How good are you at predicting the future?
That would be a silly question on any day other than New Year's Eve. The answer, of course, is "Not very," if history is any guide. You may think it's safer to predict the near future. Just remember all those folks one year ago today who thought computers would have destroyed the world by morning.
But this being the eve of a new century and millennium (save the letters and e-mails; this time, I promise I won't bring the subject up again for at least another 99 years), it seems a good time to study predictions.
(By the way, not to beat a dead horse or anything, but at least two American cities, Denver and Las Vegas, will officially celebrate midnight tonight as the start of the new millennium. All right, they are doing so more out of a sense of shame for not putting on big enough shows last year, when the rest of the mathematically incorrect world was going ga-ga over what it supposed was a new millennium, but they deserve some credit for accuracy. The Associated Press quoted Denver Mayor Wellington Webb as saying, "This is the real millennium. Everybody else got it wrong, and we've got it right." Well said.)
One hundred years ago, Collier's Weekly published an artist's prediction of what Broadway in New York would look like in 2001, "when modern inventions have been carried to the point of highest development." The picture was reproduced in a book titled, "America 1900, The Turning Point," published recently by Henry Holt and Co. Inc. It shows strange-looking trollies carrying people on cables in the sky between buildings so tall they rise above the clouds. Passengers stand on precarious platforms waiting for the next car. Other commuters can be seen floating through the air in carriages attached to large balloons. One sign advertises, "Wireless telephone, local and European." Another sign says, "Quick lunch: compressed food tablet," and yet another says, "Youth restored by electricity while you wait." A large building is ominously labeled, "Babel Building."
It's a fascinating study of how the human imagination can be limited by present surroundings. Even in an attempt to make the world look as futuristic as possible, the artist couldn't escape the clothing, carriage and lamp-post styles of the year 1901. It's kind of like watching the first Star Wars movie and noticing how everyone in the galaxy far, far away has hairstyles from the 1970s.
Laura Lee, author of the book, "Bad Predictions" (Elsewhere Press), has compiled an impressive list of things people have gotten dreadfully wrong during the years. Here's a sample she published recently in The Futurist magazine — something for you to consider tonight while you ponder 2001 and beyond:
"It would appear we have reached the limits of what it is possible to achieve with computer technology, although one should be careful with such statements; they tend to sound pretty silly in five years." (John von Neumann, computer scientist, 1949.)
"The problem with television is that the people must sit and keep their eyes glued on a screen; the average American family simply hasn't time for it." (The New York Times, following a TV demonstration at the 1939 World's Fair.)
"By A.D. 2000 one can retire with a comfortable income at the age of 50; and retirement will be compulsory at 60, except for those with skills in scant supply." (R.G. Ruste, American Heritage magazine, 1967.)
And, my personal favorite: "Nuclear powered vacuum cleaners will probably be a reality within 10 years." (Alex Lewyt, president of the Lewyt Vacuum Cleaner Co., 1955.) Ah, but be careful not to dispose of those irradiated vacuum bags in the garbage under the sink.
To predict the future requires stepping out of the present, looking at a place no one has seen before. But predictions are important because they tend to point the world in the direction its current inhabitants would like to go. They articulate dreams as well as values. In that way, they say more about who we really are than they do about the people of the future.
Lest you all are too scared now to venture a guess what tomorrow will bring, I must add that some predictions are remarkably accurate. The book "America 1900" also contains a prediction from The Ladies' Home Journal that ready-made dinners would one day be available in stores, that the world would be covered with wireless telephones and that, "a husband aboard ship in the Mid-Atlantic would be able to call his wife in Chicago and she in turn would be able to call China as easily as someone in New York City could telephone Brooklyn." It also foresaw the day when people could hear the opera in their homes; color photos would be transmitted instantly; and people could see world events as they happened.
Not bad. Now, what do you think the future will be like?
Deseret News editorial page editor Jay Evensen may be e-mailed at even@desnews.com