“The Jetsons,” Hanna-Barbera’s alternative to “Flintstones,” is set far in the future, in 2062. It’s only 36 years now, so at some point we’re going to expect the existence of a gravy boat, video chats and watches with video screens – wait, are we already living in the world before The Jetsons? Perhaps the continued expansion of AI data centers will take us to the stars, just as humans were driven from Earth into these very tall buildings.
Watching an episode of “The Jetsons” is fascinating because the team at Hanna-Barbera was endlessly creative with the gadgets and gizmos that everyone uses. Highlights include, in Season 1, a potato masher to mass produce mashed potatoes, and in Season 2, a game of chess played with miniature missiles. While, yes, we would all love a gravy boat to be something manufactured on an industrial scale, that’s too pure an idea for this world.
Instead, “The Jetsons” managed to come up with ideas that would eventually take shape. Much like how “Star Trek” influenced or popularized certain ideas we see today, “The Jetsons” did it in cartoon style. For everyone’s sake, let’s just hope that the various AI chatbots we have today don’t become as sarcastic as some of the machines in the series.
Digital encyclopedias
When George Jetson is looking for information on a creature from outer space, he pulls out the digital encyclopedia. The episode “Elroy Meets Orbitty” shows George obtaining information from a small device containing the entire “O” volume. The problem is that even in the future we wouldn’t have found a way to pack all human knowledge into something so small.
We did, however, but not until the 1980s, when Encyclopædia Britannica published its first digital version in 1981. A CD-ROM version of the Academic American Encyclopedia was published in 1986, and Wikipedia didn’t start until 2001, born from Nupedia. The difference is that Nupedia has been peer-reviewed, while Wikipedia is open for editing and then verified by volunteers. During the 1990s and early 2000s, Microsoft also published Encarta, an interactive encyclopedia.
However, George has issues with the encyclopedia, which almost mirrors some of the issues we have with LLM-driven chatbots like Google Gemini, ChatGPT, and Claude. Rather than providing information about the mysterious creature, he attempts to complete his task by presenting the wrong answer. It’s funny, but also dark at the same time, given that this is where we are right now.
Virtual assistants
“The Jetsons” features several voice-activated computer assistants, much like the ones we have today. This includes making mistakes, much like the digital encyclopedia. George uses “Rudi” at work, a voice-activated alarm, and there’s the boss, who has a “luxury” digital assistant on his desk.
Digital assistants, computer or virtual, whatever you want to call them, have been bothering us for decades. Voice-activated technologies are not new, with AT&T (then Bell Labs) developing “Audrey” in 1952. With a designated speaker, it could recognize numbers to dial. IBM’s Shoebox in 1961 could recognize 16 words, as well as the numbers 0 through 9. However, the vision of these digital assistants featured in “The Jetsons” was closer to that of Siri, Gemini, Bixby or any of the other built-in assistants now driven by AI.
One of the biggest is Alexa, on Amazon Echo devices, with millions sold and housed in the corners of homes across the United States. Large language models have mostly begun to invade the space, with ChatGPT and Claude even inducing AI psychosis in some users who become dependent on the sycophantic nature of assistants.
Robot vacuum cleaners
The Jetson family may have had Rosie the robot to help them with everyday tasks, but throughout the show they always had various robots performing different tasks. One that has been around longer than we think is the robot vacuum cleaner. Roomba entered the world in 2002, almost a quarter of a century ago at the time of writing this article.
Of course, the robot vacuum cleaners on “The Jetsons” were a little more sophisticated than the clunky Roomba, even offering Jane Jetson a cup of coffee as she complained about all the housework she had to do. Robot vacuum cleaners have become smarter as things have progressed, with the technology even being used to develop lawn mowing robots. Even “The Jetsons” still had a robot pushing a lawn mower.
In fact, robot vacuums are now so ubiquitous that we can rank ten of them based on expert opinion. Some of them even spray a solution to make floor cleaning easier or are able to remove stains from carpet. However, there is no sign that will give you a cup of coffee or put out your cigar.
Video calls
Throughout the show, the Jetsons call or are video-called several times. In fact, it has become one of the primary forms of communication within the world of “Jetsons.” While this may sound like something the series may have evoked or lifted from the various science fiction materials of the time (even the later “Star Trek” would still use radio communication), video calling was actually first made in 1927, with AT&T asking President Hoover to call via a one-way video signal to New York, nearly 200 miles away.
Video calls improved a few years later and in 1931 the first two-way video call took place. However, with the Great Depression and World War II on the horizon, the idea was put on hold while the world did its job. AT&T tried again with the Picturephone in the 1970s, but both versions failed to gain traction, with a reported peak of 500 users. It didn’t help that the rent cost $975 a month.
The BBC featured video calls in a 1986 edition of “Tomorrow’s World”, making the first video call from the BBC office in Portsmouth. Unlike the much more advanced video chat technology that comes with MSN, Skype or FaceTime, in 1986 it sent around seven frames per second.
Food Manufacturing Machines
Several food machines make up the roster of robots in “The Jetsons.” These machines are actually becoming quite common, the closest being the pizza machine. In some parts of the world, a machine now makes a pizza from scratch and dispenses it through the vending machine it is connected to. At least it doesn’t fly away, requiring someone to put on a baseball glove to catch it.
In recent years, clever people behind 3D printing technologies have figured out how to produce food from these contraptions. On the consumer side, food manufacturing machines, like Posha, will do all the heavy lifting after receiving the ingredients. Not as automated, but it seems to work in the early days of device coverage.
Restaurants are now starting to appear with robots taking over the cooking process from humans. Again, it’s not quite a giant cylinder mashing potatoes or a breakfast machine pouring your morning drink, but we’re slowly getting there. Hopefully we’ll have that gravy pipe again.
