for the curve to go on up indefinitely with increasing steepness.
The timid little predictions earlier in this article actually belong to
curve one, or, at most, to curve two. You can count on the changes in the
next fifty years at least eight times as great as the changes of the past
fifty years.
The Age of Science has not yet opened.
AXIOM: A “nine-days’ wonder” is taken as a matter of course on the tenth
day.
AXIOM: A “common sense” prediction is sure to err on the side of timidity.
AXIOM: The more extravagant a prediction sounds the more likely it is to
come true.
So let’s have a few free-swinging predictions about the future.
Some will be wrong — but cautious predictions are sure to be wrong.
1. Interplanetary travel is waiting at your front door — C.O.D. It’s yours
when you pay for it. (a)
2. Contraception and control of disease is revising relations between sexes
to an extent that will change our entire social and economic structure. (b)
5. The most important military fact of this century is that there is no way
to repel an attack from outer space. (c)
4. It is utterly impossible that the United States will start a “preventive
war.” We will fight when attacked, either directly or in a territory we
have guaranteed to defend. (d)
5. In fifteen years the housing shortage will be solved by a “breakthrough”
into new technology which will make every house now standing as obsolete as
privies. (e)
6. We’ll all be getting a little hungry by and by.
7. The cult of the phony in art will disappear. So-called “modern art” will
be discussed only by psychiatrists.
8. Freud will be classed as a pre-scientific, intuitive pioneer and
psychoanalysis will be replaced by a growing, changing “operational
psychology” based on measurement and prediction.
9. Cancer, the common cold, and tooth decay will all be conquered; the
revolutionary new problem in medical research will be to accomplish
“regeneration,” i.e., to enable a man to grow a new leg, rather than fit
him with an artificial limb. (f )
10. By the end of this century mankind will have explored this solar
system, and the first ship intended to reach the nearest star will be
abuilding. ( g )
11. Your personal telephone will be small enough to carry in your handbag.
Your house telephone will record messages, answer simple queries, and
transmit vision.
12. Intelligent life will be found on Mars. ( h )
13. A thousand miles an hour at a cent a mile will be commonplace; short
hauls will be made in evacuated subways at extreme speeds. (i)
14. A major objective of applied physics will be to control gravity. ( j )
15. We will not achieve a “world state” in the predictable future.
Nevertheless, Communism will vanish from this planet. (k)
16. Increasing mobility will disenfranchise a majority of the population.
About 1990 a constitutional amendment will do away with state lines while
retaining the semblance.
17. All aircraft will be controlled by a giant radar net run on a
continent-wide basis by a multiple electronic “brain.”
18. Fish and yeast will become our principal sources of proteins. Beef will
be a luxury; lamb and mutton will disappear. ( 1 )
19. Mankind will not destroy itself, nor will “civilization” be destroyed.
(m)
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.)
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