will be in some of them- and some may involve atomic weapons. But there will not be
that all-destroying nuclear holocaust that forms the background of so many SF
stories. There are three reasons for this: The United States, the Soviet Union, and
the People’s Republic of China.
Why? Because the three strongest countries in the world (while mutually
detesting each the other two) have nothing to gain and everything to lose in an
allout swapping of H-bombs. Because Kremlin bosses are not idiots and neither are
those in Beijing (Peiping)(Peking).
If another country-say Israel, India, or the South African Republic-gets
desperate and tosses an A- or H-bomb, that country is likely to receive three phone
calls simultaneously, one from each of the Big Three:
“You have exactly three minutes to back down. Then we destroy you.”
After World War II I never expected that our safety would ever depend on a
massive split in Communist International-but that is exactly what has happened.
1950 Here are things we won’t get soon, if ever:
Travel through time.
Travel faster than the speed of light.
“Radio” transmission of matter.
Manlike robots with manlike reactions.
Laboratory creation of life.
Real understanding of what “thought” is and how it is related to matter.
Scientific proof of personal survival after death.
Nor a permanent end to war. (I don’t like that prediction any better than
you do.)
1950 Prediction of gadgets is a parlor trick anyone can learn; but only a
fool would attempt to predict details of future history (except as fiction, so
labeled); there are too many unknowns and no techniques for integrating them even if
they were known.
Even to make predictions about overall trends in technology is now most
difficult. In fields where before World War II there was one man working in public,
there are now ten, or a hundred, working in secret. There may be six men in the
country who have a clear picture of what is going on in science today.There may not
be even one.
This is in itself a trend. Many leading scientists consider it a factor as
disabling to us as the nonsense of Lysenkoism is to Russian technology. Nevertheless
there are clear-cut trends which are certain to make this coming era enormously more
productive and interesting than the frantic one we have just passed through. Among
them are:
Cybernetics: The study of communication and control
of mechanisms and organisms. This includes the wonderful field of mechanical
and electronic “brains”-but is not limited to it. (These “brains” are a factor in
themselves that will speed up technical progress the way a war does.)
Semantics: A field which seems concerned only with definitions of words. It
is not; it is a frontal attack on epistemology-that is to say, how we know what we
know, a subject formerly belonging to long-haired philosophers.
New tools of mathematics and logic, such as calculus of statement, Boolean
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logic, morphological analysis, generalized symbology, newly invented mathematics of
every sort-there is not space even to name these enormous fields, but they offer us
hope in every field- medicine, social relations, biology, economics, anything.
Biochemistry: Research into the nature of protoplasm, into enzyme chemistry,
viruses, etc., give hope not only that we may conquer disease, but that we may
someday understand the mechanisms of life itself. Through this, and with the aid of
cybernetic machines and radioactive isotopes, we may eventually acquire a rigor of
chemistry. Chemistry is not a discipline today; it is a jungle. We know that
chemical behavior depends on the number of orbital electrons in an atom and that
physical and chemical properties follow the pattern called the Periodic Table. We
don’t know much else, save by cut-and-try, despite the great size and importance of
the chemical industry. When chemistry becomes a discipline, mathematical chemists
will design new materials, predict their properties, and tell engineers how to make
them-without ever entering a laboratory. We’ve got a long way to go on that one!
Nucleonics: We have yet to find out what makes the atom tick. Atomic
power?-yes, we’ll have it, in convenient packages-when we understand the nucleus.
The field of radioisotopes alone is larger than was the