and that the skies will be filled with myriad craft sailing over well-defined routes," which the Minneapolis Journal deemed "an attractive prophecy."