The Future Ain't What it Used to Be
By Staff -- Gifts & Decorative Accessories, 4/1/2007
In October 1956, Richard H. Rich, president, Richs Inc., wrote "What's Ahead for the Gift Industry" in the next 20 years. He forecast:
- Entertainment: There are plans for subscription television. Millions of people, for $1 or $1.50, will participate in theatrical "first nights" while they sit at home.
- Parking: On a moving strip you take a punched card, move to another strip which will transport you to a store and return you, where you put your punched card in a "car finder." Then voila! You car will come rolling down to you in a matter of minutes. Personnel? There won't be any.
- Record keeping: As we know it, record keeping will be as obsolete as the clerk with the black slipcovers on his sleeves ... The entire process of accounting — from the time a piece of merchandise is received to the time it is sold — will be kept and stored electronically.
- Advertising: It may use the greatest billboard of all — the sky. There are new lights that are 200 times greater in intensity than anything used now. They will enable us to "sky write" at night.
- In the home: All heating and lighting will be invisible ... Almost all food will be packaged.
- Travel: Board a plane in Paris, London, Madrid — and you'll be in America before you leave.
- Leisure: The four-day work week will be commonplace ... Stores will treble their volume of leisure-time products.
