# Why were futurists so wrong about life today? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 5, 2014, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-futurists-so-wrong-about-life-today/690079 "2014-06-05T01:02:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![EdwinAmi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5fc32e/32.png) [@EdwinAmi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EdwinAmi)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-futurists-so-wrong-about-life-today/690079/21 "2014-06-05T15:52:47Z")
I don’t know but we’re dead CERTAIN that global warming is going to cause all the oceans to rise suddenly, and so the nation should spend a trillion dollars to prevent it ---
**Author:** ![EdwinAmi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5fc32e/32.png) [@EdwinAmi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EdwinAmi)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-futurists-so-wrong-about-life-today/690079/22 "2014-06-05T15:54:58Z")
> [@](#): > > Mind control of devices? We have that, a little bit. There’s a toy you can buy where you play by mind. And there’s that macaque who uses his brain power to move the robotic arm to feed himself. Similar experiments done with humans. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-futurists-so-wrong-about-life-today/690079/23 "2014-06-05T16:13:04Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > But if you asked that early-century futurist how long it would take to set up a meeting between businessmen in New York and Tokyo, he would have taken the distance between those cities and divided it by the speed of his futuristic vehicle of choice… completely overlooking the possibility of a far faster meeting over Skype. Even though the future he predicted was ahead of the reality in some specific details, in the overall picture, reality is far ahead of the predictions. Again, yes and no. There are hundreds of predictions of distant communications, and illustrations clearly showing viewing screens dating back into the 19th century. As soon as electric telegraphy began people realized that time of communications had fallen to effectively zero and started to extrapolate from that. > [@EdwinAmi](#): > > I don’t know > > but we’re dead CERTAIN that global warming is going to cause all the oceans to rise suddenly, and so the nation should spend a trillion dollars to prevent it What was I saying about acting like lunatics? ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-futurists-so-wrong-about-life-today/690079/24 "2014-06-05T16:14:45Z")
Mainly because people predict linear progress of current technology. Transportation was getting faster and more reliable, so people imagined getting places instantaneously. What never occurred to people was that it might be better to move whatever you were going to get, or to do remotely what you were going to do. Someone already mentioned Skype. We don’t need to use our telepod to go to Barnes and Noble when we can download a book to a tablet with a Kindle app in even less time. Also, think of a Jetson’s episode. They have a humanoid robot maid who uses simulated human functions, like some sort of “sight” to use a conventional vacuum cleaner to sweep a room. Compare the number of steps needed for a technology like that with a Roomba. A Roomba is clearly much better technology (although they still kinda creep me out, but then so would an uncanny valley maid). A particular episode of The Jetson’s that stands out in my memory is one where the mother (of course, it’s the mother) selects a punch card from a file, inserts it into a machine, and the machine spits out a pizza. The reality is that we can go on Pizza Hut’s website, order a pizza with a few mouse clicks, and it will be delivered in about 45 minutes. I’ll bet it tastes better than the one that machine produced. People always imagined computer that used voice input, but that was because typewriters were manual, and typing was a special skill. By the time we actually had home computers, electric typewriters had been invented, and adapting the technology for computer interface wasn’t that difficult. The fact that computers had keyboards meant that a generation of children grew up hunting and pecking on very easy keyboards (it took a lot of pressure to operate a manual typewriter), that had delete and backspace keys which most people could learn to hit faster than touch-typists on manual keyboards could turn out perfect pages. The point-and-click devices, and the windows system were invented. At this point, someone used to mouse & keyboard would probably find switching to voice input klutzy. I really would want my computer to talk back to me. I like having webpages displayed instead, but back when people imagined computers that talked back, computers’ main output was punch cards. Video displays were still a couple of decades away, and then, the first ones were pretty short on images, and mostly displayed lines of type. ---
**Author:** ![Red\_Wiggler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/red_wiggler/32/13190_2.png) [@Red\_Wiggler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Red_Wiggler)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-futurists-so-wrong-about-life-today/690079/25 "2014-06-05T16:25:40Z")
When people ask “where are my flying cars?” I assume they’re making a joke about a really stale and crappy joke. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-futurists-so-wrong-about-life-today/690079/26 "2014-06-05T16:59:58Z")
> [@EdwinAmi](#): > > but we’re dead CERTAIN that global warming is going to cause all the oceans to rise suddenly, and so the nation should spend a trillion dollars to prevent it Are you under the impression that the oceans will rise because of predicted future trends? 'Cause no. They’re going to rise based on _present_ trends. You might as well say that we can’t predict what a Treasury bill will pay in 10 years because futurists are often wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Dallas\_Jones](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dallas_jones/32/3277_2.png) [@Dallas\_Jones](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dallas_Jones)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-futurists-so-wrong-about-life-today/690079/27 "2014-06-05T17:49:59Z")
The futurists thought in terms of ever advancing hardware, inter-continental rocket travel for example, but missed the intersection between hardware, software, and micronization. The predicted future would be bigger, faster machines, instead of smaller more intelligent devices. Homes would be transformed into technological wonders, instead the little details improved, better heat and insulation, water supplies, efficient wiring, washing and cleaning machines. And we still have a crew of guys showing up to build the thing with hammer and nails. Slightly better hammers and nails but the house has not greatly changed. And they imagined a world that would look vastly different from the one 100 years ago. Instead of domed cities, cities look just about the same as they used to. Sure the transportation available has changed but a building still looks like a building from 100 years ago and in some cases is still the _same_ building. A person from a hundred years ago visiting outside of the urban areas would recognize every thing. Sure the roads, cars tractors are better, farms more efficient, but not surprisingly so. The futurists expected a transformed world. Instead what we have is a wonderful transformation of the\*\* tools \*\*that we use, to live pretty much in the same world. ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-futurists-so-wrong-about-life-today/690079/28 "2014-06-05T18:11:38Z")
> [@Dallas\_Jones](#): > > The futurists thought in terms of ever advancing hardware, inter-continental rocket travel for example, but missed the intersection between hardware, software, and micronization. The predicted future would be bigger, faster machines, instead of smaller more intelligent devices. Homes would be transformed into technological wonders, instead the little details improved, better heat and insulation, water supplies, efficient wiring, washing and cleaning machines… Good point. From the middle of the 19th century to the middle of the 20th, there were a series of watershed innovations in transportation technology, each of which changed people’s lives in a major way. Railroads in the mid-1800’s, then automobiles, large oceangoing liners, automobiles, aircraft, and then space travel at the end. _It seemed as if the future would introduce even more wondrous new forms of travel._ However, what happened was that after Apollo (roughly), the progress of progress changed. Instead of concentrating on making new kinds of transportation, a large amount of effort went in to making small and gradual, but inexorable, changes to existing technology. Cars got more reliable, planes got faster, etc. E.g. cruise ships of today aren’t fundamentally different from the RMS Titanic. They may be a little bigger, stronger, safer, more luxurious, more fuel efficient, and more connected (e.g. satellite Internet access vs. one or two morse code terminals) but they are still based on the same idea and you can trace the history though small innovations. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-futurists-so-wrong-about-life-today/690079/29 "2014-06-05T18:21:35Z")
The Titanic was steam driven. Modern passenger liners are diesel or gas turbine powered. That’s a pretty fundamental difference. Your larger point is well taken, though. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-futurists-so-wrong-about-life-today/690079/30 "2014-06-05T18:27:17Z")
> [@Dallas\_Jones](#): > > And we still have a crew of guys showing up to build the thing with hammer and nails. Slightly better hammers and nails but the house has not greatly changed. Well, nail guns, anyway. The thing is, though, that the nails aren’t make my blacksmiths. They are made by machines, and amazingly cheaply. If nails weren’t so cheap, we might be looking for something better, but things that are just a little better are staggeringly more expensive. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-futurists-so-wrong-about-life-today/690079/31 "2014-06-05T18:50:57Z")
I think it was Heinlein (or was it Campbell?) who said the trick with science fiction (and extrapolation) was not to predict the car, but to predict the interstates, traffic jams, to predict Lovers’ Lane -that teenagers would use cars as mobile bedrooms to get privacy they couldn’t get at home. These secondary effects probably have the most impact on people’s daily lives. In his series on teleportation, Larry Niven predicted “flash crowds” - that people from all over would impulsively decide to congregate in one location (made easier by instant transport). He also predicted CNN and television dominated by live news. The funniest point about the predicting the future, is that if Hollywood wanted to place a movie as wildly improbable science fiction and obviously far in the future, they made the president of the United States a black man or a woman (…named Hillary?). ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-futurists-so-wrong-about-life-today/690079/32 "2014-06-05T19:14:50Z")
I think there are a few aspects of innovation that are clear in hindsight, but were not always accounted for by futurists 1. Physical laws can’t be easily “technologied” away. You still need a lot of energy to put something in orbit, Newton’s laws aren’t going away. Materials only get so strong, you’re not getting routinely available materials 100x the strength of steel. Chemicals can only store so much energy. Friction, air resistance, etc all still apply. A flying car needs a ton of stored energy, is difficult to maneuver, thanks to the limitations of air, and can kill you if you make a minor flying mistake. Domed cities need materials that don’t exist. 2. Information doesn’t weigh anything and can move at the speed of light. It’s relatively easy to get exponential growth in the ability to process and move information, you don’t have the same physical limitations you have when moving people or stuff. 3. Despite the ease of moving information, AI is frightfully hard to manage. You need to process what seems to be insane amounts of information to get a machine to act even remotely intelligent. ---
**Author:** ![smokey78](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/82dd89/32.png) [@smokey78](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smokey78)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2014, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-futurists-so-wrong-about-life-today/690079/33 "2014-06-06T00:03:32Z")
the most embarassing ? future prediction that failed was Ursula LeGuin’s futuristic story she wrote in the 50s or 60s (main character was Latka?) that was about living on the moon, I had not idea why she decided to set it to the year 1987. I recall being in middle school in the 90s and the teacher had to sheepishly explain to us the author just picked a future year. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2014, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-futurists-so-wrong-about-life-today/690079/34 "2014-06-06T00:09:28Z")
Sort of like 1984 - or 2001? ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2014, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-futurists-so-wrong-about-life-today/690079/35 "2014-06-06T01:03:45Z")
The biggest source of failure in “futurism” is to take a trend and naively project it. Homo Sapiens has a bigger brain than Homo Erectus, who in turn had a bigger brain than Homo Habilis? Then obviously our future descendants will have huge heads and giant brains. The first cars could barely go a few miles per hour while 1940s cars could go up to a hundred mph? Then the cars of the future will go hundreds of miles per hour! Cities of relatively small buildings were being replaced with skyscrapers? Then the cities of the future will consist of mile-high megastructures. The list goes on; take any temporary trend and likely you’ll find at least one work of fiction devoted to carrying it out to the Nth degree. Oddly enough, this is often combined with conservatism in other areas. Futurists would foresee mile-high towers around which canvas-winged biplanes would fly. They could imagine giant aircraft which would need liner-like luxury accommodations because they would fly at around 150 mph. And as mentioned upthread, a truly revolutionary technology is hard to anticipate. The early to mid 20th century was a time of advances in transportation and engineering, and most of the science fiction extrapolated on that. Few anticipated that the _control_ of machinery could be automated as well as the physical work- pioneers like John Von Neumann and Norbert Wiener were still inventing the concept. And that’s just for the advance of science. Where fashion and culture are concerned, all bets are off. How many people in the 1950s would have thought that beards and mustaches would make a comeback, having faded away around the turn of the century? For a frequently hilarious look at futurism in SF art and images, check out the [Tales of Future Past](http://davidszondy.com/future/futurepast.htm) site. ---
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2014, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-futurists-so-wrong-about-life-today/690079/36 "2014-06-06T01:25:28Z")
Arthur C. Clarke predicted the communications satellite. But it wasn’t just a pull-it-out-of-your-ass prediction, he was one of the first ones to describe how it could work and its value. _It’s hard to make predictions, especially about the future._ –Yogi Berra ---
**Author:** ![Lord\_Feldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lord_feldon/32/341_2.png) [@Lord\_Feldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Feldon)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2014, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-futurists-so-wrong-about-life-today/690079/37 "2014-06-06T01:38:58Z")
Some of the improvements we’ve had are pretty boring, so even if futurists predicted them they weren’t going to put them in the things they sold to the public. Cheaper airline tickets and safer cars are nice, but they aren’t going to shock people into buying your magazine like a robotic oven that walks to your bed to cook you breakfast. ---
**Author:** ![SmartAlecCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/67e7ee/32.png) [@SmartAlecCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmartAlecCat)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2014, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-futurists-so-wrong-about-life-today/690079/38 "2014-06-06T01:41:20Z")
> [@Cheesesteak](#): > > 1. Despite the ease of moving information, AI is frightfully hard to manage. You need to process what seems to be insane amounts of information to get a machine to act even remotely intelligent. Considering the breadth of questions I can type into my browser’s search box and get an almost immediate answer, I’d say people of 50 years ago would be pretty impressed… ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2014, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-futurists-so-wrong-about-life-today/690079/39 "2014-06-06T01:47:03Z")
smokey78 writes: \> the most embarassing ? future prediction that failed was Ursula LeGuin’s futuristic \> story she wrote in the 50s or 60s (main character was Latka?) that was about \> living on the moon, I had not idea why she decided to set it to the year 1987. I \> call being in middle school in the 90s and the teacher had to sheepishly explain to \> the author just picked a future year. I’m fairly certain you’ve got this wrong. Le Guin didn’t write any stories in the 1950’s. She wrote very few in the 1960’s, and they don’t fit your description: [http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?37](http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?37) ---
**Author:** ![installLSC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/54ee81/32.png) [@installLSC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/installLSC)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2014, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-futurists-so-wrong-about-life-today/690079/40 "2014-06-06T02:26:00Z")
How widely believed were the futurists? Were they legitimately believed to be predictors of the future? Or were their era’s version of sensationalist blogs, fun to read but not taken seriously? For that matter, did futurists think their technologies would be adopted by everyone or just the elite? We tend to forget how long it took technological change to be adopted. For example, in 1940 a fifth of American homes had no electricity and one third did not have running water. Most households did not have electric refridgerators or washers. Imagine how father behind most other nations were. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-futurists-so-wrong-about-life-today/690079.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-futurists-so-wrong-about-life-today/690079.md?page=3)