Myths, pseudo-scientific literature, horoscopes - they all rely on sources far from science. Therefore, such investigations are most often called pseudo- or pseudoscience. Even science fiction, which tries to create at least the appearance of science, often relies on time-tested concepts like psychic energy and time travel.
Consider Gary Seldon, the oracle and key hero of Azim's Foundation series. Seldon studies the dark ages of the galaxy using "psychohistory" - a mathematical sociology that can predict human behavior on a large scale.
Futurology also tries to recognize and assess the potential of future events. Like Seldon's psychohistory, it includes science, but is vulnerable to random events. Unlike psychohistory, futurology relies more on art and instincts than science.
We often write about what will happen in the future, or how people of the past imagined the future. Predictions are subtle because we don't have crystal magic balls and time machines. All the conclusions we can draw will be based on past trends and present events.
We are humans, and our forecasts are a product of our time. The wild optimism of the Golden Age inspired more predictions than the paranoia and cynicism of the Cold War.
Even when we broadly describe future technologies, we often ignore public opinion. For example, some forecasters foresaw that cars would open up new freedom of movement, but few spoke of dormitory communities, suburban housing estates, and boring suburbs. No one foresaw the urban sprawl of the American Southwest, the crimes of John Dillinger or Bonnie and Clyde, or the prosperity of sex minorities.
Future technologies are hidden in modern day-to-day life, like the mobile phone was hidden in the telegraph, evolving from drums and smoke flares. The fact that human nature collides with the laws of physics significantly confuses futurists. Scientists discover what is possible, inventors make dreams come true, engineers build, and marketers invite us to buy more and more. With all this, human nature, for all its flexible complexity, remains the last word that decides what remains and what goes to the dustbin of history.
Thus, the best predictions will be based on technological, economic and political factors, and also be made systematically. Futurologists are doing it with a bang.
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History of futurology
The first hints of the emergence of futurology appeared at the dawn of science fiction and utopian literature. It was strengthened, however, only at the end of World War II, when the troops of different countries had to deal with military forecasting. Combat technology is changing faster than ever before, requiring new strategies, but which ones are better? Then it was terra incognita, uncharted territory, and any approach required the attraction of huge investments, both financial and temporary. There was no room for error.
Technological forecasting reached its first breakthroughs in 1945, when aeronautical engineer Theodor von Karman led a team of scientists who predicted the emergence of supersonic aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles, self-guided missiles and new airborne communication systems. The team also predicted that long-range nuclear weapons would forever change the rules of air warfare.
Futurology has its roots in the RAND Corporation, which grew out of a joint venture between the US Air Force and Douglas Aircraft in 1946. Among other advances, RAND has achieved incredible success in developing the Delphi method and system for analyzing and generating best scenarios. Advances in computers and game theory have propelled these two approaches to unprecedented heights.
During the Cold War, nuclear strategists like Herman Kahn of RAND became something of a celebrity. In 1961, following the publication of his seminal book, On Thermonuclear War, Kahn left RAND to form the Hudson Institute, where he became involved in social forecasting and public policy. His work culminated in 1967 with The Year 2000: A Framework for Discussions for the Next 33 Years, which generated much controversy and inspired influential and controversial futuristic works such as The Limits to Growth and Humanity at the Turning Point.
The Limits to Growth, published in 1972 by environmental scientist Donella H. Meadows and her colleagues at MIT, launched scripting and futurology into the masses. Based on computer models describing the interaction of global socio-economic trends, the book is adorned with apocalyptic pictures of global collapse associated with population growth, industrial development, increased pollution, food shortages and depletion of natural resources.
In the meantime, two of Kahn's RAND colleagues, Olaf Helmer and TJ Gordon, founded the Institute for the Future. Fueled by resentment over Kahn's books, they, along with members of Stanford Research Institute and Caltech, pioneered the use of scripts to predict future events.
Gradually businesses, starting with Royal Dutch Shell, saw the value of scenarios. Futurology gradually moved from military tanks to the market for ideas.
Predicting future trends
Futurists predict the future using the same predefined and systematic methods we use on a daily basis:
presentation of the situation (games, scenario building);
collection of opinions (polls);
future trends (scanning, trend analysis and observation);
image of the desired future (visionary).
Of course, they take a broader view of things and use more sophisticated tools, like computer models of economics, but the principles are mostly the same.
Some futurists advance in academia, others use their “futurology” in business or politics, and still others are simply interested in this hobby.
Forecasts tend to collapse due to several key reasons. Most often, the context escapes from futurists, since they most often relate their predictions to the experience of the present and recent past, and may not take into account changes in social relations, economic forces or political realities that still have to occur. There are also inventions that cannot be predicted: they break the chain of cause and effect and break off the predictions of futurologists.
Take even the aforementioned "Limits to Growth", the authors of which significantly overestimated the depletion of oil, natural gas, silver, uranium, aluminum, copper, lead and zinc. The book continues the glorious tradition of scenarios of death and darkness of Thomas Malthus. In 1798, he predicted that exponential population growth would bypass more gradual growth in food production. Likewise, British economist William Stanley Jevons made his mark with The Coal Question (1865), predicting that Britain would run out of coal in a few short years. The US Department of the Interior in 1939 - and again in 1951 - announced that America had only 13 years of oil.
And while this is misleading - changes in proven reserves, economic forces, or technology are often underestimated or ignored - many of these ideas and underlying arguments are still cited by experts, ecologists, and high school teachers.
But Moore's Law, which predicted that the number of transistors on integrated circuits would double every two years, has only strengthened over time, in part because it involves technological innovation - and because Moore himself has revised his timing.
The society of the 70-80s saw the flowering of famous books by futurologists: The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (1973) by D. Bell, The Destiny of the Earth (1982) by J. Schell and Green Machines (1986) by N. Calder. Some include "Future Shock" by E. Toffler in this group, but it applies only to sociology.
Many technology forecasters today have a fiduciary stake in their predictions. One of them, Paul Saffo of Silicon Valley investment research firm Discern, bases his prediction on four points: contradiction, inversion, oddity, and coincidence. Others use different strategies.
Futurology in literature
While some practitioners acknowledge that future research rely more on art than science, many do not believe that science fiction writers are prophets of technology. They argue that fiction, be it historical or futuristic, is just a commentary by the author about his life and his time.
Maybe yes, maybe no. If science fiction writers lack a solid understanding of the metrics that futurists use, they are not limited to the need to accurately measure data or to scientifically justify an expected event. In the end, the famous futurist Herman Kahn, in his book Things to Come (1972), misunderstood that an energy crisis was just around the corner.
Besides, who predicts the future without thinking about the time in which they are now living? Definitely not futurists.
Science fiction writers probably believe that the future will do harm rather than benefit (as Ray Kurzweil also speaks about), but unlike futurists, I think more freely, and more importantly, they pay attention to such an important factor as human desire. They can promise a future that is hard to believe, and they have every right to. They can consider ideas as complex as they like and not seek excuses. As Ray Bradbury said, "I'm not trying to describe the future, I'm trying to prevent it."
In any case, some science fiction writers are credited with the gift of prophecy. A common anecdote says that history remains history until it comes true - then it becomes a prophecy.
To doubt the influence of such authors means to ignore the prediction by Arthur Clarke of telecommunication satellites or the influence of Jules Verne, or rather his "shot to the moon", described in the middle of the 19th century. This means ignoring H. G. Wells' predicted tanks (1903), aerial bombardment (1908), or the atomic bomb (1908). It also means forgetting the Czech author Karel Čapek and his prediction of something like the atomic bomb or the name “robot”, created back in 1921.
Edwin Ballmer invented a lie detector based on "involuntary reactions in blood and iron" and described it in a 1910 detective story. Hugo Gernsbeck, the great science fiction advocate (does the Hugo Prize tell you anything?), Foresaw many advances in his 1911 book Ralph 124C 41+, including televisions, fluorescent lighting, plastics, tape recorders, stainless steel, synthetic cloth, jukeboxes, foil and speakers.
Were these writers visionaries who saw the inevitable? Or did they only inspire future generations to create all these things? If so, maybe their inspiration is more powerful than the predictions of the futurists?
“The best way to predict the future is to create it,” said American computer scientist Alan Kay on November 1, 1982.
Maybe he's right. Why predict something that will necessarily pass from cause to effect, if you can just do it, inspired by fantasies?