It may not be quite as exciting as the prediction of flying cars and colonies on Mars, but here's "the bull-dog of the future," from Prose and Verse by William James Linton, 1836.

Here's a precursor to the Viewmaster, from The Story of Rapid Transit by Beckles Willson, 1903.

Here's a precursor to the Prince song "Alphabet St.," from What was the Gunpowder Plot? by John Gerard, 1897.  (Q: Did you spot the doubled letters in the illustration?)

There was a time before the Internet axiom, "What has been seen cannot be unseen."  We find proof in Seen & Unseen, or Monologues of a Homeless Snail by Yone Noguchi, 1897.

Here's a precursor to Wenceslao Moreno's "Señor Wences" act, from A History of Advertising from the Earliest Times by Henry Sampson, 1874.

Here's a precursor to the song "The Man in the Moon (is a Lady)," in the musical Mame (1966).  From Astronomy for Amateurs by Camille Flammarion, 1904.  See our previous proof that the craters of the moon line up exactly with the Mona Lisa's facial features.

Before the dirigible was the air ship of 1608, reproduced in History of the Parish Church of Saint Michael and All Angels, Chipping Lambourn by John Footman, 1894.

"So much for joy."  From Family Devotions For Every Morning and Evening Throughout the Year, 1849.  This strikes Jonathan Caws-Elwitt as a precursor to Picasso and/or Saul Steinberg.

Here's a precursor to the social media phenomenon: "He told her everything that he had already told her friends."  From Love Me For Ever by Robert Williams Buchanan, 1883.

Here's a precursor to Basil Fawlty and Polly discovering Manuel in a laundry basket (in the episode "The Kipper and the Corpse"), from The Works of Henry Fielding, illustrated by George Cruikshank, 1845.

Here's what looks like a precursor to the novelty mouth-shaped toilet, from The Anatomy, Physiology and Pathology of the Human Teeth, 1854.

We complain that today's culture is vapid, but here's "a beggarly account of empty boxes" from Dicks' English Library of Standard Works, 1884.

"People Have Been Complaining About This Longer Than You Think" dept.:

"The automatic typewriter, the telegraph, and the penny postal card have done much to cause a gradual decline in the gentle art of correspondence." —Donald Ogden Stewart, Perfect Behavior (a mock etiquette book from 1922, via Jonathan Caws-Elwitt)

Here's a precursor to The Flintstones, from A Lord Mayor's Diary, 1906-7 by William Purdie Treloar, 1920.

Here's another precursor to the famous finale of Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, this time from Az 1848-49-iki Magyar Szabadságharcz Története by György Gracza, 1894.  [Previously, and better, here.]

Here's a precursor to an AA meeting.  "And each as they sat by that bogwood fire told by turns his name and his history," from Illustrated British Ballads Old and New by George Barnett Smith, 1894.

Here's a precursor to the Woman With No Name from David Lynch's delirious farce "On the Air" (1992), from Dicks' English Library of Standard Works, 1884.

The phrase "ghosts of dead toys" delivers just one Google result from 1908.  Our illustration appears fours years earlier, in St. Nicholas magazine, 1904.