IT’S 2015!
2015
It’s 2015!
Here we are in 1945, with nothing but blue skies ahead. Scientists tells us that the Great Free Enterprise system, Americanism, and the talent of our men will create a wonderful world. Prosperity, time travel, outpost on Mars, and your choice of personal flying cars. With a place in the back of your streamlined home, science and technology can help you beat the traffic. This prosperity will really expand the middle class, and help poor people. Women (you know how they love to talk) having spent years in the factories, can now slow down a bit to raise the kids and talk on a picture phone! World War II is almost or is over. Start thinking about a three day week and one of the greatest standards of living here on earth.
Are you ready for space age clothes? There is a tiny button on the side and you can feel warm in a blizzard and comfortably cool in the hot summer. Attached to the space suit will be a tiny digital system so that this little audio system can record everything that you do and who you talk to. You don’t do much of anything. You tell it what to do. It will call, help you remember, and talk to all your robots. So you can do two or three things at once. All verbal and physical activity can be erased.
Don’t like continually picking up and straightening. The space suit talks to the robots and they take care of the rest. Don’t believe me? America has some of the finest minds in the world and with our “can do” attitude, we can whip the world. If only the rest of the world would follow us, the planet would be completely peaceful and calm. If there is evil out there, we can smash it to bits in under a half hour.
One could go on and on, but your kids with high tech and super cheap energy will inherit the universe.
Are you ready? Well, I’m not.
Raised in the 40’s and 50’s, I can’t tell you how many times I read something like the above those 50 to70 years ago. Then Dr. R. Gary Dean, retired professor of Business from Creighton University and I won a grant to describe to U.S, Army Corps of Engineers of what life may be like in the year 2020. They would develop their water policy around our premises. It received a great deal of praise for what we didn’t say. We described 3 alternative futures. The one that we thought most likely was fairly accurate. The years were 1973-75. Our report was cautious and muted. Much of what was said in the above description did not come to pass, nor did we suggest it. Another futurist in the area also described the future. As he wrote it, he said and meant that a three day week, one would be paid for five days a week. It was filled with the gee-wiz predictions discussed above. At any rate 2020 is just a few years away and I never thought that I would live this long. At the moment, many talk with certainty about a really tough future. It appears that way to me. However, what is not so certain is that we are still talking about the future. It is not certain. What may be of value is that strategies used after the crash of the Great Recession may be helpful in the future. However, that still does not make it absolutely valid.
What we think now is even harder to forecast and it is the creation of worldwide globalization. What has happened in the last few decades suggests that from the Left, the top 1/10 of one percent owns or influences much of the factories, farms, banks, and other means of production. What we get from the Right is that there is waste and fraud in state and federal government. In 1975, the USA had a more definite role in the future. Now it has dispersed. So with a great deal of humility , it would appear that we will grow but much more slowly( in unadjusted dollars) and that less may mean more and space suits won’t replace jeans. Each suit may only do half of what is promised, it may do whatever the activity is with not a lot of efficiency, and may be very costly.
So envision the future, but do it with a great deal of caution. 2020 is almost here. 1975 was roughly 40 years ago. With those numbers and the shortness of life, absolute certainty sort of fades away. Right?