So-called 'Futurologists' do this for a living. Sometimes they get it right. Sometimes they get it blisteringly wrong. In the 1950s, they thought everything in the 21st century would be atomic-powered. In the 1960s, they thought everything would be plastic and we'd all be space tourists by now.
Even respected scientists and writers made some duff prognostications. Take the late great Isaac Asimov, for example. I have massive respect for the man.
But an essay he wrote in 1964, predicting what life would be like in 2014, stated that:
'Men (sic) will continue to withdraw from nature in order to create an environment that will suit them better. By 2014, electroluminescent panels will be in common use. Ceilings and walls will glow softly, and in a variety of colours that will change at the touch of a push button. Windows need be no more than an archaic touch, and even when present will be polarised to block out the harsh sunlight.'
Hmmm. What sort of environment would 'suit us better' than the planet on which we, and every other living thing, evolved? Would people prefer to live in man-made environments? We're now an urban species with more people living in larger towns than in rural communities but that's more because of necessity than desire. It's where the work is. But it's notable that, if people have the money, they often choose to 'escape' to the countryside. Meanwhile, those who live in the city - by choice or otherwise - have demanded the renewal of green spaces and a reduction in pollution. The waiting list for an allotment can be hundreds of people in length. In many cities there are tax concessions for people driving greener electric vehicles and architects work hard to allow as much natural 'harsh' sunlight into buildings as possible.
Being connected to the natural world makes us feel better - it's no secret that it's the houses with the best views that cost the most. But it's also a fact that people in hospital rooms with a view recover more quickly than those in rooms that don't. As science is now discovering, a connection with nature is a fundamental need and is essential to our long-term mental and physical well-being. It's notable that the rise in mental health problems can be plotted fairly accurately against the rise of urban living (although many other factors are at play, of course). I highly recommend Florence Williams' book The Nature Fix (see here) if you want to know more about how exposure to the natural world can help us live more healthily.
Asimov also suggested that: 'Suburban houses underground, with easily controlled temperature, free from the vicissitudes of weather, with air cleaned and light controlled, should be fairly common.'
Thankfully, they're not. They're the sole preserve of the sorts of people who spend their money building quirky houses to feature on Grand Designs. Who wants to live underground away from fresh air and natural sunlight? That said, there's no good reason why service buildings - places like shopping malls, gyms, doctors' surgeries etc., where people only spend a part of their lives, couldn't be built underground. It would free up land that could be turned over to green open-air spaces.
And, on that subject of shops and amenities, it's no secret that our High Streets are dying due to online shopping and home delivery. The shops that sold things like clothing, shoes and books are vanishing and, in their place, we're seeing things like tattoo parlours and nail bars offering services you can't order via the internet. So why not green the High Streets? Pedestrianise them, fill them with oxygen-creating plants, wonderful art and water features. Let the cafes spill out on the streets and create open air dining spots. Create a place that people want to visit to socialise, get a hair cut, grab a good coffee and get their nails done. It's not rocket science.
Asimov did start to hit a few home runs by suggesting that: 'Gadgetry will continue to relieve mankind of tedious jobs.' However, he also suggested that:
'Kitchen units will be devised that will prepare 'automeals,' heating water and converting it to coffee; toasting bread; frying, poaching or scrambling eggs, grilling bacon, and so on. Breakfasts will be 'ordered' the night before to be ready by a specified hour the next morning.'
We do now have programmable cookers, microwaves, air fryers and many other gadgets. But, as the preponderance of cookery, baking and grow-your-own TV shows suggests, we don't all see it as a chore. We still like to cook. And we really like to entertain. If one fact emerges strongly from the many books I've read about good mental health and building strong communities it's that humans need to gather together in meaningful social groups. And the dining room table is the original social network. A book I strongly recommend you read is Dr David Bramwell's The No.9 Bus to Utopia (see here). He spent a year travelling the world in search of the perfect, happy, healthy community. I won't spoil the story but I will say that the happiest groups were always those that ate together and had meaningful face-to-face conversations
Asimov knew a thing or two about robots and he predicted that, 'Robots will neither be common nor very good in 2014, but they will be in existence.' If he means a humanoid companion, he's right. But robots are actually very commonplace and we employ thousands of them for everything from building cars to handling radioactive materials to mowing our lawns. He does however, rightly suggest that 'It will be [...] computers, much miniaturised, that will serve as the 'brains' of robots'. He's edging here towards the concept of Artificial Intelligence (AI) of which we will speak more in a moment.
On the subject of energy, Asimov believed that:
'The appliances of 2014 will have no electric cords, of course, for they will be powered by long-lived batteries running on radioisotopes. The isotopes will not be expensive for they will be by- products of the fission-power plants which, by 2014, will be supplying well over half the power needs of humanity. And an experimental fusion-power plant or two will already exist in 2014.'
I'm afraid not, Isaac. While we do have nuclear fission power plants, their by-products are incredibly hazardous and really shouldn't be used to power our electric toothbrushes. Meanwhile, we are still looking into nuclear fusion as a source of power and, very recently, we took another small step towards it becoming a reality (see here).
However, we're still a long way off and we need to be looking at other clean forms of energy in the meantime. Frustratingly the technology exists right now to harness the inexhaustible supply of free wind, solar, tidal and geothermal energy that nature provides. But, sadly, the political will doesn't. Asimov predicted that 'Large solar-power stations will also be in operation in a number of desert and semi-desert areas'. We are moving in that direction but all too slowly, sadly.
And talking of moving ...
When it comes to transport, he quite literally went off the rails:
'There will be increasing emphasis on transportation that makes the least possible contact with the surface. There will be aircraft, of course, but even ground travel will increasingly take to the air a foot or two off the ground.'
In some ways I wish he was right. I was promised a hovercar by people like Asimov when I was a child. I even used to sit in the front seats on the top deck of a bus and pretend I was driving one. But they still aren't here or even close to being here. The idea that we'll be able to skim along on 'four jets of compressed air so that the vehicle will make no contact with either liquid or solid surfaces' is very enticing, as is the idea that 'Bridges will also be of less importance, since cars will be capable of crossing water on their jets'. But it hasn't happened. And nor did the private helicopters or flying saucers.
Asimov also says that:
'Much effort will be put into the designing of vehicles with 'Robot-brains' that can be set for particular destinations and that will then proceed there without interference by the slow reflexes of a human driver.'
I strongly suspect that very few drivers will be happy to relinquish complete control ... but they may not have a choice. Many cars are now capable of parking themselves and when the technology is perfected for self-driving machines, will there be jobs for delivery drivers or hauliers or taxi drivers anymore? After all, why would a company employ drivers when a machine will do it for free?
And guess what sort of companies are sponsoring self-driving car research? Amazon. Google. Uber. etc. I rest my case, m'Lud.
On the pedestrian side of things he wrote:
'For short-range travel, moving sidewalks (with benches on either side, standing room in the centre) will be making their appearance in downtown sections. They will be raised above the traffic. Traffic will continue (on several levels in some places) only because all parking will be off-street and because at least 80 per cent of truck deliveries will be to certain fixed centres at the city's rim. Compressed air tubes will carry goods and materials over local stretches, and the switching devices that will place specific shipments in specific destinations will be one of the city's marvels.'
Sounds great. Hasn't happened. And thank goodness. One thing Asimov didn't predict is our obesity crisis and the worryingly sharp rise in diagnoses of Type 2 Diabetes caused by being overweight and unfit. Walking is so important.
And the compressed air tubes thing? No.
At this point I must reiterate that I'm really not out to attack Asimov in any way. He was a true visionary and had some amazing ideas. He got many things right.
'Communications will become sight-sound and you will see as well as hear the person you telephone. The screen can be used not only to see the people you call but also for studying documents and photographs and reading passages from books'.
Well, that could be taken as a prediction about the internet and the use of tablets, laptops and smartphones. That said, video phones never really took off and, despite having apps like Skype, Zoom and Facetime etc., the majority of personal communication is still written rather than spoken. There are more emails, tweets, Facebook updates and Whatsapp messages sent than phone calls made I'd suggest. How often do you make a phone call these days? And how often do you do it with the video turned on? I wish he'd been right. I reckon there would be substantially less trolling and online bullying if the perpetrators were forced to look their victims in the eye and, more importantly, couldn't hide behind anonymous avatars.
Asimov did get it right when he said that: 'Synchronous satellites, hovering in space will make it possible for you to direct-dial any spot on earth' . But he was oh so wrong when he said that 'You will be able to reach someone at the moon colonies. Any number of simultaneous conversations between earth and moon can be handled by modulated laser beams, which are easy to manipulate in space.'
His grimmer predictions were also wrong, thankfully:
'In 2014, there is every likelihood that the world population will be 6,500,000,000 and the population of the United States will be 350,000,000. Boston-to-Washington, the most crowded area of its size on the earth, will have become a single city with a population of over 40,000,000.'
Okay, so he underestimated the world population (currently 7.8 billion) and over-estimated the US population (331,000,000). The mega-cities he predicted haven't happened and nor has 'increasing penetration of desert and polar areas'. And his predictions that '2014 will see a good beginning made in the colonisation of the continental shelves. Underwater housing will have its attractions to those who like water sports, and will undoubtedly encourage the more efficient exploitation of ocean resources, both food and mineral' were completely wide of the target.
And speaking of food, he said that 'Ordinary agriculture will keep up with great difficulty and there will be 'farms' turning to the more efficient micro-organisms. Processed yeast and algae products will be available in a variety of flavours. The 2014 fair will feature an Algae Bar at which 'mock-turkey' and 'pseudosteak' will be served.'
If only that were true. Ordinary agriculture isn't having 'great difficulty' in keeping up as he predicted. But the price we pay for affordable food is destruction of wild spaces, pollution of our rivers and lakes by fertilisers, the death of billions of insects by insecticides, poor returns for hard-working farmers, and the creation of meat factories in which animal welfare is of less importance than volume and low supermarket prices.
The number of CAFOs (concentrated animal feeing operations) is growing - we now have hundreds in the UK. Do you really want your fried chicken, bacon butties and burgers to come from places where animals spend their entire miserable short lives in conditions like this? Because that's the reality of cheap meat.
I'm a meat eater but I now eat a lot less of it (I wrote about it here) and I eat as ethically as possible, only buying from local sources where the animals have led a free-range and, if possible, organic lifestyle. But not everyone can afford that luxury. So new forms of palatable protein need to come onto the market - either from Asimov's algae and yeast, other plant-based sources or insect protein. There's more protein in mealworms than prime beef and you can breed millions of them in the space occupied by one cow (see here). But people don't like the idea of eating bugs so it needs to taste and look good. And it needs to be marketed properly. Many things that once sounded unpalatable have since been cleverly rebranded. People are now very happy to eat Chilean Sea Bass but didn't touch it when the same animal was called the Patagonian Toothfish. And people now pay thousands of pounds for mongrel dogs that were once worthless but are now rebranded as cavapoos and labradoodles. Smart marketing can sell anything.
There are some some great books about the future of food and agriculture but I highly recommend A Small Farm Future: Making the Case for a Society Built Around Local Economies, Self-Provisioning, Agricultural Diversity, and a Shared Earth by Chris Smaje and Regenesis: Feeding the World without Devouring the Planet by George Monbiot.
Oh, and the issue with feeding people isn't lack of food - it's the distribution of wealth. Just 10% of the food wasted and thrown away by the world's richest nations could feed every person on the planet. My local food hub (not a food bank, but a place where they gather residual food from supermarkets) stops 50 tons of perfectly good food going to waste every week and makes it available to people at vastly reduced prices (read more about them here). Just yesterday I bought a turkey there for £2 (original price £18). It was being thrown out by a supermarket that over-ordered, along with 200 other edible turkeys collected by the volunteer staff. Shouldn't every politician be demanding that the towns and cities in their constituencies do the same?
Want to know how capitalism and economics can work to be fairer and less destructive? Then read Doughnut Economics by Kate Raworth.
Asimov's prediction of massive overpopulation also leads to this interesting paragraph:
'There are only two general ways of preventing this: (1) raise the death rate; (2) lower the birth rate. Undoubtedly, the world of AD 2014 will have agreed on the latter method. Indeed, the increasing use of mechanical devices to replace failing hearts and kidneys, and repair stiffening arteries and breaking nerves will have cut the death rate still further and have lifted the life expectancy in some parts of the world to age 85. There will, therefore, be a worldwide propaganda drive in favour of birth control by rational and humane methods and, by 2014, it will undoubtedly have taken serious effect.'
It's true that in the affluent west people are choosing to have fewer children due to economic reasons or because they are simply 'too busy'. The UN suggests that the world population will plateau at 10.9 billion by the end of the century. Other groups forecast earlier and smaller peaks, with global population reaching 9.7 billion by 2070 and then declining. Meanwhile, the campaign for voluntary euthanasia is gaining ground. I doubt Asimov could have foreseen that.
He ends his 1964 essay with the words:
'The world of AD 2014 will have few routine jobs that cannot be done better by some machine than by any human being. Mankind will therefore have become largely a race of machine tenders. Schools will have to be oriented in this direction.'
Of all of his predictions, this is the most concerning. Just yesterday I saw this meme online:
It, and many others like it, are expressing concern about human jobs being taken by machines. Asimov went on to predict that, 'The lucky few who can be involved in creative work of any sort will be the true elite of mankind, for they alone will do more than serve a machine. Indeed, the most sombre speculation I can make about AD 2014 is that in a society of enforced leisure, the most glorious single word in the vocabulary will have become work!'
Enforced leisure! What a thought. But he was right to be concerned.
I don't hate technology either. But I am very wary of how it is used. Technology is neither good nor bad - it's the intentions of the people who fund its development and its usage that decides how it impacts on us. Technology should not make people's lives worse by robbing them of their livelihood.
One of the most hotly-debated subjects in 2022 was Artificial Intelligence. Last year we saw the first instance of AI being used by a college student to cheat at writing a dissertation. Hollywood stars have found their faces 'deepfaked' onto the bodies of porn stars and there was a case recently where an American mum used the technology in an attempt to ruin the reputations of her daughter's cheerleading rivals. We've seen big leaps forward in self-driving vehicles and, once driverless vehicles are perfected, just think how many people could potentially be out of work. And that will include people like airline pilots. If you think that's too far-fetched, bear in mind that 90% of most long haul flights are already piloted by computer. The human only needs to be there for take off and landing. But for how much longer?
We've seen a marked 'improvement' in the algorithms that use our personal data to target us for advertising. AI generated voice-overs are becoming more common and a host of 'fun' AI art generation apps dominate the download market. Regarding that last one, I can't help thinking that this is clever marketing - to give us something free and entertaining to soften us up before AI art production kicks in on an industrial scale. In 2022 at least one mainstream publisher used AI generated art on a book cover instead of employing an artist. It's certainly rattled the cages of many artists and artists' societies who have condemned it - if only because the AI invariably uses human-made art to 'inspire' (i.e. copy and adapt) its own work.
Meanwhile, the people funding AI research are not from the worlds of medicine or human welfare. There's no philanthropy at work here. As mentioned above, it's the super-rich multi-nationals who are looking to replace jobs with machines - exactly what the Luddites fought against. And you can see why they'd find the idea attractive - if you don't employ people you don't have to pay them. Machines can't complain, demand better working conditions or form a union. And they don't need toilet breaks, holidays or maternity leave.
The clue is in the name - Artificial Intelligence. This isn't intended to be a tool used by humans. Its intended to be a tool used instead of humans.
So what do the humans do all day?
Asimov, like many futurologists before and after him, predicted a world where we'd have more leisure time but none of them pointed out the stark reality that you need money to enjoy that leisure time. 'Enforced leisure' in 2023 means unemployment, homelessness, bankruptcy, depression and having to go to a food bank. And, because more of us are living longer, the money is needed for longer. Pension funds are decreasing and we now have to work until we're at least 70 before the state will pay us a penny. Asimov wrote:
'Mankind will suffer badly from the disease of boredom, a disease spreading more widely each year and growing in intensity. This will have serious mental, emotional and sociological consequences, and I dare say that psychiatry will be far and away the most important medical specialty in 2014.'
We are in the middle of a mental health epidemic. But it's not boredom driving people to seek psychiatric help. It's money worries. It's living in concrete cities where no one knows their neighbours and community doesn't exist. It's loneliness and a sense of isolation in an increasingly mechanised world. It's being in competition with everyone on social media platforms and not being able to keep up with the Joness. It's body dysmorphia and low self-esteem. It's a media-fuelled and jacked-up fear of all kinds of nonsense from paedophile kidnappers to invading hordes of immigrants to just about everything giving you cancer.
Asimov didn't predict that 1 in 5 relationships would begin online or that the dating industry would rake in over a billion pounds per annum. He didn't predict the global storehouse of information that the internet has created or how that data is used or misused. He didn't predict the staggering rise in obesity and online gambling. He didn't see the rise in alcoholism, drug dependency and other health problems. He didn't see the continued reliance on fossil fuels, fracking and re-opening coal mines. He didn't see the polarisation of society and the rise of fascism on both sides. He didn't see the increasing gap between rich and poor and the fact that, in 2022, just 1.1% of the world's population controls half of the planet's total wealth. Or that 55% of the world population together own just 1.3%.
Of course, it's easy for us to snigger and guffaw at some of these old predictions because hindsight has 20:20 vision. Asimov was a smart guy but how could he hope to get things 100% right? If I tried to guess what life in 2072 will be like (I won't be there to see it) I might get a couple of things right but, chances are, no matter how informed I am, most of what I'd predict will prove to be wrong. Society, and humans in particular, are far too complex and unpredictable.
What I do know for sure is that the real world of 2023 is probably infinitely more fascinating than the one that Asimov envisioned. He'd love the technology and marvel at our advancements in medicine. But I also think that he'd be hugely disappointed in us. We could all be living in a much better and smarter world than this. And it all begins with putting humanity and the world we live in before profiteering and greed.
Sometimes you have to look back in order to see a better way forward. During lockdown I lost four stones and put my diabetes into remission by only eating unprocessed foods of the kind my grandparents would have eaten. I gave up junk foods and takeaways. I substantially reduced my meat intake and did my bit for animal welfare by only buying locally-reared free range produce. I grew some of my own fruit and veg and foraged for wild foods. I used the car less and walked more. I spent more time in nature. I reduced my waste and recycled as much as I could. I lowered my carbon footprint by not upgrading my phone (which works perfectly well) and by using local shops rather than ordering online. I re-learned the importance of patience and waiting because it makes us appreciate things more. I spent less time online and more time socialising with friends and neighbours. I got involved with local community events and even created a few. I read more books and watched less TV. I reduced my input of bad news by giving up newspapers, TV news and current affairs shows. I still know what's going on but I'm not bombarded with doom and gloom - my input is now at the same levels as it was in my early 20s when all we had was three TV channels and no internet.
As the result I'm happier, fitter and healthier in every way - physically and mentally.
Little changes can make a big difference.
And, on that note, Happy New Year!
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