The Future

Great Debates
21

See? Libertarian was right. One all-encompassing totalitarian regime led by rapturous dictators.

The best lack all conviction
The worst are full of passionate intensity.
*

22

But it would be okay, Spiritus, because all would be volunteers. :slight_smile:

23

I believe that “volunteer” will be an archaic and obsolete term.

24

Predicting the future can be fun, but no one has ever been any good at it. Not the oracle at Delphi, not Jean Dixon, and not the various “think tanks” that were so trendy in the '60s and '70s.

When I was a boy growing up in the '50s, I couldn’t wait for the next edition of Popular Science. Usually, the cover depicted a futuristic scene or gizmo. And of course the pulp sci-fi mags were even bolder in their predictions. I still remember some of those predictions.

  • Single seat helicopters would become as common as cars.
  • A Mars colony before the close of the century.
  • A robot maid in every household.
  • Moving sidewalks.
  • Nuclear fusion
  • Crude oil supplies exhausted by 1990, but nuclear fusion, along with solar and wind power save the day.
  • Canada and U.S. will merge by 2005.
    And there are others that I can’t recall.

What was NOT predicted was:

  • The home computer
  • The Internet.
  • Digital watches.
  • The fall of Russia.
  • Data storage on compact discs.
  • Answering machines.
    And there are others that I can’t recall.

In Alvin Toffler’s “Future Shock” he explains that the future comes at us too fast. He likens it to cultural shock.
And that’s because we don’t know what will happen next.

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