Axonoid

Google and Newspapers

I don’t know if you knew it, but Google began to scan newspapers a little while ago. You can even search for words directly in these electronic papers. OK, it doesn’t always work 100% well, but it’s a start. Also, Google categorize search results by dates, so you can check oldest or newest news, depending on what you’re looking for.

My Weird Hobby and the Message From 1950

So anyway, I was there, looking at old ads in a newspaper from 1950… A new car for only 2000$ anyone?! Yea, that’s a weird hobby… looking at old newspapers. But, I don’t know, I think there’s something relaxing and interesting in that. I like to see what people were talking about back then. What ads and design looked like…

Anyway, I don’t know really how I stumbled on that particular newspaper, but I was browsing it, looking quickly at some classified ads, headlines… And then, I saw this headline : “Message to Citizens of Year 2000“! I was stunned! The freaking newspaper was talking to me!

Nothing Has Changed Since Then

Of course, I began to read it, eager and feeling like I discovered something! It seems that a journalist, named Drew Pearson, wrote a column in 1950 to be read 50 years later! Not too bad, I’m only 8 years late. But the more I read the article, the more I felt sad… It looks like the world hasn’t really changed. The Fear ruled the world then, it still rules it now. It was “uncertain”, it’s still uncertain.

Excerpt of the Old Newspaper Article of 1950

Here are an excerpt of the text :

During the past 10 years the complications of life have accelerated faster than during the preceding hundred. Especially in the past 10 years we have accelerated the mechanics of human destruction.

In fact, I would say this was the most distinctive feature of our current decade, and that we are now at a turning point where man must learn to live with himself or else bring about his own destruction.

Here is something he said about his leaders in 1950. I still hope that our leaders will understand that some day:

But what our leaders do not realize today, but which I hope you have learned long before 2000, is that if we spent one - tenth the ingenuity we put into developing weapons of death [...], our fears might then be over.

The final words of the article are :

For if man is to drive away that mad master, fear, and if he is to attain the peace he hungers for, then somehow he must persuade the world to return to the great commandment, “Love they neighbor as thyself.”

I hope that, by the time you read this, mankind will have learned that lesson.

Well, it looks like we didn’t. One positive thing I thought about this is that people were as pessimistic then as today… So maybe that it means that we shouldn’t care and just live our life? What do you think?

Link to the Original Article of 1950

If you want to read the full article, you can do so just by clicking on the following link. It will bring you directly at the article I wrote about, thanks to the magic of Google news!
Full article from The St. Petersburg Times, Florida, May 29, 1950

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