I recently wrote a magazine article on how the last 50 years of progress haven’t been particularly spectacular. A friend who has actually been around for the last 50 years and involved in the development of new technologies in that period of time recommended I read this book – Toward the Year 2018 by the Foreign Policy Association, available for 1c here – for a view into how people were thinking in 1968. I guess it’s easy to laugh at predictions of the future, and there is a whole lot of hindsight bias in this sort of thing, but this book is too funny to pass up a good natured chuckle at the whole thing.
It gets an astounding amount of stuff right: they knew that communications technology would improve a lot more than it had. They knew that cheap international flights would change immigration and nationality forever. They knew that people would become more “open about their feelings” – though they had no idea that this would be largely a bad thing. They knew that nations might attack each other without identifying themselves – though they didn’t quite grasp the concept of non-state actors doing the same thing. They knew the United States (which was probably at around self sufficiency at that point) would be out of oil by 2018. They knew microelectronics would improve tremendously. They knew nuclear proliferation would be an important international issue in the future. They also seemed to realize that Fusion and Solar power required huge technical breakthroughs to become practical sources of energy. Finally, they contradicted the widespread idea that overpopulation would cause mass starvation at some point. They were correct: this still hasn’t happened.
Here are some bold predictions which did not come true. One of the authors postulated amazing breakthroughs in physics that never occurred: energy storage mechanisms making possible “disintegrator guns,” anti-gravity technology, they thought robots might fight bloodless wars. I don’t know why this guy thought this kind of insanity might happen (and he did hedge by saying he saw no way these things might happen, but he seemed to think they would anyway). Presumably too much television. Others postulated hypersonic air travel. The picture phone was a fun one; while it was certainly possible by the date they estimated, I guess they underestimated human nature.
The chapter on weather and climate control is hilarious. They did worry darkly that adding too much CO2 to the atmosphere might have some effect – but they seemed more interested in actually engineering climate and weather in those days. Nowadays, such talk seems like total madness. They also worried about a lot of other climate issues which it seems all get rolled into “global warming” nowadays – that sort of speculation gives one pause. Have we eliminated these things? Is carbon dioxide more important than dust bowls and ice ages? I don’t even know how to know this, but it bothers me that they asked such questions in 1968, and everything dealing with climate nowadays is deeply politicized. I guess they were right about the idea of weather becoming political, if not the ultimate way it happened.
Self repairing machines? Um, no; we don’t have this yet. Nor are we likely to any time soon. The population estimates were ultimately very high. As for widespread exploration and exploitation of undersea resources: this never happened either. We pretty much abandoned the deep oceans in the 1950s, with the abandonment of Bathyscaphe technology. Human beings haven’t been back to the ultimate deeps since then.
I guess it’s wrong of me to lump all the predictions together, as they were made by different sets of experts per chapter, but since they’re all in the same book, I leave it up to the reader to sort the sheep from the goats. This book is really a remarkable document of how huge the technological changes were in the period from 1918 to 1968; they merely assumed the rate of change would remain unchanged. Well, as it happened, progress slowed down rather a lot.
I recommend Scott’s fascinating article, which I referred to in this post:
http://thedabbler.co.uk/2010/10/the-futures-not-what-it-was/
The Observer recently asked some experts to look 25 years ahead:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/jan/02/25-predictions-25-years
The predictions are fairly tentative for this sort of thing. I note that ‘nanotechnology’ is mentioned – the technology of the future and always will be (as I learnt over at Scott’s place).
Interesting the split in people’s views, you read in many places that technology has “slowed down rather a lot” as you say Scott – and then you can read other commentators who argue the exact opposite, such as Charlie Brooker in yesterday’s Guardian, who said ‘Since about 1998 humankind began fast- forwarding through the gradually-unfolding history of progress, like someone impatiently zipping through a YouTube clip in search of the best bits.’
Interesting, they certainly knew how to sniff the wind, way back when. 1968, apparently was a good year for rune casting, pity they missed foretelling AAGill though, then we could have taken preventative measures.
“You’re all going to hell” he said, the Joe’s Witness, “and we shall be left standing on high pillars”, “bollocks” I said, proving beyond reasonable doubt that as a predictor religion is no match for profanity.
Geez, everybody’s a critic.
After all, in the last 15 years we’ve piped access to the sum total of human knowledge into more or less every home in the industrialized world, plus porn.
‘After all, in the last 15 years we’ve piped access to the sum total of human knowledge into more or less every home in the industrialized world, plus porn.’
Don’t you mean … we’ve piped porn into more or less every home in the industrialized world, plus the sum total of human knowledge?
I think a lot of us got carried away in the sixties, believing that science would transform the world out of all recognition, and within a fairly short period. Gagarin’s orbit, followed by Alan Shepard’s almost anti-climactic hop a few weeks later, Kennedy’s exhortation to the Americans to land a man on the moon, and return him safely to earth, within the decade, Crick and Watson’s work on DNA, Harold Wilson’s ‘white heat of technology’ speech, all gave me the feeling that spellbinding, unstoppable progress was inevitable. And it was all reinforced in my mind by an authoritative article I read postulating that within ten years computers would be capable of writing the equivalent of a Shakespeare play, and without much prompting. Well, I was young and gullible.
For all that, progress as been astonishing, and David Cohen puts his finger on, perhaps, the most astonishing aspect of all.
Yes, and there was enough of a run-off into the seventies for it to catch my young imagination. Concorde’s first flight – Skylab – and the first tech thing that I followed as a small boy, the first gas turbine Advanced Passenger Train.
And one I wotted not of, until reading Francis Spufford’s book “Backroom Boys” – the Black Arrow launcher.
The futuristic “look” of things like that first gas turbine APT, or Concorde, or even some of the Italian supercars of the time, has, it seems to me, lasted well. But I’m in my 40s, having waited all my life for the world to change much at all, and recent films-of-the-future like “Minority Report” now make the same bet: the future will look like the present, and innovation will be discrete.
1963 John, old Harold’s white heat speech, not long after we hit a major snag, the designers of concorde had brewed up performance data that at the time were beyond the remit of available material, when it was there were no machine tools capable of working the stuff, when they were, well, cost plus you are my god, there is no other.
White heat = trial, error, suck it and see.
I love that last line, Malty, it captures something gloriously British.
Booker’s a silly person. What awe inspiring piece of technology has happened since 1998?
Charles Murray is even more of a pessimist than I am; he thinks things have slowed down appreciably since the mid 1800s (his book “Human Achievement” is rather dry, but one of the best lifetime reading lists I’ve ever seen). I can sort of see his argument; it’s very obvious in the arts and sciences, though applying it to engineering and technology may involve a bit of survivorship bias.
Booker’s a silly person. What awe inspiring piece of technology has happened since 1998?
I’m participating in a discussion with people whom, absent one exception, I have never met.
For free.
On a phone.
How is that not awe inspiring?