Latest Blog post: Asimov’s New World Revisited

I thought today, the first day of the New Year might be a good day to post for the first time on my newly redesigned and relaunched blog. What should I talk about? The date 1st January suggests a new beginning, a fresh start, why else do we choose this date to enact our New Year’s Resolutions (if we have any)? We can disregard the old year and pretend our lack of accomplishments and the plans which withered on the vine of good intentions didn’t exist, the canvas of a fresh twelve months is stretched before us and promises success. The 1st of January  is also a liminal date which I see as straddling the old and new years, almost a day out of time, it inevitably makes me consider both the past and the future in more detail than I would normally, it’s a day which demands reflection on where we have been and where we might be going.

In late 1983 the Toronto Star newspaper thought it would be interesting to ask Isaac Asimov what he thought the future would hold, after all the new year would be 1984 and I remember well the excitement in the media at the prospect of  entering the actual year in which George Orwell set his famous dystopian fiction ‘1984’. People were interested to compare the present to that which Orwell warned might be reality in the not too distant future from his time, and the press and TV were full of compare and contrast pieces predicated on this idea. The Toronto Star though took a different path, it published a piece on where we will be in the future and put the challenge of predicting this to the famous Asimov. Azimov thought it would be interesting in the light of the then present ‘Orwell’s 1984’ atmosphere to look ahead to the year 2019, being the same amount of time ahead as it had been since the publication of 1984. It is my observation we humans can’t help but compare societal predictions with the reality when and where we can, so in accordance with my theory The (Toronto) Star has republished Asimov’s piece on the eve of the year which was the subject of the exercise.

 

© The Star

Asimov darkly prefaced his article, published on the 31 December 1983, with a caveat regarding the all-pervading fear at the time of Nuclear annihilation at the hands of the world powers (a fear which of course dissipated over the following decades but has unfortunately become an existential one again). He began,

lf we look into the world as it may be at the end of another generation, let’s say 2019 — that’s 35 years from now, the same number of years since 1949 when George Orwell’s 1984 was first published — three considerations must dominate our thoughts:

  1. Nuclear war. 2. Computerization. 3. Space utilization.

If the United States and the Soviet Union flail away at each other at any time between now and 2019, there is absolutely no use to discussing what life will be like in that year. Too few of us, or of our children and grand· children, will be alive then for there to be any point in describing the precise condition of global misery at that time.

Let us, therefore, assume there will be no nuclear war — not necessarily a safe assumption — and carry on from there.

Obviously his predictions were a little hit and miss as any must be across such a large time scale, but his concerns regarding population and pollution certainly ring true today,

Governments will be unable to hide from themselves the fact that no problem can possibly be solved as long as those problems continue to be intensified by the addition of greater numbers more rapidly than they can be dealt with.

Efforts to prevent this from happening by encouraging a lower birthrate will become steadily more strenuous and it is to be hoped that by 2019, the world as a whole will be striving toward a population plateau.

“The consequences of human irresponsibility in terms of waste and pollution will become more apparent and unbearable with time and again, attempts to deal with this will become more strenuous. It is to be hoped that by 2019, advances in technology will place tools in our hands that will help accelerate the process whereby the deterioration of the environment will be reversed.”

Unfortunately his optimism regarding both of these issues is a little misplaced.

The future of mankind in relation to space were, of course, present. He anticipated for example that,

By 2019, we will be back on the moon in force.”

Hmm, although there are plans to return in the works. However this is more prescient considering the International Space Station has been in orbit and manned for nearly two decades,

We will enter space to stay. With the shuttle rocket as the vehicle, we will build a space station and lay the foundation for making space a permanent home for increasing numbers of human beings.

His was a little more general in his last sentence though, and I am sure he will be correct there, for better or worse,

In fact, although the world of 2019 will be far changed from the present world of 1984, that will only be a barometer of far greater changes planned for the years still to come.”

It seems Asimov was not a newcomer to the world of predictions (hardly surprising considering his background) he wrote a similar piece twenty years earlier for the 1964 World’s Fair held in New York. He asked the question,

“What will life be like, say, in 2014 A.D., 50 years from now? What will the World’s Fair of 2014 be like? I don’t know, but I can guess.”

Although he also begins in a similar tone to that he used in his ideas about 2019,

“The New York World’s Fair of 1964 is dedicated to “Peace Through Understanding.” Its glimpses of the world of tomorrow rule out thermonuclear warfare. And why not? If a thermonuclear war takes place, the future will not be worth discussing. So let the missiles slumber eternally on their pads and let us observe what may come in the nonatomized world of the future.”

He makes some interesting points including some very perceptive remarks about the world’s growing population and the need for the control of birth rates as he did in his later piece and he finishes on a possible reality that, although not quite a fact of life today, can be viewed as subject for serious thought for many of the general workforce today.

 “… 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. 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.”

I knew I should have gotten into the creative arts…

 

The full article ‘35 years ago, Isaac Asimov was asked by the Star to predict the world of 2019. Here is what he wrote’ may be read here at the The Star:

https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2018/12/27/35-years-ago-isaac-asimov-was-asked-by-the-star-to-predict-the-world-of-2019-here-is-what-he-wrote.html

Visit to the World’s Fair of 2014’ By ISAAC ASIMOV at the New York Times here:

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/23/lifetimes/asi-v-fair.html