The Year 2000 (Was: Failed Dreams)

From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Wed Feb 05 2003 - 12:51:55 MST

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    On Wed, Feb 05, 2003 at 01:11:44PM -0500, Dehede011@aol.com wrote:
    > In a message dated 2/5/2003 9:27:45 AM Central Standard Time, jonkc@att.net
    > writes: In 1967 Kahn also wrote a cook called "The year 2000", he got a lot
    > right but it's more fun to see what he got wrong. He said by the year 2000
    > we'd have 3D movies and television, household robots, undersea colonies, a
    > permanent installation on the moon, "artificial moons lighting large areas at
    > night" and something he called "programmed dreams". Also, the idea that the
    > Soviet Union might collapse doesn't seem to have occurred to him.
    >
    > John,
    > The market advisors say that if you predict a price level never give a
    > date and if you predict a date never give a price level.
    > Evidently Herman Kahn should have also studied the tactics of market
    > advisors. LOL

    Actually, that he didn't and made predictions that eventually
    didn't pan out reflects well on him. There are plenty of
    "forecasters" that make statements that won't tell you anything
    useful about the future, and that mainly fit after the fact.
    The preface starts (I am translating here from the Swedish
    translation I happen to have): "This book does not constitute a
    complete compilation of "guesses" about all important aspects
    of the future; even less it is an attempt to "predict" the
    future in any particular way". The goal of the book was mainly
    methodological, and it does spend a lot of time analysing what
    future studies are and what they should deal with. It was in
    many ways the start of a current of thinking that is important
    today.

    Their list of "100 very probable technological innovations in
    the last third of the 20th century" is fun reading. Just as an
    example (since a criticism of the meat of the book would take
    too long):

    Misses: extensive rational agriculture in the tropics, direct
    conversion of nuclear power to electric power (nuclear
    batteries come close), cargo submarines, extensive use of
    cyborgisation, short-term cryonics for medical purposes,
    controllable high-efficiency sleep, agriculture or mining of
    the seas, the use of nuclear explosives for mining and channel
    construction, acceptance and general use of synthetic foods,
    physiologically safe recreational drugs, permanent
    moonbase/space habitation, mechanical or chemical intelligence
    enhancement methods, one-man flying machines for short range
    flights, general access to transuranic elements, planned
    dreams, new methods for fast language learning.

    Too optimistic about: super airplanes, new power sources for
    cars, body weight control, new animal and plant species,
    widespread use of geodesic cupolas and similar structures, 3D
    photography and movies, the automated home, limited weather
    control, genetic control of personality, new methods and
    institutions for child rearing and education, life extension,
    widespread use of robotics, undeground buildings, commercial
    extraction of oil from shale, widespread desalination,
    widespread use of fluidistors, solettas,

    The last category is mainly about stuff that is technologically
    feasible but has not panned out economically. Some of it has
    advanced more slowly than expected. Some were made obsolete,
    like fluidistors.

    Several of the things in the first category also exist to a
    degree - we have lucid dreaming and some intelligence
    amplification, we could use nuclear charges for digging if
    there was a political will, prosthetics approach much of what
    he called cyborgisation and so on. It is just that they are not
    everywhere, and mostly confined to the lab or very special
    applications. It is notable how many of these things belong to
    *our* list of things we expect. Plus ca change, plus c'est la
    meme chose :-)

    When I count this list, I find 16 clear misses and 17 too
    optimistic cases, leaving 67 more or less right "predictions".
    They got cheap and fairly easily obtained weapons of mass
    destruction, widespread use of mobile phones and much of
    internetworking right. When

    I think it is worthwhile to read it and learn from it. The
    misses are perhaps not as interesting as *why* they were
    misses. For example, they assumes technological centralisation
    to work, while thinking that it is easy to get people to accept
    radical new technologies - the common technocratic mistake,
    less obvious in 1967 than today but still common. This is why
    no safe recreational drugs have been developed: social norms
    proved resistant, and instead of spending money on making drugs
    safe money was spent on combatting it. Similarly it is too
    optimistic about the use of genetic engineering; already in 67
    it was clear what was on the horizon, but the sociocultural
    context that came to control the technology proved different.

    The book is tied to the club of Rome style worry about resource
    limitations and overpopulation as the main drivers of social
    change, against very typical for its time, and this biases many
    predictions. There is currently no need for oil from shale or
    mining the seas.

    Similarly the cold war was still interminable, and Soviet
    really did seem to be a viable (or even *more* viable)
    alternative to the West. The chapter on the future of the world
    political system is interesting. They point out that an
    indefinite arms race is unlikely, but that future weapons of
    mass destruction will be in the hands of irresponsible
    governments. They discuss the trends of international anarchy
    and governance, pointing out that they can move in many
    directions at once (as we have seen). Their list of basic
    structural changes does indeed miss the possibility that one of
    the superpowers could crash on its own - it assumes that any
    loss of power has to be due to either conquest/destruction or
    delegation to international power. Very revealing of the way
    people thought then - and now too, if we compare with
    predictions about the future of the US, EU and UN.

    To sum up, _The Year 2000_ is healthy reading. It manages to be
    both a historical document about how people thought in 67, a
    paradigm study in academic forecasting, and a good mirror to
    compare our world in.

    -- 
    -----------------------------------------------------------------------
    Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
    asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
    GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
    


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