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1987 Time Capsule Predictions by Sci-Fi Writers About 2012

250 points by joshuahedlund 14y ago

damian2000 14y ago
This one stood out for me: "Japan will be the central economic power in the world, owning or controlling a significant part of European and American industries. This "economic dictatorship" will be beneficial to Japan's client states, since Japan benefits by keeping its customers healthy and wealthy. Indeed, a peaceful and prosperous world community will owe its existence to this Pax Japanica." --SHELDON GLASHOW Replace Japan with China and he's spot on. The idea has also been given the name "Chimerica" by some economists [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimerica http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimerica].
- cjensen 14y ago
  China has indeed replaced Japan as the bogeyman in our tales of decline, but does not Santayana have something to say about how this tale ends?
  - damian2000 14y ago
    Outside of the US, demand from China is mostly seen as a kind of saviour, bringing with it huge economic development, e.g. especially in Africa, Brazil and Australia.
- quesera 14y ago
  > Replace Japan with China and he's spot on. ...except for the prosperous and peaceful part, right? And oh yeah...everything else? I think you will find yourself just as wrong about China as Glashow was about Japan.
  - nl 14y ago
    ...except for the prosperous and peaceful part, right? Prosperous: clearly people in Asia & Africa are much, much more prosperous than in 1987. In the developing regions, the proportion of people living on less than $1.25 a day fell from 47 per cent in 1990 to 24 per cent in 2008. [snip] The number of extreme poor in the developing regions fell from over 2 billion in 1990 to less than 1.4 billion in 2008.[1] Even in the US and Europe income per person has grown substantially since 1987[2]. Don't let the current economic problems overshadow longer-term trends. Peaceful: If you live outside central Africa the last 25 years haven't been bad. In 1987 Iraq was at the end of the Iran/Iraq war and Afghanistan was in the middle of attempting to expel an invading superpower. Not much change there. Of course, the various central African wars have been a complete disaster - only WW1 & WW2 have been comparable. OTOH, there hasn't been a nuclear war, which was what people expected in 1987. [1] http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/mdgoverview/mdg_goals/mdg1/ http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/mdgoverview/mdg_goa... [2] http://www.bit.ly/SWICYq http://www.bit.ly/SWICYq (Sorry about the short URL - it goes to a Flash Gapminder page)
    - quesera 14y ago
      Good points, but I would argue that there is a vast difference between being raised out of extreme poverty and being "prosperous". Also, be careful with top line income stats for the US and Europe, they just don't reflect conditions on the ground. As for peaceful, Glashow's reference to a Pax Japanica implies that, at least within its economically-annexed countries, there would be genuine peace over and above what he observed in 1987. Since the establishing event didn't happen, I guess it doesn't make sense to analyze the effects...but I'll grant you that for several years between 1987 and now, the international rhetoric among nations with large standing armies has cooled. But this isn't the Golden Age of anything, certainly not Japan. Regarding the OP, China has nothing to do with any of it. Their assertions of economic influence in Africa and South America are just a shift in patron and beneficiaries from the old world order. Great for some countries (at least in the short term), less so for others.
- InclinedPlane 14y ago
  You're more right than you know. Many people thought that Japan was going to be the global economic hegemon. This was based entirely on the pace of their economic growth over about two decades combined with some odd quirks of international finance. But as it turned out that prediction was off, by a lot. Today Japan is still strong but their economy is troubled and nobody thinks that they are poised to control the world. And now we see people making similar predictions about China. Again based on a short period of economic growth combined with some odd quirks of international finance. But it's no more true this time than last. China has some very fundamental, deep seated flaws in its governance, society, economy, and industry. And it's likely that those flaws will become more apparent and become more of a drag on Chinese economic growth as the country gets wealthier and more modern.
- Gormo 14y ago
  > Replace Japan with China and he's spot on. Is he? I don't know of many Chinese companies that own stakes in American or European industry - maybe Lenovo counts to some extent, but what others? It seems that the sources of China's capital and the markets for the resulting industry are almost entirely Western, and primarily American. China's fate is far more determined by American investors and consumers than the reverse. China's government scrambles to buy dollars to keep the RMB artificially weak against the dollar so this pattern can be sustained for a while longer. But how long can that last?
  - damian2000 14y ago
    I'm not sure to the overall level, but it is increasing - looking to top $8bn of direct investment in the US this year... http://money.cnn.com/2012/07/25/investing/china-investing-us/index.htm http://money.cnn.com/2012/07/25/investing/china-investing-us... Speaking from Australia, China made $9.9bn investment last year, also growing... http://blogs.wsj.com/dealjournalaustralia/2011/12/30/chinese-ma-into-australia-reaches-record/ http://blogs.wsj.com/dealjournalaustralia/2011/12/30/chinese... - here they are generally looking to up their stake in mining/energy companies. I think its much the same in Canada as well.
    - bzbarsky 14y ago
      The investment share of GDP for the US was 12% in 2010 according to https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2185.html https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/... and I would expect it hasn't moved much since. US GDP is about $15 trillion/yr right now. So the $8bn of direct investment you mention is about 0.4% of the investment that happened in the US last year. A far cry from "owning or controlling a significant part of European and American industries". ;) Oh, and the $10bn investment into Australia, which has "only" 27% * $1.5e12 = $405bn of investment yearly, is about 2.5% of yearly Australian investment. At that rate you _could_ get to "significant" in several years, if the economy doesn't also grow at several % a year.... (For further comparison, the EU gdp is about 17tn/year and investment is almost 19% of that, so figure about 2.9tn/year.)
Foy 14y ago
TL;DR - By 2012 we'll have moon bases and missions to Mars if AIDS doesn't wipe us out first. They really had high hopes for space exploration. Shame that never happened. :( EDIT: Oh this was a good one (thankfully not at all accurate): "TIM POWERS: Probate and copyright law will be entirely restructured by 2012 because people will be frozen at death, and there will be electronic means of consulting them. Many attorneys will specialize in advocacy for the dead."
reasonattlm 14y ago
Gregory Benford's notes are perhaps the most interesting, given his present position on the board of Genescient - a company that mines the genetics of longevity: http://www.genescient.com/about/board-of-directors/#gbenford http://www.genescient.com/about/board-of-directors/#gbenford Interesting for the pessimism, that is. Every age and sub-age and decade and year, and so on down, has its seeping pessimism - yet here we are, still. Humans are good at foreseeing, identifying, and solving problems. Yet despite the vast evidence of that trait at work in our history, recent and otherwise, our capacity for progress and success is greatly underrated in every present day in comparison to our capacity to build problems.
- mattgreenrocks 14y ago
  Pessimism is helpful when it motivates us towards the right types of change: those that better humanity as a whole. Optimism can have its day when we've moved past our tribalistic, petty natures. Until then, we have work to do.
- lifthrasiir 14y ago
  And you should bring him a bottle. To be exact, we are still not good at predicting WHAT solution to those problems will appear. That's why optimistic entries are largely incorrect (to my standard).
- eevilspock 14y ago
  Necessity is the mother of invention. Fear is its maternal grandfather.
chewxy 14y ago
Some of these are very salient (Pohl), and some not so. Brilliant points (Orson Scott Card): > We must count ourselves lucky if anyone has leisure enough in 2012 to open this time capsule and care what is inside. In 2012 Americans will see the collapse of Imperial America, the Pax Americana, as having ended with our loss of national will and national selflessness in the 1970s. Worldwide economic collapse will have cost America its dominant world role; but it will not result in Russian hegemony; their economy is too dependent on the world economy to maintain an irresistible military force. ... And this one by Roger Zelazny, pretty spot on until... > It is good to see that a cashless, checkless society has just about come to pass, that automation has transformed offices and robotics manufacturing in mainly beneficial ways, including telecommuting, that defense spending has finally slowed for a few of the right reasons, I stopped reading at "defense spending has finally slowed"... no one could have predicted George W. Bush I guess This one is almost completely opposite: >Multiple sclerosis and Parkinson's disease will be effectively cured. However, AIDS will not yet have been controlled. It will have become the leading cause of death worldwide with millions of new cases each year.
- caf 14y ago
  Zelazny did get ebooks right though.
- NoPiece 14y ago
  Even including the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the defense spending is a much lower percentage of GDP than it was in 1987. http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/19/more-on-defense/ http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/19/more-on-defense/
- cema 14y ago
  Not predicted Bush? Not predicted 9/11, more like. Which is strange too: one of my first impressions of the US was how vulnerable the country was. (Resilient too, but that was not surprising.)
  - Vivtek 14y ago
    9/11 was a bee sting. Bush is the one that instituted the subsequent anaphylactic shock.
cjensen 14y ago
Fears of War, Population Explosion, American Decline, and Japanese Ascension with some anti-Reagan sentiment mixed in. Pretty much a lesson in what pop-culture fear look like in 1987, and every one of them turned out to be a non-issue. This ought to give one pause and great skepticism when evaluating today's pop-culture fears. Of course, just because an idiot picks (c) on an SAT question doesn't mean it's wrong.
- waterlesscloud 14y ago
  Group-think and reality tunnels apparent throughout. If someone thinks we aren't doing the same thing, they're insane.
  - mattgreenrocks 14y ago
    Precisely. Pop culture is made to be vacuous, ephemeral, and cyclic. Unfortunately, there are scores of people who eat it up because it's pushed to them. Worse, there are lots of institutions who make a killing off of giving people exactly what they say they want. The success doesn't bother me; the pandering does.
  - Gormo 14y ago
    > If someone thinks we aren't doing the same thing, they're insane. For varying values of we, anyway. Every generation seems to have its crisis/moral panic du jour. Only a minority ever seems to take a moderate, pragmatic view, and expect neither utopia nor dystopia.
    - anabis 14y ago
      > expect neither utopia nor dystopia. Maybe the old utopia is the new mundane? Infant mortality near zero, lifespan 80 years, global communication and travel, almost no hunger or war. Wouldn't that be considered utopia 100 years ago? Those are for the West, but the rest of the world is rapidly catching up, too.
- eevilspock 14y ago
  Yeah, but whose to say that the prevalence of those fears didn't have a hand in making them a non-issue? What else but a fear of war motivates us to avoid it? Would China have instituted its one-child policy without a fear of population explosion, a policy which arguably is one of the most important factors in its rapid rise (as compared to India, for instance)? Perhaps the seeming inevitability of Japan's dominance made them complacent while simultaneously stripping American's of theirs?
tokenadult 14y ago
My elementary school included a class that put a time capsule together during the 1968-1969 school year, with pupil predictions of the year 2001. In the year 2001, the time capsule was opened up. We were quite concerned about air pollution and, wouldn't you know, running out of petroleum, and both turned out to be less of a problem than we anticipated. I expected more progress in the United States in "race" relations than there actually has been, but it is a fact that the United States is experiencing an ongoing reduction of "race" consciousness that is hard to imagine to people who remember the days of legal segregation by state law. http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/14635780-post3.html http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/14635780-post3.html I was interested to see that another page on the site hosting the submitted article has a description of the late L. Ron Hubbard http://www.writersofthefuture.com/lrhbio http://www.writersofthefuture.com/lrhbio that perhaps needs some fact-checking. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Ron_Hubbard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Ron_Hubbard http://www.villagevoice.com/related/to/L.+Ron+Hubbard/ http://www.villagevoice.com/related/to/L.+Ron+Hubbard/ http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2012/07/25/bay-area-great-grandson-of-l-ron-hubbard-blasts-scientology/ http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2012/07/25/bay-area-great-g...
- waterlesscloud 14y ago
  Writers Of The Future is a Hubbard thing. He originated it. So it's not surprising it has a more favorable view of him than other sources...
- jtolle 14y ago
  A round of applause for the Clean Air Act!
- runn1ng 14y ago
  The site looks like 100% Scientóogy propaganda. I know this may sound paranoic, but you can really recognize it by the home page and the way it's written.
  - fluxon 14y ago
    +1
joezydeco 14y ago
When I was a kid I bought a paperback copy of The People's Almanac: The Book of Predictions[1]. The book is mostly wacky, but over the decades I would thumb through it from time to time and catch something that someone got right, although mostly by accident. The psychics that were interviewed were way off. The scientists? They did a lot better. It's a fun read if you can find a copy. [1] (http://books.google.com/books/about/The_People_s_Almanac_Presents_the_Book_o.html?id=07XMYmhoX2YC http://books.google.com/books/about/The_People_s_Almanac_Pre...)
kposehn 14y ago
I find it rather gratifying - even comforting - that by and large their predictions missed the mark by a wide margin. Predictions are the product of your current experience - your time until now. Many brilliant people try and predict the future, but in the end the future is up to us.
toomuchcoffee 14y ago
Most Americans are barely literate, think in images rather than symbols, and think the future is something that will happen to somebody else… Right on the money.
- majormajor 14y ago
  You left out the "just as today…" which rather changes the tone.
  - toomuchcoffee 14y ago
    Nah, just making it shorter and easier to parse.
brimanning 14y ago
"The American economy will have experienced a gentle yet relentless decline. Our children will not live such comfortable lives as we do. The spread between the rich and the poor will have grown, and crime will have become so prevalent as to threaten the social fabric. The rich and the poor will form 2 armed camps. Most automobiles and heavy machinery will be manufactured in Japanese owned planets located in America. Yet, agriculture and higher education will be our most successful exports. There will be no fast trains connecting American cities, but a network of levitated superconducting trains will be under construction in Western Europe and in Japan." - Sheldon Glashow This was the most stunning part of the predictions as it's far more negative than what truly is the case, yet points to many truths and is what many could say about the next 25 years.
waterlesscloud 14y ago
Doom! Gloom! Disaster Just Around The Corner! How depressing. Not just the worlds they paint, but that some of the brightest minds were (and are) trapped into such a negative way of looking at the future.
- vacri 14y ago
  In 1987 the cold war was still going strong, and the threat of Mutually-Assured Destruction was palpably felt. The industrialised world was divided into two sides and it affected politics quite powerfully. In 1987 there weren't the public glimmerings of the fall of communism - the Berlin Wall was torn down in '89. Since the fall of communism ended the two-superpower cold war, industrialised nations simply don't feel the threat of being sucked into a massively destructive third world war. Don't forget also that many of those minds write about things happening in a post-apocalptic timeframe :)
  - eevilspock 14y ago
    waterlesscloud was probably a child or not born yet, so we who were alive and old enough back then sound just as weird as the World War and Great Depression generations sounded to us. S/he will be in the same boat 15-25 years from now :)
    - waterlesscloud 14y ago
      I was 19 in 1987. :-) Old enough to be aware of the voices of Gloom and Doom even then. There's always an excuse to believe in them. And there's always a choice to see it otherwise.
- sbmassey 14y ago
  Science Fiction writers != some of the brightest minds.
unimpressive 14y ago
What's interesting to me is how some made assumptions that didn't turn out to be true but got much correct anyway. Algis Budrys stands out in particular.
paul 14y ago
This is wonderful. Their confident pessimism brightens my day :)
- Auguste 14y ago
  I was surprised at how pessimistic they were. Did the future really look that bleak 25 years ago?
  - ChuckMcM 14y ago
    You mean it doesn't now ? :-) Only half joking. It is easier to see what could happen that would be bad, and believe it will come to pass, than it is to see something that is going to make everything good. That said, there were a number of very hopeful letters in there too. In 1987 none of these writers had any real insight into the changes the Internet would bring. "The World is Flat" [1] wouldn't come out for nearly 20 years. Although engineers were getting a pretty good grasp of what would be different 10 years later in '97. I clearly remember showing my parents Java when they came to visit at Christmas in 1994 and they thought it was 'interesting' but really didn't believe that everyone in the world would be affected by it. The next year (Christmas '95) and at my sister's house in Utah I pointed out a web site on a car ad and asked her if she knew what it was. Nope, I told her that soon it would be the only way to get information on anything. She didn't believe me. We've not made nearly the strides in delivered medicine that we might have, that is in part due to regulatory delays, although mechanical things (titanium inserts, replacement joins, heart valves, etc) did quite well. And world politics were clearly difficult to predict. I too saw the juggernaut of Japanese manufacturing excellence and thought "Gee, if we don't get our game on we're dead meat!" but never ever imagined a world with web sites like Global Sources [2] where you fill out a form, wire some money, and have a Chinese factory working on widgets for you before the end of the week. [1] http://www.amazon.com/The-World-Is-Flat-Twenty-first/dp/0374292884 http://www.amazon.com/The-World-Is-Flat-Twenty-first/dp/0374... [2] http://www.globalsources.com/?WT.mc_id=1001007&WT.srch=1&gclid=COv-m63nuLECFYUaQgodKFUACg http://www.globalsources.com/?WT.mc_id=1001007&WT.srch=1...
    - jkimmel 14y ago
dkhenry 14y ago
Is this the same L. Ron Hubbard of Scientology fame ?
- dsr_ 14y ago
  Yes. Before that, his career was SF pulp writer. Not a great one, mind you. Religion pays better.
redthrowaway 14y ago
"Because we will be in a trough between 20th-century resources and 21st-century needs, in 2012 all storable forms of energy will be expensive. Machines will be designed to use only minimal amounts of it. At the same time, there will be a general expectation that a practical cheap-energy delivery system is just around the corner. Individuals basing their career plans on any aspect of technology will concentrate on that future, leaving contemporary machine applications to the less ambitious or to those who foresee a different future. The most socially approved-of individuals will constitute a narrowly focused aristocracy, and will be at the mercy of dull functionaries and secretive rebels who actually perform the day-to-day maintenance of society. It should be noted that most minimal-energy devices process information and microscopic materials, not consumer goods. The function of "our" society may depend on processing information and biotechnology to subjugate goods-producing societies. These societies may be geographically external, or may be yet another social stratum within central North America. In either case, crowd-management technologies will have to turn away from forms that might in any way impair capital goods production. Social regimentation will then have become so deft that most people will regard any other social milieu as pitiable. " Most were quaintly charming, but that was right on. I'm surprised that fewer authors mentioned the information revolution as being a large force in society.
- maxerickson 14y ago
  Portable energy isn't particularly expensive. The cheap labor in Asia isn't particularly subjugated (and Western nations produce more material goods in absolute terms, never mind U.S. agriculture). What's left?
  - ricardobeat 14y ago
    Portable energy is extremely expensive. The Tesla Roadster's battery pack costs upwards of $30k and weighs half a ton. Lithium AA batteries cost ~$400-500 per kW.
    - illumin8 14y ago
      A gallon of gasoline costs ~$3.50 and weighs a few pounds.
bguthrie 14y ago
A wonderful link. My votes are: Wolverton for prescience, Silverberg for wisdom. Your AUs per year may vary.
zavulon 14y ago
> I would also like to take this opportunity to plug my new book, to be published in both computerized and printed versions in time for 2012 Christmas sales—but I've not yet decided on its proper title. Grandchildren of Amber sounds at this point a little clumsy, but may have to serve. Oh how I wish this was the case...
cubicle 14y ago
Isaac Asimov Died 1992 Gregory Benford Alive Algis Budrys Died 2008 Gerald Feinberg Died 1992 Sheldon Glashow Alive Frederik Pohl Alive Jerry Pournelle Alive Tim Powers Alive Orson Scott Card Alive Robert Silverberg Alive Jack Williamson Died 2006 Gene Wolfe Alive Dave Wolverton Alive Roger Zelazny Died 1997 A lot more of them have survived to be embarrassed by their predictions than I had thought.
- jpdoctor 14y ago
  > A lot more of them have survived to be embarrassed by their predictions Predictions are hard, especially about the future. -- Yogi Berra But seriously, I was in my mid-20's in 1987 and not a lot of these predictions seem outlandish having lived through that time.
TechNewb 14y ago
Orson Scott Card wins.
3pt14159 14y ago
By far the most accurate: DAVE WOLVERTON In 2012 We will see: 1) That economic cycles caused by rises in technological levels will begin to level out—countries that have a falsely inflated economy will be forced to export their technologies to third-world countries where people are willing to work for less money. This will lead to a situation where knowledge, the key to our technologic success, will be spread across the world. We'll see rapid decreases in starvation levels, but will still be plagued with political turmoil. 2) Men's Rights—We will see a reaction to the women's movement. Men will demand to be portrayed by the media as the sensitive, caring creatures that they are. They will also demand equal rights in custody battles where children are seldom awarded to a father because our society chooses to believe a mother is a better care-taker by nature. 3) Introduction of x-ray microscopes in the early 2000's will lead to rapid progress in gene splicing. Look for rapid growth in medicine and mining, and food production. We may also see bacteria being engineered to simulate parts of the immune system (which could cure immune disorders such as AIDS and allergies).
- aprendo 14y ago
  The second point is technically accurate – but does it really count if it’s a delusional movement by a few crazies that is in no way comparable to to the women’s movement and mostly based on a completely weird worldview (all the while many of the legitimate goals of the women’s movement are far from reached)?
  - rmc 14y ago
    Agreed. There have been some men's rights groups but they are now a minority. I don't know about child care, but men are starting to be shown on media as caring people with emotions (e.g. Brokeback mountain won an Oscar and that's about 2 men who fall in love). I don't think the MRA's are responsible for that, since they mostly campaign against various policies put in help women (rather than campaign for sensitive men).
  - lunarscape 14y ago
    Feminists were also branded as delusional mentally ill people when they started fighting for their rights. Your comment shows exactly why these movements need to exist and the prejudices they have to overcome. Are men fighting for basic access to their children in a biased legal system "crazies"? What about those trying to tackle the massive problem of young men committing suicide? What about those campaigning to give boys the same protection from genital mutilation as girls? Every movement has radicals and unfortunately they tend to be the loudest. Consider the running controversy over anti-transgender feminist groups (eg. [1]). They're loud, get lots of attention but hardly represent the majority. [1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/25/radical-feminism-trans-radfem2012 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/25/radical-...
ilamont 14y ago
Frederik Pohl's essay is great. By 1987, he had been writing science fiction for nearly 50 years and I think had become embittered by the course of 20th century history. Read Gateway (which I think came out that same year) to see his vision of 21st century Earth -- humanity lives on an overpolluted planet, with only a tiny portion of the population able to have access to "Full Medical" and live in clean, domed cities. He's still alive, incidentally. And has turned to blogging: http://www.thewaythefutureblogs.com/ http://www.thewaythefutureblogs.com/
ekianjo 14y ago
SOme lesson to learn from this: most people are wrong, and totally wrong about the near future (provided 25 years is considered "near"). That should say a lot about not listening to what's being said currently about what will happen in 25 years from now.
jwecker 14y ago
2037 Some promising technologies will still be struggling along in 2037. Others have disappeared or been replaced completely. No matter how miraculous and marvelous the advances that have happened though, society will have managed to consider them mundane and probably inevitable. I don't know what quantum computers and machine learning will have allowed by 2037- (better weather prediction? deep mathematical truths?), but I suspect that the things people think about the most, like how to have meaningful relationships and fulfilling work, will have only been minimally affected. On the other hand, I predict that some people thinking about those things now will have found, individually, exactly what they were looking for. Each generation will be less mature (at least until it reaches the same age as the last). Each new generation (there will have been a couple by 2037) will, despite its immaturity, regressiveness, and destructiveness, manage to yield forth individuals who inspire and transform, who rise above petty concerns and a world brimming with distraction and reveal something new about the capacity of mankind. In short, the fundamental struggle will continue between technology that exalts our knowledge and capacity, and human nature that debases and waste them. Existential threats to mankind will still occasionally surface. The threat of genocide, tyrants who oppress and reign in terror, the Earth groaning under its abuse as we attempt to listen better, to act better. But, as always there will be pockets of peace and prosperity where others can sit and take a moment to write an entry for 2062.
- purplelobster 14y ago
  Bravo! I believe that's as accurate a prediction you could make. As soon as you dive into specific issues, such predicting what will happen with China, virtual reality, space exploration etc, you'll have a much better chance of success if you predict status quo, or nothing at all. You hit on something though. We won't have "real" AI in 2037, but believe we're in the midst of a machine learning and computer vision revolution. Self driving cars should be possible in 25 years, technically. Whether there will be legal issues or not I can't guess.
- dennisgorelik 14y ago
  Each generation will be more mature by the time they reach the same age. It's been so for ages and that trend would continue. AI would advance a lot. Virtual reality would be a commonplace. Population would keep slowly rising (due to natural selection). World would be even more peaceful than it is today. No existential threats to mankind in the next 25 years.
Aloha 14y ago
Goes to show, just how much easier it is to write about a future, than it is to predict the future. Though on whole, if you grab a statement out of each (almost) you have the world of today.
brianchu 14y ago
Gregory Benford: "Berkeley, California will have a theme park devoted to its high period—the 1960s." He's right. Berkeley has People's Park. As for the theme, well...
nl 14y ago
Lesson: Don't be pessimistic. The disaster scenarios you imagine are inevitable are really just the worst case, and the things that actually problems aren't thing you can predict.
Dove 14y ago
I find it curious that more than one of them predicted a decrease in literacy. Indeed, the opposite seems to have happened. When I was in college, my English professor vowed that he would make us better writers by forcing us to write an essay every single night. And it really worked. Yet we live in a world where people are writing, constantly writing, in a way my English teacher could barely have dreamed of. High school kids, debating endlessly with a hostile audience every day, are turning into frighteningly persuasive writers all on their own.
- itmag 14y ago
  High school kids, debating endlessly with a hostile audience every day, are turning into frighteningly persuasive writers all on their own. u jelly brah?
- rmc 14y ago
  People thought that TV & radio would take off, both media that don't require literacy to use/consume/watch. However the internet means everone has to read AND write in order to interact. People have to be able to string words together. People have to be able to write to have friendly. Computers have probably done lots for literacy. You can see it a little bit now when much older people who don't use computers a lot, write things. They aren't very literate, probably because they haven't written as much as young people have.
- smsm42 14y ago
  The issue here is that the population is very different. Some of the worst schools literally graduated people that were unable to read their own diplomas. Some give great education. I'd say literacy did not decrease, and access to information greatly improved. But if you wanted, you also could find a lot of illiterate people and a lot of ignoramuses, I would even argue it is easier to be an ignoramus now than before. I can see however where that came from - with the rise of the TV culture and not seeing the following rise of the internet and global information connectedness brought by it - you can easily decide that the future is couch potatoes watching TV, not couch potatoes reading blogs and writing comments :)
dennisgorelik 14y ago
All these writers clearly had no clue about the future. Even "Back to the Future" was much closer in spite of being a comedy.
dennisgorelik 14y ago
All these writers clearly had no clue about the future. Even "Back to the Future" was much closer in spite of being a comedy.
derleth 14y ago
It seems that the major pass-time among people who read time capsule predictions is to count the most idiot things as "hits" as hail the people with the most bizarre ideas as prophets. In that spirit, here's a few "hits" for everyone here: "A new world order will emerge from famine, disease, and social dislocation: the re-tribalization of Africa, the destruction of the illusion of Islamic unity, the struggle between aristocracy and proletariat in Latin America—without the financial support of the industrialized nations, the old order will be gone." -- Orson Scott Card "America and the U.S.S.R. preserve an uneasy accord, each testing the other's will within well-defined limits. [snip]Vestiges of reading, writing, and spelling remain in the curricula of the public schools. Those who can read a few hundred common words are counted literate. The schools train their students for employment—how to report to computers and follow instructions. [snip] There is little sex outside marriage, which normally includes a legal contract. A single instance of infidelity is amply sufficient to terminate a marriage, with damages to the aggrieved party [snip] The population of the planet is below six billion." -- Gene Wolfe "Most Americans are barely literate, think in images rather than symbols [snip] Berkeley, California will have a theme park devoted to its high period—the 1960s. [snip] There will have been major "diebacks" in overcrowded Third World countries, all across southern Asia and through Africa. This will be a major effect keeping population from reaching 10 billion." -- Gregory Benford
- itmag 14y ago
  Most Americans are barely literate, think in images rather than symbols This rubbed me the wrong way. Thinking that way does not make a person stupid or illiterate.
perfunctory 14y ago
> Bases on the moon, an expedition to Mars…all done. How badly we underperformed.
- stevejabs 14y ago
  No one here to blame other than political agenda. I fully feel we could have been in preparation for a humanized mission to Mars at this point. However, we've wasted too much time funding war and whether or not abortion and gay marriage should be legal instead. It's actually quite sad.
- stevejabs 14y ago
  No one here to blame other than political agenda. I fully feel we could have been in preparation for a humanized mission to Mars at this point. However, we've wasted too much time funding war and whether or not abortion and gay marriage should be legal instead. It's actually quite sad.
perfunctory 14y ago
> Most Americans are barely literate, think in images rather than symbols Any comments on this?
- itmag 14y ago
  It rubbed me the wrong way too. I'm a visual thinker myself, and I don't consider myself barely literate :p Then again, I guess it could be interpreted in a different way...
beefman 14y ago
I reviewed these and counted 49 distinct and falsifiable predictions, of which I judged 11 correct (about 20%). Optimistic predictions fared better (30%) than pessimistic ones (10%). Zelazny did best with 4/8, followed by Benford and Glashow. Full accounting here: http://lumma.org/temp/1987-2012_Predictions.txt http://lumma.org/temp/1987-2012_Predictions.txt
allaun1 14y ago
I think Sheldon Glasgow was the nearest to accurate. Most of their predictions were almost 100%. SHELDON GLASHOW Written on the Eastern Air Shuttle between Boston and N.Y. What will life be like in the year 2012? There will have been no nuclear war, and the threat of such a war will have been removed by the mutual nuclear disarmament of the major powers. SDI, Reagan's ill advised Star Wars program will have come to nothing. Japan will be the central economic power in the world, owning or controlling a significant part of European and American industries. This "economic dictatorship" will be beneficial to Japan's client states, since Japan benefits by keeping its customers healthy and wealthy. Indeed, a peaceful and prosperous world community will owe its existence to this Pax Japanica. Many diseases will be curable: diabetes and gout, for example, will be treated by 'genetic engineering' techniques. Multiple sclerosis and Parkinson's disease will be effectively cured. However, AIDS will not yet have been controlled. It will have become the leading cause of death worldwide with millions of new cases each year. The American economy will have experienced a gentle yet relentless decline. Our children will not live such comfortable lives as we do. The spread between the rich and the poor will have grown, and crime will have become so prevalent as to threaten the social fabric. The rich and the poor will form 2 armed camps. Most automobiles and heavy machinery will be manufactured in Japanese owned planets located in America. Yet, agriculture and higher education will be our most successful exports. There will be no fast trains connecting American cities, but a network of levitated superconducting trains will be under construction in Western Europe and in Japan.
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DanielBMarkham 14y ago
The lesson here is "don't ask sci-fi writers to predict the future." Seriously, these guys are doing what we all do: making some kind of linear estimate based on past data. Usually these estimates end in some sort of crisis. No, we are not out of oil. It's debatable whether we've even reached peak oil, which I doubt. The U.S. has a shot at becoming a major oil exporter if we don't screw it up. No, hunger and disease are no more widespread and rampant than they were then. If anything, things have probably gotten a little better. No, we are not colonizing the moon or Mars. Our space program is still barely getting started. No, everybody isn't an illiterate slob watching CGI dramas, but that day still seems to be fast approaching, at least for the western world. The internet really took the species on a hard turn from where we all thought we were going. Even idea of a hive mind where billions vegetate using computer stimulus wasn't considered. Everybody thought that the individual would stay the same and technology would evolve around them. What's happened is much more interesting: the idea of the unique individual is changing as more of the things that make us unique are being recorded and shared. Technology is not transforming the world; technology is transforming us. ADD: An interesting title to this article might be "It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine."
- drostie 14y ago
  Well, I had the opposite conclusion. Lots of the linear estimates were more or less right, and the ones that were wildly wrong were not linear enough. Like, here's a wildly wrong one: "Probate and copyright law will be entirely restructured by 2012 because people will be frozen at death, and there will be electronic means of consulting them. Many attorneys will specialize in advocacy for the dead." What is this guy anticipating? He's anticipating that biocomputing will explode up from approximately 0 to the level where we blur the line between life and death. What about "now in 1987, we would beg you to forgive us. We have burdened you with impossible debts, wasted and polluted the planet that should have been your rich heritage, left you instead a dreadful legacy of ignorance, want, and war"? The author has totally neglected the idea that perhaps future presidents would create debts, pollution, ignorance, and war at scales which just blow those original scales out of the water, so as to seem irrelevant by comparison. Instead he predicts a total reversal of human nature, expressed in a "faith that you have saved yourselves". If they've shown sci-fi bias towards computers, that has actually to some extent held up; if they've shown sci-fi bias towards space, that has not. The slow-and-incremental predictions are not so bad.
ionwake 14y ago
GREETINGS TO 2012: If we had a time-phone, now in 1987, we would beg you to forgive us. We have burdened you with impossible debts, wasted and polluted the planet that should have been your rich heritage, left you instead a dreadful legacy of ignorance, want, and war. Yet, in spite of that, we have a proud faith in you. Faith that you have saved yourselves, that you are giving birth to no more children than you can love and nurture, that you have cleansed and healed your injured planet, ended hunger, conquered crime, learned to live in peace. Looking toward a better future for you than we can see for ourselves, we trust that you will use your computers and all your new electronic media to inform and liberate, not to dominate and oppress, trust that you will employ the arts of genetic engineering to advance the human species and make your children better than yourselves. We know that you will be inventing new sciences that would dazzle us, opening brave new frontiers, climbing on toward the stars. We live again through you. Sincerely, Jack Williamson
fluxon 14y ago
"Doom, doom, doom-doom, doom, doom ... doomie-doomie-doom, doomie-doomie-doomie-doom ... doom, doom. The end." -- The Doom Song, GIR, Invader Zim
sampsonjs 14y ago
Worth a read: Pitfalls of Prophecy: Why Science Fiction So Often Fails to Predict the Future , http://www.locusmag.com/2009/Westfahl_Predictions.html http://www.locusmag.com/2009/Westfahl_Predictions.html. Why do they think that the fact that they write science fiction makes it worth listening to their predictions anyways? Well, besides the genre inferiority complex, which requires its hacks to pretend they're prophets, so they can feel important.
calinet6 14y ago
"Berkeley, California will have a theme park devoted to its high period—the 1960s." This pretty accurately describes Telegraph Ave.
mratzloff 14y ago
What's always interesting about these kinds of predictions is not the predictions themselves, but the window into the hopes and fears of people at the time. It's all here: Japan as an economic superpower, space travel, AIDS, poverty, hunger. Now compare to predictions that sci-fi writers today make about 2037 and you'll have a similar window into our own hopes and fears--many of which will be just as accurate, at least in the next 25 years.
gwern 14y ago
As much as I love Gene Wolfe, his predictions are just embarrassing.
dhughes 14y ago
I grew up in the 80s and the one main thing I can recall is the ever present fear of nuclear war. If I had made a prediction back then I would say there would certainly be some sort of nuclear event at some point in the next twenty or thirty years.
jonhendry 14y ago
Huh, no predictions that Tom Cruise would still not be exhibiting any OT powers.
xiaoma 14y ago
My favorite of the bunch, Roger Zelazny, was also most accurate: "ROGER ZELAZNY It is good to see that a cashless, checkless society has just about come to pass, that automation has transformed offices and robotics manufacturing in mainly beneficial ways, including telecommuting, that defense spending has finally slowed for a few of the right reasons, that population growth has also slowed and that biotechnology has transformed medicine, agriculture and industry—all of this resulting in an older, slightly conservative, but longer-lived and healthier society possessed of more leisure and a wider range of educational and recreational options in which to enjoy it—and it is very good at last to see this much industry located off-planet, this many permanent space residents and increased exploration of the solar system. I would also like to take this opportunity to plug my new book, to be published in both computerized and printed versions in time for 2012 Christmas sales—but I've not yet decided on its proper title. Grandchildren of Amber sounds at this point a little clumsy, but may have to serve" * We're mostly a cashless society using cards and electronic payment -- CORRECT * Automation has transformed offices and robotics manufacturing in mainly beneficial ways -- CORRECT * Defense spending has finally slowed for a few of the right reasons -- MIXED : True as a ratio, but not in absolute $$$ * population growth has also slowed -- CORRECT * Biotechnology has transformed medicine, agriculture and industry—all of this resulting in an older, slightly conservative, but longer-lived and healthier society possessed of more leisure and a wider range of educational and recreational options -- CORRECT on nearly all counts * ...in which to enjoy it—and it is very good at last to see this much industry located off-planet, this many permanent space residents and increased exploration of the solar system. -- WRONG * I would also like to take this opportunity to plug my new book, to be published in both computerized and printed versions in time for 2012 Christmas sales—but I've not yet decided on its proper title. Grandchildren of Amber sounds at this point a little clumsy, but may have to serve -- ... Despite all the other excellent predictions, his death came much earlier than he forsaw :(
smsm42 14y ago
What is surprising in these predictions is how near-sighted many of them are. Basically most of the writers just took popular topics of the day and wrote along the lines "will it get better? will it get worse?" Very few tried to think outside of the box and imagine future where their current concerns won't be concerns at all and instead different hot topics will arise. I do not blame them - it's almost impossible feat to achieve, but I still would expect from scifi writers a better detachment from politics de-jour and current fears and concerns. I like Silverbergs and Zelazny's ones the best. Too sad Zelazny didn't live to present us that 2012 Christmas Grandchildren of Amber.

250 points by joshuahedlund 14y ago

damian2000 14y ago

This one stood out for me: "Japan will be the central economic power in the world, owning or controlling a significant part of European and American industries. This "economic dictatorship" will be beneficial to Japan's client states, since Japan benefits by keeping its customers healthy and wealthy. Indeed, a peaceful and prosperous world community will owe its existence to this Pax Japanica." --SHELDON GLASHOW Replace Japan with China and he's spot on. The idea has also been given the name "Chimerica" by some economists [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimerica http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimerica].

cjensen 14y ago
China has indeed replaced Japan as the bogeyman in our tales of decline, but does not Santayana have something to say about how this tale ends?
- damian2000 14y ago
  Outside of the US, demand from China is mostly seen as a kind of saviour, bringing with it huge economic development, e.g. especially in Africa, Brazil and Australia.
quesera 14y ago
> Replace Japan with China and he's spot on. ...except for the prosperous and peaceful part, right? And oh yeah...everything else? I think you will find yourself just as wrong about China as Glashow was about Japan.
- nl 14y ago
  ...except for the prosperous and peaceful part, right? Prosperous: clearly people in Asia & Africa are much, much more prosperous than in 1987. In the developing regions, the proportion of people living on less than $1.25 a day fell from 47 per cent in 1990 to 24 per cent in 2008. [snip] The number of extreme poor in the developing regions fell from over 2 billion in 1990 to less than 1.4 billion in 2008.[1] Even in the US and Europe income per person has grown substantially since 1987[2]. Don't let the current economic problems overshadow longer-term trends. Peaceful: If you live outside central Africa the last 25 years haven't been bad. In 1987 Iraq was at the end of the Iran/Iraq war and Afghanistan was in the middle of attempting to expel an invading superpower. Not much change there. Of course, the various central African wars have been a complete disaster - only WW1 & WW2 have been comparable. OTOH, there hasn't been a nuclear war, which was what people expected in 1987. [1] http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/mdgoverview/mdg_goals/mdg1/ http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/mdgoverview/mdg_goa... [2] http://www.bit.ly/SWICYq http://www.bit.ly/SWICYq (Sorry about the short URL - it goes to a Flash Gapminder page)
  - quesera 14y ago
    Good points, but I would argue that there is a vast difference between being raised out of extreme poverty and being "prosperous". Also, be careful with top line income stats for the US and Europe, they just don't reflect conditions on the ground. As for peaceful, Glashow's reference to a Pax Japanica implies that, at least within its economically-annexed countries, there would be genuine peace over and above what he observed in 1987. Since the establishing event didn't happen, I guess it doesn't make sense to analyze the effects...but I'll grant you that for several years between 1987 and now, the international rhetoric among nations with large standing armies has cooled. But this isn't the Golden Age of anything, certainly not Japan. Regarding the OP, China has nothing to do with any of it. Their assertions of economic influence in Africa and South America are just a shift in patron and beneficiaries from the old world order. Great for some countries (at least in the short term), less so for others.
InclinedPlane 14y ago
You're more right than you know. Many people thought that Japan was going to be the global economic hegemon. This was based entirely on the pace of their economic growth over about two decades combined with some odd quirks of international finance. But as it turned out that prediction was off, by a lot. Today Japan is still strong but their economy is troubled and nobody thinks that they are poised to control the world. And now we see people making similar predictions about China. Again based on a short period of economic growth combined with some odd quirks of international finance. But it's no more true this time than last. China has some very fundamental, deep seated flaws in its governance, society, economy, and industry. And it's likely that those flaws will become more apparent and become more of a drag on Chinese economic growth as the country gets wealthier and more modern.
Gormo 14y ago
> Replace Japan with China and he's spot on. Is he? I don't know of many Chinese companies that own stakes in American or European industry - maybe Lenovo counts to some extent, but what others? It seems that the sources of China's capital and the markets for the resulting industry are almost entirely Western, and primarily American. China's fate is far more determined by American investors and consumers than the reverse. China's government scrambles to buy dollars to keep the RMB artificially weak against the dollar so this pattern can be sustained for a while longer. But how long can that last?
- damian2000 14y ago
  I'm not sure to the overall level, but it is increasing - looking to top $8bn of direct investment in the US this year... http://money.cnn.com/2012/07/25/investing/china-investing-us/index.htm http://money.cnn.com/2012/07/25/investing/china-investing-us... Speaking from Australia, China made $9.9bn investment last year, also growing... http://blogs.wsj.com/dealjournalaustralia/2011/12/30/chinese-ma-into-australia-reaches-record/ http://blogs.wsj.com/dealjournalaustralia/2011/12/30/chinese... - here they are generally looking to up their stake in mining/energy companies. I think its much the same in Canada as well.
  - bzbarsky 14y ago
    The investment share of GDP for the US was 12% in 2010 according to https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2185.html https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/... and I would expect it hasn't moved much since. US GDP is about $15 trillion/yr right now. So the $8bn of direct investment you mention is about 0.4% of the investment that happened in the US last year. A far cry from "owning or controlling a significant part of European and American industries". ;) Oh, and the $10bn investment into Australia, which has "only" 27% * $1.5e12 = $405bn of investment yearly, is about 2.5% of yearly Australian investment. At that rate you _could_ get to "significant" in several years, if the economy doesn't also grow at several % a year.... (For further comparison, the EU gdp is about 17tn/year and investment is almost 19% of that, so figure about 2.9tn/year.)

Foy 14y ago

TL;DR - By 2012 we'll have moon bases and missions to Mars if AIDS doesn't wipe us out first. They really had high hopes for space exploration. Shame that never happened. :( EDIT: Oh this was a good one (thankfully not at all accurate): "TIM POWERS: Probate and copyright law will be entirely restructured by 2012 because people will be frozen at death, and there will be electronic means of consulting them. Many attorneys will specialize in advocacy for the dead."

reasonattlm 14y ago

Gregory Benford's notes are perhaps the most interesting, given his present position on the board of Genescient - a company that mines the genetics of longevity: http://www.genescient.com/about/board-of-directors/#gbenford http://www.genescient.com/about/board-of-directors/#gbenford Interesting for the pessimism, that is. Every age and sub-age and decade and year, and so on down, has its seeping pessimism - yet here we are, still. Humans are good at foreseeing, identifying, and solving problems. Yet despite the vast evidence of that trait at work in our history, recent and otherwise, our capacity for progress and success is greatly underrated in every present day in comparison to our capacity to build problems.

mattgreenrocks 14y ago
Pessimism is helpful when it motivates us towards the right types of change: those that better humanity as a whole. Optimism can have its day when we've moved past our tribalistic, petty natures. Until then, we have work to do.
lifthrasiir 14y ago
And you should bring him a bottle. To be exact, we are still not good at predicting WHAT solution to those problems will appear. That's why optimistic entries are largely incorrect (to my standard).
eevilspock 14y ago
Necessity is the mother of invention. Fear is its maternal grandfather.

chewxy 14y ago

Some of these are very salient (Pohl), and some not so. Brilliant points (Orson Scott Card): > We must count ourselves lucky if anyone has leisure enough in 2012 to open this time capsule and care what is inside. In 2012 Americans will see the collapse of Imperial America, the Pax Americana, as having ended with our loss of national will and national selflessness in the 1970s. Worldwide economic collapse will have cost America its dominant world role; but it will not result in Russian hegemony; their economy is too dependent on the world economy to maintain an irresistible military force. ... And this one by Roger Zelazny, pretty spot on until... > It is good to see that a cashless, checkless society has just about come to pass, that automation has transformed offices and robotics manufacturing in mainly beneficial ways, including telecommuting, that defense spending has finally slowed for a few of the right reasons, I stopped reading at "defense spending has finally slowed"... no one could have predicted George W. Bush I guess This one is almost completely opposite: >Multiple sclerosis and Parkinson's disease will be effectively cured. However, AIDS will not yet have been controlled. It will have become the leading cause of death worldwide with millions of new cases each year.

caf 14y ago
Zelazny did get ebooks right though.
NoPiece 14y ago
Even including the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the defense spending is a much lower percentage of GDP than it was in 1987. http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/19/more-on-defense/ http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/19/more-on-defense/
cema 14y ago
Not predicted Bush? Not predicted 9/11, more like. Which is strange too: one of my first impressions of the US was how vulnerable the country was. (Resilient too, but that was not surprising.)
- Vivtek 14y ago
  9/11 was a bee sting. Bush is the one that instituted the subsequent anaphylactic shock.

cjensen 14y ago

Fears of War, Population Explosion, American Decline, and Japanese Ascension with some anti-Reagan sentiment mixed in. Pretty much a lesson in what pop-culture fear look like in 1987, and every one of them turned out to be a non-issue. This ought to give one pause and great skepticism when evaluating today's pop-culture fears. Of course, just because an idiot picks (c) on an SAT question doesn't mean it's wrong.

waterlesscloud 14y ago
Group-think and reality tunnels apparent throughout. If someone thinks we aren't doing the same thing, they're insane.
- mattgreenrocks 14y ago
  Precisely. Pop culture is made to be vacuous, ephemeral, and cyclic. Unfortunately, there are scores of people who eat it up because it's pushed to them. Worse, there are lots of institutions who make a killing off of giving people exactly what they say they want. The success doesn't bother me; the pandering does.
- Gormo 14y ago
  > If someone thinks we aren't doing the same thing, they're insane. For varying values of we, anyway. Every generation seems to have its crisis/moral panic du jour. Only a minority ever seems to take a moderate, pragmatic view, and expect neither utopia nor dystopia.
  - anabis 14y ago
    > expect neither utopia nor dystopia. Maybe the old utopia is the new mundane? Infant mortality near zero, lifespan 80 years, global communication and travel, almost no hunger or war. Wouldn't that be considered utopia 100 years ago? Those are for the West, but the rest of the world is rapidly catching up, too.
eevilspock 14y ago
Yeah, but whose to say that the prevalence of those fears didn't have a hand in making them a non-issue? What else but a fear of war motivates us to avoid it? Would China have instituted its one-child policy without a fear of population explosion, a policy which arguably is one of the most important factors in its rapid rise (as compared to India, for instance)? Perhaps the seeming inevitability of Japan's dominance made them complacent while simultaneously stripping American's of theirs?

tokenadult 14y ago

My elementary school included a class that put a time capsule together during the 1968-1969 school year, with pupil predictions of the year 2001. In the year 2001, the time capsule was opened up. We were quite concerned about air pollution and, wouldn't you know, running out of petroleum, and both turned out to be less of a problem than we anticipated. I expected more progress in the United States in "race" relations than there actually has been, but it is a fact that the United States is experiencing an ongoing reduction of "race" consciousness that is hard to imagine to people who remember the days of legal segregation by state law. http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/14635780-post3.html http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/14635780-post3.html I was interested to see that another page on the site hosting the submitted article has a description of the late L. Ron Hubbard http://www.writersofthefuture.com/lrhbio http://www.writersofthefuture.com/lrhbio that perhaps needs some fact-checking. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Ron_Hubbard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Ron_Hubbard http://www.villagevoice.com/related/to/L.+Ron+Hubbard/ http://www.villagevoice.com/related/to/L.+Ron+Hubbard/ http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2012/07/25/bay-area-great-grandson-of-l-ron-hubbard-blasts-scientology/ http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2012/07/25/bay-area-great-g...

waterlesscloud 14y ago
Writers Of The Future is a Hubbard thing. He originated it. So it's not surprising it has a more favorable view of him than other sources...
jtolle 14y ago
A round of applause for the Clean Air Act!
runn1ng 14y ago
The site looks like 100% Scientóogy propaganda. I know this may sound paranoic, but you can really recognize it by the home page and the way it's written.
- fluxon 14y ago
  +1

joezydeco 14y ago

When I was a kid I bought a paperback copy of The People's Almanac: The Book of Predictions[1]. The book is mostly wacky, but over the decades I would thumb through it from time to time and catch something that someone got right, although mostly by accident. The psychics that were interviewed were way off. The scientists? They did a lot better. It's a fun read if you can find a copy. [1] (http://books.google.com/books/about/The_People_s_Almanac_Presents_the_Book_o.html?id=07XMYmhoX2YC http://books.google.com/books/about/The_People_s_Almanac_Pre...)

kposehn 14y ago

I find it rather gratifying - even comforting - that by and large their predictions missed the mark by a wide margin. Predictions are the product of your current experience - your time until now. Many brilliant people try and predict the future, but in the end the future is up to us.

toomuchcoffee 14y ago

Most Americans are barely literate, think in images rather than symbols, and think the future is something that will happen to somebody else… Right on the money.

majormajor 14y ago
You left out the "just as today…" which rather changes the tone.
- toomuchcoffee 14y ago
  Nah, just making it shorter and easier to parse.

brimanning 14y ago

"The American economy will have experienced a gentle yet relentless decline. Our children will not live such comfortable lives as we do. The spread between the rich and the poor will have grown, and crime will have become so prevalent as to threaten the social fabric. The rich and the poor will form 2 armed camps. Most automobiles and heavy machinery will be manufactured in Japanese owned planets located in America. Yet, agriculture and higher education will be our most successful exports. There will be no fast trains connecting American cities, but a network of levitated superconducting trains will be under construction in Western Europe and in Japan." - Sheldon Glashow This was the most stunning part of the predictions as it's far more negative than what truly is the case, yet points to many truths and is what many could say about the next 25 years.

waterlesscloud 14y ago

Doom! Gloom! Disaster Just Around The Corner! How depressing. Not just the worlds they paint, but that some of the brightest minds were (and are) trapped into such a negative way of looking at the future.

vacri 14y ago
In 1987 the cold war was still going strong, and the threat of Mutually-Assured Destruction was palpably felt. The industrialised world was divided into two sides and it affected politics quite powerfully. In 1987 there weren't the public glimmerings of the fall of communism - the Berlin Wall was torn down in '89. Since the fall of communism ended the two-superpower cold war, industrialised nations simply don't feel the threat of being sucked into a massively destructive third world war. Don't forget also that many of those minds write about things happening in a post-apocalptic timeframe :)
- eevilspock 14y ago
  waterlesscloud was probably a child or not born yet, so we who were alive and old enough back then sound just as weird as the World War and Great Depression generations sounded to us. S/he will be in the same boat 15-25 years from now :)
  - waterlesscloud 14y ago
    I was 19 in 1987. :-) Old enough to be aware of the voices of Gloom and Doom even then. There's always an excuse to believe in them. And there's always a choice to see it otherwise.
sbmassey 14y ago
Science Fiction writers != some of the brightest minds.

unimpressive 14y ago

What's interesting to me is how some made assumptions that didn't turn out to be true but got much correct anyway. Algis Budrys stands out in particular.

paul 14y ago

This is wonderful. Their confident pessimism brightens my day :)

Auguste 14y ago
I was surprised at how pessimistic they were. Did the future really look that bleak 25 years ago?
- ChuckMcM 14y ago
  You mean it doesn't now ? :-) Only half joking. It is easier to see what could happen that would be bad, and believe it will come to pass, than it is to see something that is going to make everything good. That said, there were a number of very hopeful letters in there too. In 1987 none of these writers had any real insight into the changes the Internet would bring. "The World is Flat" [1] wouldn't come out for nearly 20 years. Although engineers were getting a pretty good grasp of what would be different 10 years later in '97. I clearly remember showing my parents Java when they came to visit at Christmas in 1994 and they thought it was 'interesting' but really didn't believe that everyone in the world would be affected by it. The next year (Christmas '95) and at my sister's house in Utah I pointed out a web site on a car ad and asked her if she knew what it was. Nope, I told her that soon it would be the only way to get information on anything. She didn't believe me. We've not made nearly the strides in delivered medicine that we might have, that is in part due to regulatory delays, although mechanical things (titanium inserts, replacement joins, heart valves, etc) did quite well. And world politics were clearly difficult to predict. I too saw the juggernaut of Japanese manufacturing excellence and thought "Gee, if we don't get our game on we're dead meat!" but never ever imagined a world with web sites like Global Sources [2] where you fill out a form, wire some money, and have a Chinese factory working on widgets for you before the end of the week. [1] http://www.amazon.com/The-World-Is-Flat-Twenty-first/dp/0374292884 http://www.amazon.com/The-World-Is-Flat-Twenty-first/dp/0374... [2] http://www.globalsources.com/?WT.mc_id=1001007&WT.srch=1&gclid=COv-m63nuLECFYUaQgodKFUACg http://www.globalsources.com/?WT.mc_id=1001007&WT.srch=1...
  - jkimmel 14y ago

dkhenry 14y ago

Is this the same L. Ron Hubbard of Scientology fame ?

dsr_ 14y ago
Yes. Before that, his career was SF pulp writer. Not a great one, mind you. Religion pays better.

redthrowaway 14y ago

"Because we will be in a trough between 20th-century resources and 21st-century needs, in 2012 all storable forms of energy will be expensive. Machines will be designed to use only minimal amounts of it. At the same time, there will be a general expectation that a practical cheap-energy delivery system is just around the corner. Individuals basing their career plans on any aspect of technology will concentrate on that future, leaving contemporary machine applications to the less ambitious or to those who foresee a different future. The most socially approved-of individuals will constitute a narrowly focused aristocracy, and will be at the mercy of dull functionaries and secretive rebels who actually perform the day-to-day maintenance of society. It should be noted that most minimal-energy devices process information and microscopic materials, not consumer goods. The function of "our" society may depend on processing information and biotechnology to subjugate goods-producing societies. These societies may be geographically external, or may be yet another social stratum within central North America. In either case, crowd-management technologies will have to turn away from forms that might in any way impair capital goods production. Social regimentation will then have become so deft that most people will regard any other social milieu as pitiable. " Most were quaintly charming, but that was right on. I'm surprised that fewer authors mentioned the information revolution as being a large force in society.

maxerickson 14y ago
Portable energy isn't particularly expensive. The cheap labor in Asia isn't particularly subjugated (and Western nations produce more material goods in absolute terms, never mind U.S. agriculture). What's left?
- ricardobeat 14y ago
  Portable energy is extremely expensive. The Tesla Roadster's battery pack costs upwards of $30k and weighs half a ton. Lithium AA batteries cost ~$400-500 per kW.
  - illumin8 14y ago
    A gallon of gasoline costs ~$3.50 and weighs a few pounds.

bguthrie 14y ago

A wonderful link. My votes are: Wolverton for prescience, Silverberg for wisdom. Your AUs per year may vary.

zavulon 14y ago

> I would also like to take this opportunity to plug my new book, to be published in both computerized and printed versions in time for 2012 Christmas sales—but I've not yet decided on its proper title. Grandchildren of Amber sounds at this point a little clumsy, but may have to serve. Oh how I wish this was the case...

cubicle 14y ago

Isaac Asimov Died 1992 Gregory Benford Alive Algis Budrys Died 2008 Gerald Feinberg Died 1992 Sheldon Glashow Alive Frederik Pohl Alive Jerry Pournelle Alive Tim Powers Alive Orson Scott Card Alive Robert Silverberg Alive Jack Williamson Died 2006 Gene Wolfe Alive Dave Wolverton Alive Roger Zelazny Died 1997 A lot more of them have survived to be embarrassed by their predictions than I had thought.

jpdoctor 14y ago
> A lot more of them have survived to be embarrassed by their predictions Predictions are hard, especially about the future. -- Yogi Berra But seriously, I was in my mid-20's in 1987 and not a lot of these predictions seem outlandish having lived through that time.

TechNewb 14y ago

Orson Scott Card wins.

3pt14159 14y ago

By far the most accurate: DAVE WOLVERTON In 2012 We will see: 1) That economic cycles caused by rises in technological levels will begin to level out—countries that have a falsely inflated economy will be forced to export their technologies to third-world countries where people are willing to work for less money. This will lead to a situation where knowledge, the key to our technologic success, will be spread across the world. We'll see rapid decreases in starvation levels, but will still be plagued with political turmoil. 2) Men's Rights—We will see a reaction to the women's movement. Men will demand to be portrayed by the media as the sensitive, caring creatures that they are. They will also demand equal rights in custody battles where children are seldom awarded to a father because our society chooses to believe a mother is a better care-taker by nature. 3) Introduction of x-ray microscopes in the early 2000's will lead to rapid progress in gene splicing. Look for rapid growth in medicine and mining, and food production. We may also see bacteria being engineered to simulate parts of the immune system (which could cure immune disorders such as AIDS and allergies).

aprendo 14y ago
The second point is technically accurate – but does it really count if it’s a delusional movement by a few crazies that is in no way comparable to to the women’s movement and mostly based on a completely weird worldview (all the while many of the legitimate goals of the women’s movement are far from reached)?
- rmc 14y ago
  Agreed. There have been some men's rights groups but they are now a minority. I don't know about child care, but men are starting to be shown on media as caring people with emotions (e.g. Brokeback mountain won an Oscar and that's about 2 men who fall in love). I don't think the MRA's are responsible for that, since they mostly campaign against various policies put in help women (rather than campaign for sensitive men).
- lunarscape 14y ago
  Feminists were also branded as delusional mentally ill people when they started fighting for their rights. Your comment shows exactly why these movements need to exist and the prejudices they have to overcome. Are men fighting for basic access to their children in a biased legal system "crazies"? What about those trying to tackle the massive problem of young men committing suicide? What about those campaigning to give boys the same protection from genital mutilation as girls? Every movement has radicals and unfortunately they tend to be the loudest. Consider the running controversy over anti-transgender feminist groups (eg. [1]). They're loud, get lots of attention but hardly represent the majority. [1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/25/radical-feminism-trans-radfem2012 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/25/radical-...

ilamont 14y ago

Frederik Pohl's essay is great. By 1987, he had been writing science fiction for nearly 50 years and I think had become embittered by the course of 20th century history. Read Gateway (which I think came out that same year) to see his vision of 21st century Earth -- humanity lives on an overpolluted planet, with only a tiny portion of the population able to have access to "Full Medical" and live in clean, domed cities. He's still alive, incidentally. And has turned to blogging: http://www.thewaythefutureblogs.com/ http://www.thewaythefutureblogs.com/

ekianjo 14y ago

SOme lesson to learn from this: most people are wrong, and totally wrong about the near future (provided 25 years is considered "near"). That should say a lot about not listening to what's being said currently about what will happen in 25 years from now.

jwecker 14y ago

2037 Some promising technologies will still be struggling along in 2037. Others have disappeared or been replaced completely. No matter how miraculous and marvelous the advances that have happened though, society will have managed to consider them mundane and probably inevitable. I don't know what quantum computers and machine learning will have allowed by 2037- (better weather prediction? deep mathematical truths?), but I suspect that the things people think about the most, like how to have meaningful relationships and fulfilling work, will have only been minimally affected. On the other hand, I predict that some people thinking about those things now will have found, individually, exactly what they were looking for. Each generation will be less mature (at least until it reaches the same age as the last). Each new generation (there will have been a couple by 2037) will, despite its immaturity, regressiveness, and destructiveness, manage to yield forth individuals who inspire and transform, who rise above petty concerns and a world brimming with distraction and reveal something new about the capacity of mankind. In short, the fundamental struggle will continue between technology that exalts our knowledge and capacity, and human nature that debases and waste them. Existential threats to mankind will still occasionally surface. The threat of genocide, tyrants who oppress and reign in terror, the Earth groaning under its abuse as we attempt to listen better, to act better. But, as always there will be pockets of peace and prosperity where others can sit and take a moment to write an entry for 2062.

purplelobster 14y ago
Bravo! I believe that's as accurate a prediction you could make. As soon as you dive into specific issues, such predicting what will happen with China, virtual reality, space exploration etc, you'll have a much better chance of success if you predict status quo, or nothing at all. You hit on something though. We won't have "real" AI in 2037, but believe we're in the midst of a machine learning and computer vision revolution. Self driving cars should be possible in 25 years, technically. Whether there will be legal issues or not I can't guess.
dennisgorelik 14y ago
Each generation will be more mature by the time they reach the same age. It's been so for ages and that trend would continue. AI would advance a lot. Virtual reality would be a commonplace. Population would keep slowly rising (due to natural selection). World would be even more peaceful than it is today. No existential threats to mankind in the next 25 years.

Aloha 14y ago

Goes to show, just how much easier it is to write about a future, than it is to predict the future. Though on whole, if you grab a statement out of each (almost) you have the world of today.

brianchu 14y ago

Gregory Benford: "Berkeley, California will have a theme park devoted to its high period—the 1960s." He's right. Berkeley has People's Park. As for the theme, well...

nl 14y ago

Lesson: Don't be pessimistic. The disaster scenarios you imagine are inevitable are really just the worst case, and the things that actually problems aren't thing you can predict.

Dove 14y ago

I find it curious that more than one of them predicted a decrease in literacy. Indeed, the opposite seems to have happened. When I was in college, my English professor vowed that he would make us better writers by forcing us to write an essay every single night. And it really worked. Yet we live in a world where people are writing, constantly writing, in a way my English teacher could barely have dreamed of. High school kids, debating endlessly with a hostile audience every day, are turning into frighteningly persuasive writers all on their own.

itmag 14y ago
High school kids, debating endlessly with a hostile audience every day, are turning into frighteningly persuasive writers all on their own. u jelly brah?
rmc 14y ago
People thought that TV & radio would take off, both media that don't require literacy to use/consume/watch. However the internet means everone has to read AND write in order to interact. People have to be able to string words together. People have to be able to write to have friendly. Computers have probably done lots for literacy. You can see it a little bit now when much older people who don't use computers a lot, write things. They aren't very literate, probably because they haven't written as much as young people have.
smsm42 14y ago
The issue here is that the population is very different. Some of the worst schools literally graduated people that were unable to read their own diplomas. Some give great education. I'd say literacy did not decrease, and access to information greatly improved. But if you wanted, you also could find a lot of illiterate people and a lot of ignoramuses, I would even argue it is easier to be an ignoramus now than before. I can see however where that came from - with the rise of the TV culture and not seeing the following rise of the internet and global information connectedness brought by it - you can easily decide that the future is couch potatoes watching TV, not couch potatoes reading blogs and writing comments :)

dennisgorelik 14y ago

All these writers clearly had no clue about the future. Even "Back to the Future" was much closer in spite of being a comedy.

dennisgorelik 14y ago

All these writers clearly had no clue about the future. Even "Back to the Future" was much closer in spite of being a comedy.

derleth 14y ago

It seems that the major pass-time among people who read time capsule predictions is to count the most idiot things as "hits" as hail the people with the most bizarre ideas as prophets. In that spirit, here's a few "hits" for everyone here: "A new world order will emerge from famine, disease, and social dislocation: the re-tribalization of Africa, the destruction of the illusion of Islamic unity, the struggle between aristocracy and proletariat in Latin America—without the financial support of the industrialized nations, the old order will be gone." -- Orson Scott Card "America and the U.S.S.R. preserve an uneasy accord, each testing the other's will within well-defined limits. [snip]Vestiges of reading, writing, and spelling remain in the curricula of the public schools. Those who can read a few hundred common words are counted literate. The schools train their students for employment—how to report to computers and follow instructions. [snip] There is little sex outside marriage, which normally includes a legal contract. A single instance of infidelity is amply sufficient to terminate a marriage, with damages to the aggrieved party [snip] The population of the planet is below six billion." -- Gene Wolfe "Most Americans are barely literate, think in images rather than symbols [snip] Berkeley, California will have a theme park devoted to its high period—the 1960s. [snip] There will have been major "diebacks" in overcrowded Third World countries, all across southern Asia and through Africa. This will be a major effect keeping population from reaching 10 billion." -- Gregory Benford

itmag 14y ago
Most Americans are barely literate, think in images rather than symbols This rubbed me the wrong way. Thinking that way does not make a person stupid or illiterate.

perfunctory 14y ago

> Bases on the moon, an expedition to Mars…all done. How badly we underperformed.

stevejabs 14y ago
No one here to blame other than political agenda. I fully feel we could have been in preparation for a humanized mission to Mars at this point. However, we've wasted too much time funding war and whether or not abortion and gay marriage should be legal instead. It's actually quite sad.
stevejabs 14y ago
No one here to blame other than political agenda. I fully feel we could have been in preparation for a humanized mission to Mars at this point. However, we've wasted too much time funding war and whether or not abortion and gay marriage should be legal instead. It's actually quite sad.

perfunctory 14y ago

> Most Americans are barely literate, think in images rather than symbols Any comments on this?

itmag 14y ago
It rubbed me the wrong way too. I'm a visual thinker myself, and I don't consider myself barely literate :p Then again, I guess it could be interpreted in a different way...

beefman 14y ago

I reviewed these and counted 49 distinct and falsifiable predictions, of which I judged 11 correct (about 20%). Optimistic predictions fared better (30%) than pessimistic ones (10%). Zelazny did best with 4/8, followed by Benford and Glashow. Full accounting here: http://lumma.org/temp/1987-2012_Predictions.txt http://lumma.org/temp/1987-2012_Predictions.txt

allaun1 14y ago

I think Sheldon Glasgow was the nearest to accurate. Most of their predictions were almost 100%. SHELDON GLASHOW Written on the Eastern Air Shuttle between Boston and N.Y. What will life be like in the year 2012? There will have been no nuclear war, and the threat of such a war will have been removed by the mutual nuclear disarmament of the major powers. SDI, Reagan's ill advised Star Wars program will have come to nothing. Japan will be the central economic power in the world, owning or controlling a significant part of European and American industries. This "economic dictatorship" will be beneficial to Japan's client states, since Japan benefits by keeping its customers healthy and wealthy. Indeed, a peaceful and prosperous world community will owe its existence to this Pax Japanica. Many diseases will be curable: diabetes and gout, for example, will be treated by 'genetic engineering' techniques. Multiple sclerosis and Parkinson's disease will be effectively cured. However, AIDS will not yet have been controlled. It will have become the leading cause of death worldwide with millions of new cases each year. The American economy will have experienced a gentle yet relentless decline. Our children will not live such comfortable lives as we do. The spread between the rich and the poor will have grown, and crime will have become so prevalent as to threaten the social fabric. The rich and the poor will form 2 armed camps. Most automobiles and heavy machinery will be manufactured in Japanese owned planets located in America. Yet, agriculture and higher education will be our most successful exports. There will be no fast trains connecting American cities, but a network of levitated superconducting trains will be under construction in Western Europe and in Japan.

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DanielBMarkham 14y ago

The lesson here is "don't ask sci-fi writers to predict the future." Seriously, these guys are doing what we all do: making some kind of linear estimate based on past data. Usually these estimates end in some sort of crisis. No, we are not out of oil. It's debatable whether we've even reached peak oil, which I doubt. The U.S. has a shot at becoming a major oil exporter if we don't screw it up. No, hunger and disease are no more widespread and rampant than they were then. If anything, things have probably gotten a little better. No, we are not colonizing the moon or Mars. Our space program is still barely getting started. No, everybody isn't an illiterate slob watching CGI dramas, but that day still seems to be fast approaching, at least for the western world. The internet really took the species on a hard turn from where we all thought we were going. Even idea of a hive mind where billions vegetate using computer stimulus wasn't considered. Everybody thought that the individual would stay the same and technology would evolve around them. What's happened is much more interesting: the idea of the unique individual is changing as more of the things that make us unique are being recorded and shared. Technology is not transforming the world; technology is transforming us. ADD: An interesting title to this article might be "It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine."

drostie 14y ago
Well, I had the opposite conclusion. Lots of the linear estimates were more or less right, and the ones that were wildly wrong were not linear enough. Like, here's a wildly wrong one: "Probate and copyright law will be entirely restructured by 2012 because people will be frozen at death, and there will be electronic means of consulting them. Many attorneys will specialize in advocacy for the dead." What is this guy anticipating? He's anticipating that biocomputing will explode up from approximately 0 to the level where we blur the line between life and death. What about "now in 1987, we would beg you to forgive us. We have burdened you with impossible debts, wasted and polluted the planet that should have been your rich heritage, left you instead a dreadful legacy of ignorance, want, and war"? The author has totally neglected the idea that perhaps future presidents would create debts, pollution, ignorance, and war at scales which just blow those original scales out of the water, so as to seem irrelevant by comparison. Instead he predicts a total reversal of human nature, expressed in a "faith that you have saved yourselves". If they've shown sci-fi bias towards computers, that has actually to some extent held up; if they've shown sci-fi bias towards space, that has not. The slow-and-incremental predictions are not so bad.

ionwake 14y ago

GREETINGS TO 2012: If we had a time-phone, now in 1987, we would beg you to forgive us. We have burdened you with impossible debts, wasted and polluted the planet that should have been your rich heritage, left you instead a dreadful legacy of ignorance, want, and war. Yet, in spite of that, we have a proud faith in you. Faith that you have saved yourselves, that you are giving birth to no more children than you can love and nurture, that you have cleansed and healed your injured planet, ended hunger, conquered crime, learned to live in peace. Looking toward a better future for you than we can see for ourselves, we trust that you will use your computers and all your new electronic media to inform and liberate, not to dominate and oppress, trust that you will employ the arts of genetic engineering to advance the human species and make your children better than yourselves. We know that you will be inventing new sciences that would dazzle us, opening brave new frontiers, climbing on toward the stars. We live again through you. Sincerely, Jack Williamson

fluxon 14y ago

"Doom, doom, doom-doom, doom, doom ... doomie-doomie-doom, doomie-doomie-doomie-doom ... doom, doom. The end." -- The Doom Song, GIR, Invader Zim

sampsonjs 14y ago

Worth a read: Pitfalls of Prophecy: Why Science Fiction So Often Fails to Predict the Future , http://www.locusmag.com/2009/Westfahl_Predictions.html http://www.locusmag.com/2009/Westfahl_Predictions.html. Why do they think that the fact that they write science fiction makes it worth listening to their predictions anyways? Well, besides the genre inferiority complex, which requires its hacks to pretend they're prophets, so they can feel important.

calinet6 14y ago

"Berkeley, California will have a theme park devoted to its high period—the 1960s." This pretty accurately describes Telegraph Ave.

mratzloff 14y ago

What's always interesting about these kinds of predictions is not the predictions themselves, but the window into the hopes and fears of people at the time. It's all here: Japan as an economic superpower, space travel, AIDS, poverty, hunger. Now compare to predictions that sci-fi writers today make about 2037 and you'll have a similar window into our own hopes and fears--many of which will be just as accurate, at least in the next 25 years.

gwern 14y ago

As much as I love Gene Wolfe, his predictions are just embarrassing.

dhughes 14y ago

I grew up in the 80s and the one main thing I can recall is the ever present fear of nuclear war. If I had made a prediction back then I would say there would certainly be some sort of nuclear event at some point in the next twenty or thirty years.

jonhendry 14y ago

Huh, no predictions that Tom Cruise would still not be exhibiting any OT powers.

xiaoma 14y ago

My favorite of the bunch, Roger Zelazny, was also most accurate: "ROGER ZELAZNY It is good to see that a cashless, checkless society has just about come to pass, that automation has transformed offices and robotics manufacturing in mainly beneficial ways, including telecommuting, that defense spending has finally slowed for a few of the right reasons, that population growth has also slowed and that biotechnology has transformed medicine, agriculture and industry—all of this resulting in an older, slightly conservative, but longer-lived and healthier society possessed of more leisure and a wider range of educational and recreational options in which to enjoy it—and it is very good at last to see this much industry located off-planet, this many permanent space residents and increased exploration of the solar system. I would also like to take this opportunity to plug my new book, to be published in both computerized and printed versions in time for 2012 Christmas sales—but I've not yet decided on its proper title. Grandchildren of Amber sounds at this point a little clumsy, but may have to serve" * We're mostly a cashless society using cards and electronic payment -- CORRECT * Automation has transformed offices and robotics manufacturing in mainly beneficial ways -- CORRECT * Defense spending has finally slowed for a few of the right reasons -- MIXED : True as a ratio, but not in absolute $$$ * population growth has also slowed -- CORRECT * Biotechnology has transformed medicine, agriculture and industry—all of this resulting in an older, slightly conservative, but longer-lived and healthier society possessed of more leisure and a wider range of educational and recreational options -- CORRECT on nearly all counts * ...in which to enjoy it—and it is very good at last to see this much industry located off-planet, this many permanent space residents and increased exploration of the solar system. -- WRONG * I would also like to take this opportunity to plug my new book, to be published in both computerized and printed versions in time for 2012 Christmas sales—but I've not yet decided on its proper title. Grandchildren of Amber sounds at this point a little clumsy, but may have to serve -- ... Despite all the other excellent predictions, his death came much earlier than he forsaw :(

smsm42 14y ago

What is surprising in these predictions is how near-sighted many of them are. Basically most of the writers just took popular topics of the day and wrote along the lines "will it get better? will it get worse?" Very few tried to think outside of the box and imagine future where their current concerns won't be concerns at all and instead different hot topics will arise. I do not blame them - it's almost impossible feat to achieve, but I still would expect from scifi writers a better detachment from politics de-jour and current fears and concerns. I like Silverbergs and Zelazny's ones the best. Too sad Zelazny didn't live to present us that 2012 Christmas Grandchildren of Amber.