The future is coming fast -- are you ready for it? Technology is advancing so rapidly in every direction that the possibilities seem limited only by our imaginations -- in fact it's getting harder and harder for our imaginations to keep up with all the changes! But the authors of the texts in this unit encourage us to give it a try. After Text A takes us on a light-hearted trip to the year 2030, the same author compares past predictions with the reality we live in today in Text B; finally, Text C speculates about whether advances in science and technology are really all it takes to make a better future.

Text  B

  Edward Cornish 

    The first issue of The Futurist was published exactly three decades ago. It was packed with ideas about what would happen in the coming decades. Now, 30 years later, the moment of truth has come: How well did we do? Are we as good as we like to think, or as bad as critics claim, when it comes to foreseeing what lies ahead?

     To try to answer this question, I decided to evaluate the forecasts made in the February 1967 issue of The Futurist. So here are those predictions, along with my judgements and comments.

SPACE

1. A landing on the moon will be made by 1970. RIGHT

2. We will land on other planets by 1980. WRONG

       Clearly, the first forecast was correct, since men did land on the moon in 1969. The second forecast must be judged wrong since only unmanned probes have ever landed on any other planet.

MEDICINE

3. Human body organs will be transplanted from one person to another and artificial organs will be used by 1987. RIGHT

4. The implanting of artificial organs will be a common practice by 1986. RIGHT

    Transplants are now a standard part of medical practice and would be even more common except for the shortage of usable organs. Artificial hearts are used as temporary substitutes for failing natural hearts but have not proved as reliable as natural hearts.

CITIES

5. Three out of four people in the United States will live in cities or towns by 1986. RIGHT

6. Most urban people will live in high-rise multiple-purpose buildings by 1986. WRONG

7. Private passenger vehicles will be barred from most city centers by 1986. WRONG

    The notion that cities would push higher and higher into the sky as people crowded ever more tightly together proved quite wrong. Instead, people in the United States and many western nations spread out across the countryside. Laws rarely barred cars from city cores, but traffic jams and high parking charges made the centers so unattractive to drivers that legal restrictions were unnecessary.

ECONOMICS

8. By 1986, world agricultural production will be 50% above that of 1966. RIGHT

9. Credit cards will virtually eliminate currency by 1986. WRONG

     World population soared between 1966 and 1986, but food production did even better. The fears that there would not be enough food to feed the world's expanding population went unrealized, although hunger persists in some areas. Cash has hardly disappeared from modern society -- even the U.S. penny persists -- but, in terms of the large sums, cash has been losing out fast to checks and credit cards.

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

10. Lasers will be in widespread use by 1986. RIGHT

11. Short-term weather forecasting will be highly reliable by 1986. RIGHT

    What once was an exotic and mysterious force is now reading bar codes at your local supermarket and performing thousands of other tasks, from cutting cloth for suits to treating certain eye diseases. Meanwhile, everyone complains about weather forecasters, but -- far more than in the past -- they sometimes know what they're talking about.

COMMUNICATIONS

12. By the 1980s, remote terminals in the home, connected to data banks, may make the home the most efficient place to work for many activities. RIGHT

13. Full-color three-dimensional TV will be in use on a global basis. WRONG

14. More sophisticated teaching machines will be in use in education by 1987. RIGHT

     Home computers now enable vast numbers of people to work at home. Doing so enables people to carry on various domestic activities, such as tending for children, while making electronic sales calls and feeding data to the company headquarters.

     Three-dimensional television has not come into wide-spread use, although it may have specialized applications. Educators are clearly using much more sophisticated "teaching machines", although the term itself was offensive to teachers and is now obsolete. We now speak of multimedia educational courses or computer-assisted instruction.

OCEANS

15. Desalinated seawater will be widely used in agriculture by 1987. WRONG

16. Undersea resorts will develop, possibly with the use of submarines and submerged hotels. RIGHT

     Energy prices soared in 1973, making desalination even more costly than it already was, but also making the ocean's petroleum resources more valuable. Undersea tourism has become a sizable industry in the Caribbean and elsewhere. And, yes, at least one underwater hotel has been built -- in Florida -- and there are tourist submarines in service.

     The forecasts in The Futurist 30 years ago were not wild fancies. Quite the contrary: Every one was a perfectly reasonable anticipation of the future, based on what was known about current social and technological trends in the 1960s. Yet the fact remains that 37% went wrong.

     Looking at the February 1967 issue as a whole, the forecasters seem to have given a fairly good account of themselves. The forecasts depict a society making dynamic technological progress, expanding into the oceans and space, enlarging its economy, and curing ancient ills. And that -- despite all our worries about war, overpopulation, and environmental collapse -- is what we have actually experienced during the past 30 years.

(850 words)

30年后看我们的预测