
Isaac Asimov's predictions 50 years on - tagawa
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27069716
======
dalke
This cherry-picked the predictions which seem to have come true, and omits
many of the duds.

It doesn't mention "The appliances of 2014 will have no electric cords, of
course, for they will be powered by long- lived batteries running on
radioisotopes"

Nor does it mention "Jets of compressed air will also lift land vehicles off
the highways, which, among other things, will minimize paving problems".

Nor "2014 will see a good beginning made in the colonization of the
continental shelves."

Or, when it talks about automatic coffee makers, it omits the full context
"... next heating water and converting it to coffee; toasting bread; frying,
poaching or scrambling eggs, grilling bacon, and so on." So in this sense
Asimov correctly predicted the electric drip coffee maker of the 1970s, but
the others are failures.

It's also a stretch to classify ITER as an "experimental fusion-power plant".
ITER is a fusion reactor, yes, but it's not a power plant. ITER sets the
groundwork for such a plant, currently called DEMO, but with only a vague idea
that it might start operations in 2033.

~~~
BugBrother
Sigh, mainstream atomic batteries would be so cool... :-(

But:

>>"experimental fusion-power plant"

Last I read, General Fusion talks about a quite serious prototype for their
steam driven power plant in 2014. They seem to have many of the possible show
stoppers already solved.

Of course, if the GF approach works they are a few years away from a working
system. But before ITER goes online for testing... (The readiness of the other
contenders in alternative fusion -- Polywell, Tri Alpha, etc -- are harder to
evaluate.)

Edit: GF aims to start building a full size prototype in 2014. I'd call that a
win for Asimov :-) [http://nextbigfuture.com/2014/04/general-fusion-will-
start-b...](http://nextbigfuture.com/2014/04/general-fusion-will-start-
building-full.html)

~~~
aetherson
Nobody has come within several orders of magnitude of net-energy-positive (by
which I mean for the whole process, not narrowly "more energy than was
actually absorbed by the fusing particles") fusion so far. The idea that
General Fusion is going to this year is fantasy.

And even your article suggests that they hope to start building a full size
prototype in 2014, but they don't expect to finish until 2017.

~~~
sergiosgc
Britain's JET is not orders of magnitude below net-positive output. I don't
have the exact number here, but I believe they are near the 75% mark. The US
NIF facility reached net-positive for a brief period last year [1]. ITER is
projected to be net-positive at about 10x.

The tech is not here, but it isn't orders of magnitude away either.

[1] [http://m.bbc.com/news/science-
environment-24429621](http://m.bbc.com/news/science-environment-24429621)

~~~
aetherson
Read this article:
[http://www.fusenet.eu/node/585](http://www.fusenet.eu/node/585)

They approximate that the actual energy input into the process at NIF (as
opposed to "absorbed by the particles") was 422 MJ in for 14 kJ out. That's
roughly 4 orders of magnitude.

~~~
sergiosgc
I can easily concede that NIF results are too recent and still under scrutiny.
However, JET's peak output was 65% of input, and these are results solid
enough to justify scaling JET up with the ITER project. 65% is on the same
order of magnitude, not four orders of magnitude away.

Reference:[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_power](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_power)

I know it was for a short period, but 0.5 seconds is enough to prove the
concept, and this was the objective then. They did another experiment at a
quarter of the output for five seconds, and both were limited by the design of
the tokamak not targeting long runs (it's a scientific reactor).

~~~
aetherson
I know this is now a pretty dead thread, but just FYI: you're again looking at
the comparison of power output to "power absorbed by the particles to be
fused," not power output to overall system power input.

All the fusion people are _so_ far from being energy positive to overall
system power input, and so far from even trying to get to that milestone, that
it's a little hard to find articles that talk about the power input to the
whole system. But, to use wikipedia, here's a link:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_European_Torus](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_European_Torus)

Note that they talk about Q. JET claims a Q of approximately 0.7. Q=1 is what
you're talking about -- more energy out of the particles than is absorbed by
the particles. Q=5 is potentially self-sustaining -- because, in this case,
only 20% of the energy out is in a form that can create more fusion reactions.
The article suggests Q=10 as the minimum for overall power output. My guess is
that Q=10 is wildly optimistic for that.

------
ama729
There is something a bit funny when a science-fiction writer like Asimov can
get the future pretty right 50 years ago, when a futurist like Kurzweil can't
predict it for ten:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictions_made_by_Ray_Kurzwe...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictions_made_by_Ray_Kurzweil#Early_2000s)

Though in itself, it probably show more that technology is a lot slower moving
than you would think, after all, as the article point out, some of the future
technologies were already present in some form.

~~~
acqq
Asimov is not a simple "science-fiction writer," he was a real genius with
fantastically broad and clear knowledge. Try to read his non-fiction books,
you'd be surprised how good grasp he has whatever subject he takes.

I firmly believe he was right to say:

"Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of
us who do."

[http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Isaac_Asimov](http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Isaac_Asimov)

~~~
madaxe_again
For a brilliant intro into his non-fiction essays, I can't recommend The Left
Hand of the Electron
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Left_Hand_of_the_Electron](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Left_Hand_of_the_Electron))
enough. Snagged my copy from the peace corps library in Liberia. Ahem.

~~~
acqq
Thanks for the book tip, I've just found the pdf!

For others interested, here's the list with all his works:

[http://www.asimovonline.com/oldsite/asimov_catalogue.html](http://www.asimovonline.com/oldsite/asimov_catalogue.html)

I'm just reading

[http://www.asimovreviews.net/Books/Book225.html](http://www.asimovreviews.net/Books/Book225.html)

It's available in iBooks.

------
petercooper
It's interesting how social and human issues overrule technology in most cases
though. Predicting what technology will be _possible_ seems to be a lot easier
than predicting what people will actually want to use.

With regards to "communications will become sight-sound", this has been
theoretically possible for nearly all communications for a while now, yet
broadly speaking people choose _not_ to be on video despite it being possible.
The same goes for 3D TV, as noted in the article, or the renaissance of proper
cooking as opposed to chucking semi-artificial muck into the microwave for 5
minutes as was considered 'the future' in the late 70s.

~~~
Udo
_> It's interesting how social and human issues overrule technology in most
cases though. _

Exactly, the same is painfully true for our presence in space. He could have
easily been right about the moon base, we just chose to not "do" space.

The big takeaway from this for me is that it's possible for a tech-minded
person to make good predictions about the speed of technological advancement
in general, it just gets thwarted by the uncertainty of society's interest in
these things.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I think this is why sci-fi authors seem to predict future better than
futurists - to write good science fiction you need not only to have
imagination and know the science well, but you also need to grok people and
society, if you want your book to be believable for audience.

------
sambeau
Although Asimov was _actually_ trying to predict the future here, SF writers
generally aren't in the _prediction_ business—they are in the _speculation_
business[1] (many modern SF writers claim the 'S' in SF would be for
'Speculation' rather than 'Science').

I find it unfair when SF writers are held to account for their more fanciful
speculations—they should be free to ask "What if?" without later ridicule.

[1] In reality, they are in the entertainment business and should therefore be
allowed to entertain without later ridicule, too.

~~~
icebraining
Related: Ursula Le Guin's Introduction in _The Left Hand of Darkness_ :
[http://theliterarylink.com/leguinintro.html](http://theliterarylink.com/leguinintro.html)

This said, I think Asimov was actually trying to guess about the future; it's
an essay, not an SF work.

------
acqq
The real article by Asimov (1964)

[http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/23/lifetimes/asi-v-
fair.h...](http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/23/lifetimes/asi-v-fair.html)

already thoroughly commented here

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6287340](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6287340)

good to observe his predictions which didn't come true and that already exist
in the article.

------
hkmurakami
I think it's worth noting that in many ways, the future predicted by these
writers are being realized because the kids who grew up loving these books and
their premises are building the future that they saw in these texts and
dreamed of as a child.

------
ZoFreX
Which modern-day authors do you think are painting a vision of the future that
will be looked back on as accurate?

~~~
danieltillett
Iain Banks with his Culture novels - I love the saying from this series "Money
is a sign of poverty" \- the sooner we reach this state the better.

------
truantbuick
There's a lot of difficulty in evaluating stuff like this, and I feel like we
inevitably trip over biases that go in both directions. On one hand, it's very
easy in hindsight to ridicule what didn't come true or what seems like an
outdated 1960s infatuation. However, it's also easy to pick through his
predictions and pick through the modern day and apparently find a match.

Ultimately, I give some credit that he wasn't completely wrong (which I
suspect is a lot harder than it seems!), but I don't think these predictions
were particularly visionary -- just intelligently made given the information
of his own time, which is all we can really expect.

He reasonably charts the technology of his own time to today. Some of it turns
out alright, some of it not, and some in between.

------
signa11
>To give him his due, flat-screen televisions have replaced traditional sets,
and 3D television technologies, while not in cube form, have long been a
highlight of the electronics trade show circuit.

my guess is that he meant 3d television sans the glasses...

------
S_A_P
So he states that most people would be worse off in 50 years than they were
then. This contradicts what Bill Gates said that people are generally better
off and extreme poverty is lower now than a generation ago. (Paraphrasing)
this article seems to imply that people are worse off and we need equal access
in agreement with Asimov, but doesn't outright say this. While I certainly
agree we should strive for equal access it seems as though progress has been
made in the opposite direction than predicted.

~~~
moron4hire
No, that's not at all what he said. He basically said the same thing Bill
Gates did, that the poor today are better off than the poor yesterday, but he
also said that the gap between the rich and the poor would grow. Which is
indisputable and probably his wildest claim, given that up to that point in US
history, growing upper-class wealth saw a proportional lower- and middle-class
growth as well.

------
shalmanese
I count 22 hits, 17 misses (2 other):

men will continue to withdraw from nature in order to create an environment
that will suit them better - Hit

By 2014, electroluminescent panels will be in common use. Ceilings and walls
will glow softly, and in a variety of colors that will change at the touch of
a push button - Close

Windows need be no more than an archaic touch, and even when present will be
polarized to block out the harsh sunlight. The degree of opacity of the glass
may even be made to alter automatically in accordance with the intensity of
the light falling upon it. - Miss

if its windows are not polarized, they can nevertheless alter the "scenery" by
changes in lighting - Miss

Suburban houses underground, with easily controlled temperature, free from the
vicissitudes of weather, with air cleaned and light controlled, should be
fairly common - Miss

Kitchen units will be devised that will prepare "automeals," heating water and
converting it to coffee; toasting bread; frying, poaching or scrambling eggs,
grilling bacon, and so on. - Hit

reakfasts will be "ordered" the night before to be ready by a specified hour
the next morning. - Miss

Complete lunches and dinners, with the food semiprepared, will be stored in
the freezer until ready for processing. - Hit

I suspect, though, that even in 2014 it will still be advisable to have a
small corner in the kitchen unit where the more individual meals can be
prepared by hand, especially when company is coming. - Hit

Robots will neither be common nor very good in 2014, but they will be in
existence. - Hit

It will be such computers, much miniaturized, that will serve as the "brains"
of robots. - Hit

In fact, the I.B.M. building at the 2014 World's Fair may have, as one of its
prime exhibits, a robot housemaid _large, clumsy, slow- moving but capable of
general picking-up, arranging, cleaning and manipulation of various
appliances. - Honda, not IBM but Hit

The appliances of 2014 will have no electric cords, of course, for they will
be powered by long- lived batteries running on radioisotopes. - Miss

And experimental fusion-power plant or two will already exist in 2014.- Hit

Large solar-power stations will also be in operation in a number of desert and
semi-desert areas - Hit

An exhibit at the 2014 fair will show models of power stations in space,
collecting sunlight by means of huge parabolic focusing devices and radiating
the energy thus collected down to earth. - Miss

There is every likelihood that highways at least in the more advanced sections
of the world_will have passed their peak in 2014; there will be increasing
emphasis on transportation that makes the least possible contact with the
surface. - Miss

There will be aircraft, of course, but even ground travel will increasingly
take to the air _a foot or two off the ground. - Miss

Much effort will be put into the designing of vehicles with "Robot-
brains"_vehicles that can be set for particular destinations and that will
then proceed there without interference by the slow reflexes of a human
driver. - Hit

For short-range travel, moving sidewalks (with benches on either side,
standing room in the center) will be making their appearance in downtown
sections. - Miss

Traffic will continue (on several levels in some places) only because all
parking will be off-street and because at least 80 per cent of truck
deliveries will be to certain fixed centers at the city's rim. - Miss

Compressed air tubes will carry goods and materials over local stretches, and
the switching devices that will place specific shipments in specific
destinations will be one of the city's marvels. - Miss

Communications will become sight-sound and you will see as well as hear the
person you telephone. - Hit

The screen can be used not only to see the people you call but also for
studying documents and photographs and reading passages from books. - Hit

Synchronous satellites, hovering in space will make it possible for you to
direct-dial any spot on earth - Hit

For that matter, you will be able to reach someone at the moon colonies - Miss

As for television, wall screens will have replaced the ordinary set - Hit

but transparent cubes will be making their appearance in which three-
dimensional viewing will be possible. - Miss

In 2014, there is every likelihood that the world population will be
6,500,000,000 and the population of the United States will be 350,000,000 -
Hit

Boston-to-Washington, the most crowded area of its size on the earth, will
have become a single city with a population of over 40,000,000. - Miss

Most surprising and, in some ways, heartening, 2014 will see a good beginning
made in the colonization of the continental shelves. - Miss

Ordinary agriculture will keep up with great difficulty and there will be
"farms" turning to the more efficient micro-organisms - Mixed

Processed yeast and algae products will be available in a variety of flavors.
The 2014 fair will feature an Algae Bar at which "mock-turkey" and
"pseudosteak" will be served. - Hit

It won't be bad at all (if you can dig up those premium prices), but there
will be considerable psychological resistance to such an innovation. - Hit

A larger portion than today will be deprived and although they may be better
off, materially, than today, they will be further behind when compared with
the advanced portions of the world. They will have moved backward, relatively.
- Hit

There are only two general ways of preventing this: (1) raise the death rate;
(2) lower the birth rate. Undoubtedly, the world of A>D. 2014 will have agreed
on the latter method. - Hit

Indeed, the increasing use of mechanical devices to replace failing hearts and
kidneys, and repair stiffening arteries and breaking nerves will have cut the
death rate still further and have lifted the life expectancy in some parts of
the world to age 85. - Hit

There will, therefore, be a worldwide propaganda drive in favor of birth
control by rational and humane methods and, by 2014, it will undoubtedly have
taken serious effect. The rate of increase of population will have
slackened*but, I suspect, not sufficiently. - Hit

One of the more serious exhibits at the 2014 World's Fair, accordingly, will
be a series of lectures, movies and documentary material at the World
Population Control Center (adults only; special showings for teen-agers). -
Miss

The world of A.D. 2014 will have few routine jobs that cannot be done better
by some machine than by any human being. Mankind will therefore have become
largely a race of machine tenders. - Hit

All the high-school students will be taught the fundamentals of computer
technology will become proficient in binary arithmetic and will be trained to
perfection in the use of the computer languages that will have developed out
of those like the contemporary "Fortran" (from "formula translation"). - Miss

Even so, mankind will suffer badly from the disease of boredom, a disease
spreading more widely each year and growing in intensity. - Hit

The lucky few who can be involved in creative work of any sort will be the
true elite of mankind, for they alone will do more than serve a machine. - Hit

Indeed, the most somber speculation I can make about A.D. 2014 is that in a
society of enforced leisure, the most glorious single word in the vocabulary
will have become work! - Miss

~~~
dalke
I admire the work you did to make a point-by-point analysis. I have objections
to a few of your decisions.

You count kitchens that can produce automeals, including making bacon, as a
"hit"? I counted it as a miss. Where is there such a kitchen?

That is, "heating water and converting it to coffee" can't be considered
standalone, since percolators existed when Asimov made the prediction. Auto
drip coffee ("Mr. Coffee") is from the 1970s, so I think that's a hit. But
toasters existed in 1964, so "toasting bread" can't mean just that. What
device can I acquire for "frying, poaching or scrambling eggs"? And for making
bacon?

I don't think the increase of life expectancy in Japan, which is the only one
with an average life expectancy of 85 or above, is due to "mechanical devices
to replace failing hearts and kidneys." That is, he emphasized _mechanical
devices_ , and not the general increase of life expectancy.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aging_of_Japan](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aging_of_Japan)
attributes it instead to "high education, devotion to raising healthy
children, late marriage, increased participation of women in the labor force,
small living spaces, education about the problems of overpopulation, and the
high costs of child care and education."

So I would say that's closer to a miss than a hit.

The reference to the "worldwide propaganda drive in favor of birth control" is
interesting because I think the drive was much bigger in the 1960s/1970s with
the Zero Population Growth movement. The 1980s saw the single child policy in
place in China, and the 1970s saw the discourteously attempts as "rational"
birth control in India. Instead, I think the current trend is towards female
education and equal rights for women, which also ends up decreasing the number
of children. So it's hard to say if this is a "hit" or "miss", since I don't
know what Asimov meant.

You said that "Synchronous satellites, hovering in space will make it possible
for you to direct-dial any spot on earth" is a hit. That's a hard one to
judge, but it's technically incorrect. GOE systems like Inmarsat don't reach
every spot on earth, like the highest 30 or so degrees of latitude, or
valleys. It's LEO systems like Iridium that can provide global satellite
coverage.

I'm curious about how you can quantify "The lucky few who can be involved in
creative work of any sort..." as a hit. How much more is it true than it was
in 1964? It seems to me that the richest people in the world (as a proxy for
'true elite') is not made up primarily by those who are best characterized as
"involved in creative work."

~~~
shalmanese
Obviously any accounting like this is open to debate but, for the most part, I
tried to judge by the spirit of the prediction and was generous if the exact
mechanism was a little bit off.

* automeals: It's less about the specific items that can be cooked and more about the proliferation of single-purpose kitchen devices and the general trend towards easier cooking. Stuff like microwave bacon cookers, slap chops, pasta cooking containers and other infomercialware

* Life expectancy hasn't quite hit 85 but it's close enough to count. And while education and healthy eating has contributed to it, undoubtably as well, so has pacemakers and dialysis machines.

* Birth control: I agree with you but I still think this is directionally right. We have more birth control today than 50 years ago, even if it isn't the main thrust right now.

* Satellites: The mechanism may be wrong but we can, indeed, direct dial any place on earth right now.

* Lucky few: I interpreted this to mean the elimination of "good blue collar jobs" and the bifurcation of society into the educated few with "good" jobs and the underclass working commodity service jobs.

~~~
dalke
The difficulty in judging any prediction is to the extent that it was true at
the time it was made. For example, someone in the 1990s who predicts that
there would be self-driving vehicles by 2015 would be correct, because there
were self-driving vehicles already in the 1980s.

It's very hard for me to judge the 1960s, but that was the era of the TV-
dinners and Swanson frozen food delivery trucks. Certainly my grandmother had
single-purpose kitchen devices, like a pressure cooker, sausage maker, and
gelatin molds that I haven't seen in most modern kitchens, along with a
mechanical knife grinder/can opener and grapefruit spoons, which I only rarely
see these days. Also, my parents received two fondue sets for their wedding -
apparently fondue dinners were the in-thing then. My rough sense is that
there's no increasing trend towards gadgets, but only a change in the details.

Which is why I conclude that Asimov meant something more than a bunch of
kitchen gadgets and a more diverse selection of TV dinners.

FWIW, I do think that the life expectancy in Japan definitely counts. I just
don't think that pacemakers and dialysis machines contribute enough to be
notable.

What's amazing about satellite phones is actually how wrong the prediction
was, despite being 100% correct. While it's completely correct that sat phones
can reach everywhere on earth, the economics behind Iridium failed because it
turns out to be easier to set up cell phone towers and lay down transoceanic
fiber connections. People generally don't want to direct dial "any place on
earth" but rather "any place on the earth where other people live". It's also
possible to provide cell service underground, like subway stations, where
satellites can't reach.

I think your "lucky few" interpretation is valid. Really I'm complaining more
about the vagueness of the prediction. It could equally well have been made
100 years previous.

