En L'An 2100

In 1899, a group of French artists imagined life in the year 2000.

Commissioned for the Paris World Exhibition, illustrator Jean-Marc Côté created postcards depicting flying postmen, underwater croquet, automated classrooms, and airborne police patrols. The company collapsed before distribution. The cards sat in a basement for decades until science fiction legend Isaac Asimov rediscovered them in 1986.

They got some things remarkably right: machine-assisted farming, electronic music, video communication. They got others spectacularly wrong: personal wings, seahorse transportation, the assumption that Victorian fashion would persist forever.

En L'An 2100 transforms these artifacts into a futures thinking tool.

What's on Each Card

The Prediction: What the Belle Époque artists imagined for the year 2000

What Actually Happened: The reality check—where prediction met history

Cultural Note: Historical context that shaped the original vision

The 2100 Challenge: Your turn—a provocation to envision the next century

Why This Deck Exists

In 1893, Chicago hosted the World's Columbian Exposition—a gleaming White City that answered Paris's Eiffel Tower with the Ferris Wheel and launched the City Beautiful movement. Seven years later, Côté's postcards emerged from the same Belle Époque optimism that believed technology would transform everything.

The Chicago Futures Salon carries forward that tradition. We believe the best way to prepare for the future is to practice imagining it—and the best way to imagine it is to understand how others have tried and failed before us.

These cards don't predict. They provoke.

How to Use It

Solo: Draw a card. Sit with the 2100 Challenge. Write, sketch, or simply think.

Dinner Table: Pass the deck. Each person draws and shares. Debate what we're getting wrong today.

Workshops: Deal 3-5 cards per table. Teams identify patterns and build collective visions. Cross-pollinate.

Strategic Foresight: Use themed cards to challenge assumptions in specific domains—transportation, communication, agriculture, urban life.

What's Included

61 illustrated provocation cards featuring original Belle Époque artwork

Themes spanning Transportation, Communication, Leisure, Agriculture, Warfare, Urban Life, Science, and Fantasy

Instruction card with facilitation guidance

Custom tuck box with Art Nouveau-inspired design

Perfect For

Facilitators and workshop leaders

Strategy teams exploring long-term scenarios

Educators teaching futures thinking or design

Dinner party hosts who prefer speculation to small talk

Anyone who believes the future is worth imagining

The future is unwritten. Draw a card.