The phrase “post-modern” is often thrown about when discussing items such as art and music.

But one could argue we are currently living in a “post-futuristic” age.

The seemingly overnight change in technology this era is experiencing is far beyond what past generations encountered. (A quick look around at strolling preteens taking to their peers via hands-free devices is enough to give anybody future shock.)

Thus it’s occasionally fun to retreat into the literature of the past to see what folks speculated might be happening today. While some guesses show great foresight, many are simply off the mark … and comical.

A site called Modern Mechanix is capitalizing on these conjectures.

Launched in 2005, the site (blog.modernmechanix.com) proudly trumpets “Yesterday’s Tomorrow Today.” It provides this service by gathering various articles and advertisements from bygone eras centering on futuristic concepts.

Take a look at “Skyscrapers Doomed by Underground Cities?” (published in 1934), “Space Cops to Enforce World Peace” (1951) or “Use Vacuum to Aid Hair Growth” (1936).

One goofy 1948 feature called “Movies of Television Show Provide Permanent Record” praises a “specially designed movie camera” that records TV programs directly from the monitor tube at the station. You know, so that there can be an enduring recording of the show.

That’s kind of like making a painting to preserve a photograph.

The site is divided into categories such as entertainment, house and home, robots and transportation. Many of the submissions are culled from magazines from the 1930s to 1970s, such as Popular Mechanics, Mechanix Illustrated and Popular Science. Some hail from a defunct periodical actually called Modern Mechanix.

Pithy annotations accompany each article – and these are often eclipsed by the comments posted by readers.

But it isn’t just outlandish ideas that provide guffaws. Much amusement value is found in the preliminary bravado paid to mundane things we currently take for granted.

This is illustrated by a Life magazine article published in 1970 titled “The Handy Uses of a Home Computer,” which is as humorous as it is prescient.

The centerpiece photo shows a family gathered around a device that looks like the dashboard of a Packard. A hand-cranked pencil sharpener sits right next to it.

One of the family members claims, “Since we got the computer, no one’s ever bored around here anymore.”

Just give it time.

Perhaps the most eye-opening premise stems from an article in Modern Mechanics and Inventions.

It’s titled “Carbon Dioxide Heats the Earth,” and it focuses on a naval physicist who provides “conclusive mathematical evidence that the Earth’s temperature is being warmed by the increased amount of carbon dioxide present in the air.”

The date of the issue: July 1932.