The world famous science fiction writer Isaac Asimov in 1964 in his article "World Fair 2014" suggested what the world will be like in half a century.
And now 50 years have passed since then. Did much of the predictions of the master of fiction come true? Let's take a look at the theses of Asimov's article through the eyes of contemporaries.
"… calls all over the world, even to Antarctica …"
“Electronics will save people from tedious work. Special kitchen gadgets will be able to cook food automatically, be it coffee, toast, scrambled eggs or fried bacon. Breakfast will be ordered in the evening and prepared by the specified time in the morning."
It came true exactly. True, the inhabitants of the countries of the former USSR had the benefits of civilization in the form of coffee machines, toasters, microwave ovens and other electronic kitchen utensils a little later than in the West. But now every Russian family, even with an average income, can afford them.
“Communication will be carried out not only by voice, you will also be able to see your interlocutor as if you are next to him. For this, the equipment will begin to be equipped with special screens that can be used not only for communication, but also for educational purposes. At the same time, thanks to communication satellites, calls will be possible all over the world, even to Antarctica."
Also to the point. Today every schoolchild knows what skype, videoconference is. Children, perhaps, will be even more intelligent in this regard than other parents. Not to mention the grandparents.
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And with satellite phones Azimov guessed right
"Robots have not yet reached a sufficiently high level of development, but will already be actively used."
Yes, now almost every TV news release is dedicated to fresh events from the world of robotics. Robots have penetrated almost all areas of science and technology. As for "a sufficiently high level of development" … Maybe, well, his, such a limit of perfection? And what good, the day will come when the script of the film “Terminator. Rise of the Machines "will become a reality …
“Devices in 2014 will communicate with each other wirelessly. At the same time, they will operate from long-lived batteries based on radioisotopes."
Mobile phones, laptops, walkie-talkies - those who wish can continue the list - such devices that communicate with each other without wires are invented today in abundance. And then there will still be!
There will be cars with a robotic brain …
“Highways in the most developed regions of the world have already reached their peak by 2014. Transportation of people and goods will be carried out mainly by air. These will not only be airplanes, ground transport will also be raised about a meter above the surface."
The peak of development of highways in Russia is still very far away - the inescapable problem of "fools and roads" has not lost its relevance for decades. But in developed countries, road construction is actually very well developed. And autobahns, especially in megacities, are often erected at such a height that a pedestrian's hat will fall if he decides to watch the flow of cars.
"There will be cars with robotic brains and will be able to travel along any route without human intervention."
Well, that at all without human participation - this is not yet available. Perhaps there are prototypes somewhere, but they are not yet used commercially. But everyone has heard about auto navigators. Many domestic motorists, while driving, even manage to argue with them: they say, what the hell are you, a piece of iron, you tell me where to turn.
Again, any modern car, be it a foreign car or "Lada Kalina", today is equipped with an on-board computer that monitors various indicators of the life of the car. So if Azek Azimov in this case, if he was mistaken, then not much.
"There will be screens in the form of transparent cubes that will be able to transmit a three-dimensional image as close as possible to reality."
With the shape, Asimov missed - in our iPhone-tablet age, technical progress is flat, like a sheet of paper. But about the 3D image - to the very point.
“The number of people on Earth will reach 6.5 billion. At the same time, 350 million will live in the United States. Humanity will have to seriously think about methods of birth control. The world will begin to pay special attention to this issue”.
According to the German Foundation for the Population of the Earth (DSW) as of January 1, 2014, 7.2 billion people live on the planet. That is, even more than Azimov predicted. With the United States, he almost guessed - a little over 320 million now live in America.
In principle, it is also predicted correctly about birth control - everyone knows how things are with this, for example, in China. There, the planned childbearing has recently been enshrined in legislation. Today the population of this country is 1.34 billion people. Over the past year, 6.68 million more people were born in the Celestial Empire than died. And this is all without taking into account Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.
At the same time, in the modern world, the topic of protecting the rights and freedoms of sex minorities, which has become the norm in the West and is now being imposed on us, is being actively discussed in parallel. What is this if not evidence of a persistent desire to debunk the traditional idea of the institution of the family?
Yes, Isaac Yudovich (real name and patronymic of the science fiction writer), this issue is now given special attention in the world.
Humanity will begin to suffer greatly from boredom …
“Since by 2014 humanity will be largely dependent on various machines, education should be oriented in this direction. Thus, secondary schools will definitely teach the binary number system, and university students will certainly learn computer languages like modern Fortran."
Oh yes, Fortran will be followed by C, Prolog … Today there are several thousand different programming languages. And in fact, without knowledge of the computer alphabet today, nowhere, and the programmer is one of the most prestigious professions of our time.
“Humanity will begin to suffer greatly from boredom and various depression. This will have serious mental, emotional and sociological consequences. As a result, psychiatry will become the most important area of medicine."
Apparently, Isaac Asimov in the distant 1960s really knew something like that - otherwise how to explain such an accurate forecast? The modern world really seems to have gone crazy, "stress" today is in the list of the most frequently used words.
Is psychiatry the most important area of medicine? Maybe that's the way it is. But still not with us. If the damned Yankees, for the slightest reason, as one run headlong to their psychoanalyst, then the Russians - unless by the verdict of the court: such kind of consultations (at any age and for any reason) are perceived by our people unambiguously - as a statement of their own mental disability.
… We have cited not all excerpts from the "prophetic" article by A. Azimov. Some of his predictions today look naive, and some passages - frankly funny. But on the whole, the writer turned out to be a visionary - most of the versions expressed by Azimov, in fact, have been brought to life. The science fiction colleagues also often “sinned” with predictions. But Isaac Yudovich Ozimov, perhaps, “made” them all.
Mikhail BURLESHIN