The Future

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The Future

• July 8, 2008

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Short History of the Future

• The Historicists
• The Professional Prophets
• The Amateur Prophets

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The Historicists
Historicism the belief that there exist timeless
laws that govern the development of human history
(Popper, The Poverty of Historicism)
Greek and Hindu myth Vico Hegel and
Marx Spengler and Toynbee
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Mythology

• The world cycles through four ages
• We are now living in the worst age, or kali yuga

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Vicos Cyclic History

• Giambattista Vico (1668-1744)
• Saw history as the succession of four ages the
  divine, the heroic, the human, and the ricorso.

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Hegel (1770-1831)
History is the working-out of a dialectical
process, which takes us from primitive
despotism, through democracy, to absolute
monarchy.
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Karl Marx (1818-1883)

• Replaced Hegels dialectic with dialectical
  materialism societys form is determined by the
  means of production used.

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Karl Marx (1818-1883)

• Dialectical materialism takes society through a
  fixed sequence of stages savagery, barbarism,
  feudalism, capitalism, socialism and communism.
  Each stage, except the last, is characterised by
  the dominance of a particular class.

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Karl Marx (1818-1883)

• Impressive success the Communist Manifesto
  (1848) predicted revolutions that would occur
  fifty to a hundred years later.
• Less impressive doctrine of the immiseration of
  the proletariat.

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Untergang des Abendlands
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Summer Earliest urban/civil societies
aristocrats vs. monarch
Spring Feudalism Nobility vs. priesthood
Autumn Aristocrats vs. bourgeois
Winter Materialism, non-symbolic art, democracy
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Untergang des Abendlands

• Oswald Spengler, 1880-1936
• All societies pass through fixed stages, ending
  in culture, civilization and decline.
• Western society is just entering the stage of
  decline.

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Arnold Toynbees A Study of History (1934-1961)

• Civilizations grow as they respond to challenges,
  decline as they fail to respond.
• Civilizations die of suicide, not murder.

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Popper on Historicism

• Although history should be purely descriptive,
  most historicists seem to take it as a
  prescription for action
• Its good to move things in the direction
  theyre bound to go.

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Popper on Historicism

• The historicist project is doomed to fail, since
  one major determinant of the form of society is
  technology, and we cant predict future
  technology (if we could, it would be todays
  technology).

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Popper on Historicism

• Historicists may deny that there are timeless
  laws of human nature. But many examples exist,
  including Lord Actons dictum
• You cannot give a man power over other men
  without tempting him to misuse it --a temptation
  which roughly increases with the amount of power
  wielded, and which very few are capable of
  resisting.

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The Professional Prophets

• 1. Herman Kahn and the Hudson Institute
• 2. Limits to Growth
• 3. The popular prophets
• Alvin Toffler, Future Shock
• John Naisbitt, Megatrends

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Herman Kahn and the Hudson Institute

• Things to Come thinking about the Seventies and
  Eighties (1972)
• There will be nuclear-powered aircraft,
  weighing thousands or tens of thousands of tons.

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Herman Kahn and the Hudson Institute

• The great globe itself is in a rapidly maturing
  crisis -- attributable to the fact that the
  environment in which technological progress must
  occur has become both undersized and
  under-organisedin the years between now and
  1980, the crisis will probably develop far beyond
  all earlier patterns
• (from Things to Come, quoting von Neumann,
  1955, Fortune)

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Herman Kahn and the Hudson Institute

• (From The Next 200 Years, 1976)
• By 2000, a quarter of mankind will live in
  post-industrial society, in which the task of
  procuring the necessities of life has become
  trivially easy. Virtually everyone will be rich
  and devote their leisure to cultured pursuits.
• More than two-thirds of humanity will earn more
  than 11,000/year

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Herman Kahn and the Hudson Institute

• (From The Resourceful Earth, 1984)
• Fish catches are resuming their long upward
  trend.
• There is no sign of climate change.
• There is no evidence of species loss.

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Limits to Growth (1972)

• A range of computer models, extrapolating
  existing trends, showed global catastrophe
  approaching within the next few decades
• (similar results were obtained by the
  Ehrlichs.)

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The Popular Prophets Alvin Toffler
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The Popular Prophets Alvin Toffler

• As we hurtle towards super-industrialism, a new
  ethos emerges in which other goals supplant
  those of economic welfare
• One of the healthiest phenomena has been the
  sudden proliferation of organisations dedicated
  to the study of the future.
• To improve education there should be a
  council of the future in every school and
  community.
• There should be whole new curricula, designed
  by futurists
• (Future Shock, 1970)

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Naisbitt -- Megatrends
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Naisbitt -- Megatrends
Trend 2 the Human Potential movement will
grow in pace with increased use of
computers
Trend 4 Companies will move from short-term
planning to long-term planning
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Criticisms of the Professional Prophets

• You cant extrapolate a chaotic process
• The sum of a chaotic process and a linear process
  is a chaotic process
• The closed world problem

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Criticism of the Professional Prophets

• 4. Evident self-interest
• Repeated emphasis on the growing importance of
  futurology
• Who funds the Hudson Institute?

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The Amateur Prophets

• Science fiction and movies of this and the
  previous century
• 1. In the future, everyone will dress alike.
• (Metropolis, Star Trek,
• We by Zamiatin
• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley)

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The Amateur Prophets

• 2. Humanity will evolve into two sub-species
• an effete class of owners, and a degraded
• class of workers.
• (Metropolis, Brave New World,
• The Time Machine)

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The Amateur Prophets

• 3. Application of the most recent technology will
• lead to a change in the moral character of
  mankind.
• That airplanes, by linking the Earth, will
  bring
• about lasting peace between these close-knit
• nations.
• British aviators Graham-White and Harry Harper,
• 1914

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The Amateur Prophets

• 3. Application of the most recent technology will
• lead to a change in the moral character of
  mankind.
• That the Web, by linking the Earth, will
  bring
• about lasting peace between these close-knit
• nations.
• British aviators Graham-White and Harry Harper,
• 1914

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The Amateur Prophets

• 3. Application of the most recent technology will
  lead to a change in the moral character of
  mankind.
• Example The Airplane, in Things to Come and
• Kiplings Easy as ABC.
• See also
• Through technological improvements, the human
  condition will improve, till it becomes as
  disgusting to kill a man as we today consider it
  disgusting to eat one.
• (Andrew Carnegie, 1900)

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The Amateur Prophets

• 3a. That the most recent technology will produce
  a revolutionary improvement in education.
• Motion pictures will revolutionise our
  educational
• system, and in a few years will supplant largely
  if not
• entirely, the use of textbooks
• Thomas Edison, 1922

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The Amateur Prophets

• 3a. That the most recent technology will produce
  a revolutionary improvement in education.
• Computers will revolutionise our educational
• system, and in a few years will supplant largely
  if not
• entirely, the use of textbooks
• Thomas Edison, 1922

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Where is Technology Going?

• 1. Science leads technology scientific advance
  makes new things possible, and these are the
  things that technology creates.
• 2. The needs of humanity direct technology
  engineers work on products and problems for which
  demand exists. (This demand can be expressed
  either through the marketplace or by the elected
  representatives of the people.)

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Where is Technology Going?

• 3. Managers direct technology those who run
  enterprises choose which technologies to develop,
  then create a demand for their products.
• (Example the conviction of GM, Standard Oil and
  Firestone, March 1949, for having criminally
  conspired to destroy the electric trolley system
  in Los Angeles and replace it by gasoline or
  diesel-powered buses.)

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Where is Technology Going?

• 4. Military goals lead technology, which in turn
  leads to new military goals.
• Example any arms race.

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Conclusions

1. We cant know the future if we dont know the
   past.
2. Knowing the past will not allow us to know the
   future.
3. but a knowledge of the past will help show us
   the range of possibilities