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These photos, which surfaced recently on a Vipper forum, show a Showa Era newspaper’s predictions of what Tokyo would look like in their future. If Mark Twain can foresee the Internet nearly a hundred years in advance, surely a Showa Era newspaper can get a few predictions right? Let’s take a look:

▼ In the classroom of the future, children will have extreme attention deficit disorders, requiring a fleet of corporal punishment robots to keep them in line, and some kind of sinister time-out bot (far right). Instead of answering questions the old fashioned way, kids will apparently play a slot machine type device until the right answer comes out.

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▼ Crime solving seems basically unchanged, except that detectives of the future will play an oversized game of Guess Who? to determine guilt (center left).

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▼ This picture accurately predicts sprinkler systems, and automated fire alarms.

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▼ This tech-centric photo accurately predicts Roombas, 3-D televisions, teleconferencing and more. But falls short on the evolution of the computer, and goes a bit overboard with mobile tables that bring dinner to you.

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▼ Honestly, we’re not even sure what’s going on here, but apparently cars in 2011 with be floating, sentient and extremely disgruntled about their jobs. Did we miss the memo?

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More creative members of the Vipper community decided the pictures presented a perfect opportunity for them to make their own predictions of what 3013 has in store for us:

“Robots will be smarter than us.”

“Endangered species will make a comeback.”

“Humans will no longer have chins.”

“Human legs will become too weak from over-reliance on elevators, chairs and cars, and degenerate into slug-like appendages.”

Now where did my car drive itself off to?

Source: Vippers