Futurists are no longer so optimistic

 

What will the United States be like in 1994? That question was posed in U.S. News & world Report magazine back in January of 1974. the experts in those days said in 1994 there would be “communal peace” among various sectors of the population. Solar converters would heat homes. Nuclear power would flourish. Every day, Americans would travel in jets at 4,000 miles per hour. The work-week would be slightly diminished to 36 hours. Personal wealth would dramatically increase. All would be guaranteed a minimum annual income and national health insurance. There would be a cure for cancer. Television would be three-dimensional.

In the big cities, fast and efficient "people movers" (mass transit) would carry most of the population. Highways in which cars guided by computer would be commonplace.

Houses could be expanded with modular room units made of reinforced plastic.

Are you with me? I don't know what reality you live in, but my reality says those forecasts are dead wrong.

In all fairness, the "futurologists." as they were called, were right on a number of issues, including what today we would call Norplant. Prozac, faxes, urban blight, pollution and the decline of small farms.

Additionally, their population predictions for the country were close.

Predictions of the need for lifelong learning, the flight to the suburbs by the middle class, and the variation in families were fairly accurate. So, too, were predictions of

VCRs, the increase in students attending community colleges, increases in divorces and remarriages, smaller families, and a tendency toward an older population.

However, the overall picture, at least in my judgment, was extremely optimistic

In 1974 I was a futurist with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. My forecast, published in "To The Year 2020" (a monograph with Dr. R. Gary Dean of Creighton University) was much more guarded.

Today I am a consultant with the Arlington Institute, a Washington. D.C., futurist think tank." Further, my school, Kirkwood Community College, continually does "environmental scanning" for future trends. In both instances, I receive a number of future forecasts. Although technological forecasts seem promising, the future social order envisioned by many in the field appears less promising. Some of it is grim.

I just received one newsletter that claims (without documentation) that the rich are quietly moving out of the country before a big social, political and economic upheaval occurs in the next decade.

Further, "fatherless" white middle-class teen-age males living in the suburbs will belong to gangs, and there will be drive-by shootings, subjugation of female teens and heavy drug usage. Most of the world will be in war and squalor. Both tuberculosis and super-toxic viruses will spread rapidly throughout the world and this country.

If any of this comes to pass, it is probably good news for Cedar Rapids. That's right. It is good news. Or perhaps, the bad news won’t be so bad for us. Why? That is Tuesday's column.

 

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Joel Snell of Cedar Rapids is professor of social science at Kirkwood Community College.