Posted on 12/27/2011 12:24:17 AM PST by Windflier
In the February 1952 issue of Galaxy magazine, Robert Heinlein offered his verdict on the conclusion of the twentieth century. He would later revisit these predictions in the 1966 short story collection The Worlds of Robert A. Heinlein and discuss the challenges of predicting the future. Here's what the author gathered, six decades ago:
So let's have a few free-swinging predictions about the future. Some will be wrong - but cautious predictions are sure to be wrong.
1. Interplanetary travel is waiting at your front door — C.O.D. It's yours when you pay for it.
2. Contraception and control of disease is revising relations between the sexes to an extent that will change our entire social and economic structure.
3. The most important military fact of this century is that there is no way to repel an attack from outer space.
I thought we were suppose to have flying cars by now!
You will note I was replying to a post that identified #11 and I said “as well”.
On that note there’s a John Prine song that applies here, Living in the Future, the chorus of which goes:
We are living in the future
I’ll tell you how I know
I read it in the paper
Fifteen years ago
We’re all driving rocket ships
And talking with our minds
And wearing turquoise jewelry
And standing in soup lines
We are standing in soup lines
Mr. Heinlein seem to be suffering from a lack of cynicism when he made this set of predictions (I was never a Heinlein fan and would like to see his revised 1966 set). Just going by the 3 excerpted examples given, he should have realized that the coming about of item # 2, would have a profound affect on items # 1 & 3...
2. Contraception and control of disease is revising relations between the sexes to an extent that will change our entire social and economic structure.
Contraception did. Women are in the workforce to an extent unimagined in 1952, and the social structure is utterly changed.
3. The most important military fact of this century is that there is no way to repel an attack from outer space.
Accurate.
6. We'll all be getting a little hungry by and by.
He's right. I'm peckish right now.
11. Your personal telephone will be small enough to carry in your handbag. Your house telephone will record messages, answer simple inquiries, and transmit vision.
Dead on.
17. All aircraft will be controlled by a giant radar net run on a continent-wide basis by a multiple electronic "brain."
More or less.
19. Mankind will not destroy itself, nor will "Civilization" be destroyed.
True dat.
True, but he was by no means the first. The concept of a hand-held device serving as a computer terminal was described in the 1949 book "Giant Brains-or Machines that Think" by Edmund Berkeley.
"We can even imagine what new machinery for handling information may some day become: a small pocket instrument that we carry around with us, talking to it whenever we need to, and either storing information in it or receiving information from it."
I Want my flying car
I Want my flying car
He did predict high-speed transportation. In fact, the comments after the piece were interesting - pointing out that it was natural for anyone writing in 1950 to overestimate the progress in transportation speed, since the prior 50 years had taken the common individual from horse to, basically, cars which would keep up with traffic today, if with a little more noise and vibration than we are now used to at 80 mph on some interstates. Someone pointed out that we stopped going for speed after the SST failure, and ever since then have gone for size and passenger capacity at a little more than Mach 0.9.Oh, how we wish....9. Cancer, the common cold, and tooth decay will all be conquered; the revolutionary new problem in medical research will be to accomplish "regeneration," i.e., to enable a man to grow a new leg, rather than fit him with an artificial limb.
Still have none of that, but the "revolutionary new problem" is in fact just that. Adult stem cells, anyone?In fact, it's now known that the tip of a finger will regrow, slowly, if you keep it clean and don't cover it over. But if you graft a flap of skin over where the tip should grow, the subtle difference in DNA coding for skin at the wound site vs that which existed in the intact finger will shut down regrowth.
I wish point 7 were true.
11 is bang on, 12 is ruled out
15 was incredibly accurate considering how inevitable communism's rise seemed in 1952
Heinlein wasn’t pretending to be a religious leader. He was an engineer making educated guesses.
Number 11 is dead on. I’m posting this on an android phone. The one about cancer is almost true, since sciencists are looking aat the regeneration of limbs.
Well, he got about 3/19.
Boy, he really blew #4. We’ve done it several times.
Too bad about 12.
18 was a wide miss too. If anything, beef is even less expensive, while fish is getting more expensive.
While he was a socialist in his young adult age, he became so libertarian in his latter years as to provoke numerous attacks from the left. It is interesting that, almost a quarter-century after his death, many of his books are still eminently readable and enjoyable.
If you grok this, thank RAH and Michael Smith! If you have ever used a Waldo manipulator or slept in a non-patentable waterbed - thank RAH for the seed of an idea!
If you think Heinlein is dated, try some of these RAH quotes on for size;
One can judge from experiment, or one can blindly accept authority. To the scientific mind, experimental proof is all important and theory is merely a convenience in description, to be junked when it no longer fits. To the academic mind, authority is everything and facts are junked when they do not fit theory laid down by authority. - "Doctor Pinero" in Life-Line (1939) Anthropogenic Climate Change anyone?
Every law that was ever written opened up a new way to graft. "Red Planet" (1949) Oxley-Sarbanes and MFGlobal?
I could go on but why spoil your fun.
1 is correct. We could send men to Mars if we were willing to pay for it. The tech exists.
2 is absolutely right. The massive changes to family structure could not have occurred otherwise. Arguably the most profound changes in our society are directly related to this prediction.
3 is still true.
4 was arguably disproved by the Iraq War, which was at least partially pre-emptive in nature.
5 has not yet come true, but this is at least partly because he didn’t foresee housing becoming a major investment, giving society an incentive to prevent new technology from reducing the price of existing housing stock.
6 untrue. He didn’t foresee the Green Revolution. There is less hunger now than ever in history.
7 is unfortunately untrue. I personally think it will come true eventually, but the phony in art is still dominant. However, the prediction is true insofar as the general public utterly ignores the phony in modern classical music, art, poetry, etc. The “artists” are producing for each other and a small pretentious elite.
8 came true, though we’re still working on it.
First part of 9 untrue, but we’re working on the 2nd part.
10 untrue, though more to a failure of will than a lack of adequate technology.
11 absolutely true.
12 untrue.
13 untrue.
14 is true. This is a major objective, though we still don’t have a clue how to go about it. There is no inherent logical reason why the gravitational force can’t be controlled as we do with the electromagnetic force.
15 true. Communism has disappeared in fact, though not in name, as a system of government. The motivations behind it, of course, continue to go strong.
16 was accurate, though the issue was dealt with by expansion of the use of absentee ballots and changes in residency requirements on a state level rather than by amendment to the Constitution.
17 could be true tomorrow, if we wanted to implement it.
18 did not come true, largely because of the Green Revolution which freed up land and other resources for meat production rather than grain to feed people directly.
19 is, so far, true.
I count 9 as accurate, with some of the others potentially or partially so. That’s a damn good percentage for 50 years out.
Hear! Hear!
And he was an excellent writer as well!
One has to wonder about all the "near misses" and outright goof ups from Bob Isaiha, Sam Samuel, Nate Nathan, Fred Elijah, Gerry Jeremiah, and my personal favorite, Mike "the Scribe" Ezekiel. All "prophets" however were mostly writers too. About 90% of what all of them wrote never made it into the history books - too "far out". Stuff like, "I predict that Rome will not last another 100 years!!", and "It is safe to say that a cure for the common cold will be found before -3,000!", and "Bleeding the sick is a sure cure for almost everything that ails ya!".
All in all, I'd say Heinlein did a fairly good job - when asked - in predicting (or "prophesying" as some would have it).
Not quite the speed, but cost is spot on (in 1952 cents)
Heinlein re-addressed these ‘predictions’ a second time in, if I recall correctly, “Expanded Universe” (1980). I am trying to find my copy but so far have failed to come up with it. Maybe I can by this weekend. I will try to post Heinlein’s final update at that time.
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