Here are some great visual images of what the past envisioned for our world today. 

Enjoy!

Clothing of the "Future" — What designers in the 1930s thought we'd be wearing today. This is hysterical.

1967 Future Prediction: The PC — Clip from film 1999 A.D. shows glimpses of the "home computer" as imagined 40-plus years ago.

Disney's 1957 House of the Future — Promotional video put out by Disneyland predicting the homes of today.

When we were contacted by a census worker this past spring, I gave the process very little thought. It seemed fairly irrelevant to my life now or down the road.

But my attitude has shifted, having recently stumbled upon Thom Patterson's article What the census can teach us about ourselves. Census records connect past and future — whichever direction you look.

The data collected last year will give the "future" a window to the past, providing our great-grandchildren valuable insight about how we lived in the first part of the 21st century. 

"Basic population statistics are released soon after each census is tabulated," Patterson wrote. "However, for privacy protection, documents with names and personal details of respondents aren't released for 72 years."

So fast-forward to 2082. What interesting tidbits will future family historians uncover about our lives? Patterson wrote, for example, that the effects of the recession will be evident to future historians by the number households with families doubling-up or adult children living with their parents.

But most of Patterson's article discusses the value of past census records in our lives today. They can offer key information about previously unknown or misunderstood pieces of our family history. 

My husband's family has recently uncovered some new and surprising information about his grandmother and her family — all because of census information gathered a century ago. Patterson provides some great insights about what information census records provide — and how to find it.

Ancestry.com is a great place to start sifting around for information about your ancestors (as far back as 1790). The 1930 census is the most recent census details released. You may be surprised by what you'll find …. 

Yes, it's true. We're a "disposable society."  But we regularly dispose of more than blenders, jeans, and laptops.  

We clean out our "Sent" email files and neglect to print out our digital photos. Most of our personal information sits on our hard drives or on servers of password-protected internet companies, says Professor John Naughton in a recent article.

What we know about our great-grandparents and their parents is primarily gathered through old letters, photos, and diaries. But those tangible written communications from the past to the future have been replaced by the less-tangible — emails, Facebook posts, and blog entries. 

What are we doing to ensure that our family's digital library is protected … when the computer crashes or we're no longer around to keep up our Facebook page. 

Naughton writes about the importance of keeping a printed record of our online communications — or using a service like Entrustet to do the digital archiving for you. He says that we may be "carelessly or unwittingly — consigning the records of our lives to the digital shredder."  

Remember the Jetsons? I was certain that by the time I had kids of my own, we'd all own flying cars and have robot housekeepers. Rosie would be such a great addition to my household.

I wonder how accurately we imagine the world of tomorrow? 

At the end of most life-story interviews, I like to take some time to pass along thoughts, hopes, wishes to the future — distant and not-so-distant. What are your hopes for your grandchildren? What concerns do you have about the world that your grandchildren and great-grandchildren will inherit? 

Too bad most of us don't have our great-grandparents' answers to these questions. It would be interesting to hear what they envisioned about the world that awaited their great-great-grandchildren — the youth of today.

On her site, Brainpickings.com, Maria Popover has dug up six visions of the future, left to us from the past. They cover topics from travel, clothing, architecture, technology and communications — even snippets from Walt Disney's program "Tomorrowland." Fascinating stuff. Be sure to watch the "Clothing of the Future" video clip from the 1930s ….