

Arthur C. Clarke Predicts the Future in 1964 … And Kind of Nails It - ColinWright
http://www.openculture.com/2011/09/arthur_c_clarke_looks_into_the_future_1964.html

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arethuza
I really wish there was more information available on the meeting that Arthur
C. Clarke, C.S. Lewis, Tolkien and some rocket boffin had in an Oxford pub to
discuss the morality of interplanetary colonization - Lewis and Tolkien
opposing, Clarke and Val Cleaver in favour.

Clarke wrote of the meeting:

 _Needless to say, neither side converted the other, and we refused to abandon
our diabolical schemes of interplanetary conquest. But a fine time was had by
all, and when, some hours later, we emerged a little unsteadily from the
Eastgate, Dr. Lewis’s parting words were "I’m sure you are very wicked people
but how dull it would be if everyone was good."_

[http://www.cthreepo.com/blog/2009/04/arthur-c-clarke-vs-
c-s-...](http://www.cthreepo.com/blog/2009/04/arthur-c-clarke-vs-c-s-lewis-
and-j-r-r-tolkien.shtml)

[Edit: Link to some details on Val Cleaver: [http://www.bis-space.com/what-we-
do/the-british-interplaneta...](http://www.bis-space.com/what-we-do/the-
british-interplanetary-society/history/bis-presidents/arthur-valentine-val-
cleaver-obe)]

~~~
absconditus
This is not entirely related, but Lewis and Tolkien belonged to an interesting
group of authors who often held discussions at pubs near Oxford.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inklings>

~~~
swombat
And, completely unrelated, having studied in Oxford for 4 years, and having
been in that (and many other) pub in Oxford, I can categorically state that
discussions of themse varying from the philosophical and scientific to the
mundane are regularly held throughout all the pubs of Oxford.

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RyanMcGreal
One of the things Clarke got wrong was his contention, expressed in at least a
few of his books, that instant global telecommunications would eliminate the
need for people to live in close proximity in cities. Despite the
proliferation of low-density sprawl around many North American (and some
European) cities, density is still a principal driver of innovation and big
cities are, if anything, even bigger and denser than they were when Clarke
made this prediction.

 _Edit to add_ \- One more thing: in case anyone here doesn't already know,
Clarke invented the concept of geostationary communications satellites in a
1945 article he wrote for _Wireless World_.
<http://lakdiva.org/clarke/1945ww/>

~~~
jerf
Wait for robotic cars, and the subsequent explosion of time-shared rent-a-cars
(imagine if ZipCars could be really truly computer-scheduled), robotic public
transport and mixed transport (freely intermixing various transport types),
even cheaper robotic delivery services, and the still-improving telepresence
software and cheaper hardware. We're still at the beginning of that moreso
than the end. Driving to the city half-an-hour away is annoying when it carves
half-an-hour out of your day, but if you just click to order a car, get in and
continue doing whatever it is you were doing before, and just arrive half-an-
hour later it'll feel much less like it was An Event to go to the city. Or
going from the city to something half-an-hour away.

~~~
stretchwithme
Robotic cars will make it even easier to live in cities. Cabs will actually go
robotic and be the preferred use of cars because they will actually get much
cheaper than owning one.

In fact cabs are already cheaper than owning a car where parking space is very
expensive, but robotic cabs will reach a whole new level of cheapness.

Cars and engines are going to get a lot smaller when you don't need to
accommodate a driver or the need to speed. Think rickshaw size with a top
speed of 35 mph.

Mopeds get 120 mpg. That's like 4 cents a mile. Door to door for a dollar a
trip will be a reality and make mass transit AND the traditional automobile
industry increasingly irrelevant.

~~~
wanorris
Some interesting points, but I think robotic cars will/would be a bigger
enabler for exurbs than for actual city dwelling. Get yourself some acreage at
the edge of some teeming metropolis, have 60-90 minutes of uninterrupted time
each way in your little cocoon to do as you please, have face time in the
office once you get there.

Use the commute time to telecommute and shorten (or extend!) your in-office
work day, or spend it pursuing solitary leisure activities and work a normal-
length day at the office.

This would be awesome.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
You still have to power the thing. Declining oil production and the
limitations of battery power are going to be a severe limiting factor that
will influence the way we roll out self-driving automobiles.

~~~
jerf
Fleets of self-driving vehicles nearly eliminate the problems with battery
power; they can easily schedule when they need to return to the station to
swap out their battery packs for fresh ones.

I still think technology is winning the resource depletion race, even if we
ignore the fact that it's really starting to look like oil production isn't
actually near the end of its road yet. And if we don't ignore that, the
likelihood that gas (or more broadly "energy") will just be "too expensive"
for people to want to jaunt about anytime in the next 20 years seems to be
decreasing rather than increasing. A great deal of our current apparent
shortages of various things are 100% self-imposed.

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stcredzero
E. M. Forester (1 January 1879 – 7 June 1970) predicted the Internet. Right
down to blogs, and the crappy compressed quality of many voice comms and video
chat.

<http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html>

~~~
ojbyrne
s/Forester/Forster/ please.

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SoftwareMaven
Regarding ability to predict the future: There is a huge amount of survivor
bias involved. Given how many people predicted incorrectly (just look at 1950s
Pop Sci covers), somebody was bound to be somewhat correct. We only know _his_
prediction because it came true; how many other predictions of his haven't?

Clarke was an amazing writer, and there is no question he had an eye for
possible futures. I wish I could write half as well.

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diego_moita
I found interesting that most predictions of the future always focus in the
technological high-end.

For the very big majority of people in 1964 the really big change was moving
from rural environments to the slums of Mexico City, Kinshasa, Mumbai or other
3rd world big town.

~~~
ippisl
That prediction by clarke means that today million of relatively poor indians
work for companies in the U.S. and make better living.

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absconditus
Another terribly interesting sci-fi author was Jules Verne. He made many
predictions about the future in several of his works.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_the_Earth_to_the_Moon>

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_in_the_Twentieth_Century#...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_in_the_Twentieth_Century#Predictions)

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estel
There's a fuller version here:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KT_8-pjuctM&feature=relat...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KT_8-pjuctM&feature=related)

The next prediction gets a bit more far-fetched, by suggesting bio-engineering
chimpanzees as some form of slave labour.

~~~
mbyrne
In 1964 he predicted the concept of ape slave labor which was the basis of the
plot of the novel "La planète des singes" (Planet of the Apes) by Pierre
Boulle printed in 1963.

~~~
zizee
No time to research this myself, but are those dates around the wrong way?

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IdeaHamster
Clarke was right, about the technology. He was, unfortunately but rather
predictably, so very wrong about people's willingness to adopt the technology.
Currently, I'm looking to move from one very large city to another, even
larger, city and all I want is a job that is willing to let me work remote
from my new home. Unfortunately, because the new city is not one of the
"blessed" cities where people expect software developers to work, I'm having
an extraordinarily difficult time finding a good opportunity.

Even when there is no financial reason, no technological reason, people are
still, inherently, unfortunately wary about people working from "just
anywhere"...

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drtse4
He just didn't factor in some human tendencies that limit the adoption of the
remote work model. To get around those another 50 years could not be enough.

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bgruber
If you're actually interested in what Arthur C. Clarke thought about the
future, may i suggest his book "Profiles of The Future", from whence we get
Clarke's 3 laws, including the well-worn "any technology, sufficiently
advanced, is indistinguishable from magic."

Not only does it contain lots of predictions like the ones in this video, but
also fascinating analysis about the whole future-predicting business,
including gems like this:

"Anything that is theoretically possible will be achieved in practice, no
matter what the technical difficulties, if it is desired greatly enough."

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qq66
It's not that hard to make predictions like this and have them be eventually
confirmed true. In fact, the weakest predictions often seem the most prescient
since they are achieved the farthest into the future.

I'll just go on the record here with flying cars, 300 year lifespans, portable
holograms, human-embedded electronics that give superhuman sensory abilities,
etc...

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spuz
The site appears to be down. Here's a slightly more in-depth article from
Singularity Hub from this time last year:
[http://singularityhub.com/2010/09/01/retro-futurism-
arthur-c...](http://singularityhub.com/2010/09/01/retro-futurism-arthur-c-
clarkes-predictions-from-1964-video/)

~~~
danparsonson
It's working here, but in any case, the crux of the article is this video:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOaZspeSBZU&feature=playe...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOaZspeSBZU&feature=player_embedded)

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WalterBright
In Imperial Earth, Clarke's minisec pretty much describes the ipad.

~~~
jimbokun
Was that also the inspiration for the flat screen used to watch the BBC in
2001?

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ojbyrne
The references to Clarke and Friedman in the same blog post makes me cringe.
One is a writer, the other one isn't, by any critical metric.

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bluena
So what are your predictions for 2050?

~~~
sixtofour
1\. I'll be dead.

2\. Government and corporate surveillance of the individual will be so common
place that it will seem weird that people in the past went through most of
their lives unobserved.

3\. Corruption in American government will be beyond rampant, and no one will
even bother to complain about it anymore. It will be almost like Indian
society where individuals have to pay bribes for any government contact,
except the bribery will still only be available to corporations and
individuals rich enough to operate as corporations.

4\. Access to health care/health insurance (they amount to the same thing
here) will be worse than it is now, and we will still crow that ours is the
best healthcare system in the world.

5\. The reported unemployment numbers will be at or above 20%.

6\. Public schools will have deteriorated so badly that only the poorest of
families will educate their kids there. That group will however be more than
50% of kids.

7\. The car culture will have disappeared. Most of us will use public
transportation, which will cost about what it costs now to operate a car.

8\. 2050 will be the Year of the Linux Desktop.

------
layzphil
I guess it's a good thing he's been wrong about the equalisation of the sexes
- both men _and_ women may not commute today.

~~~
sp332
"Man"/"men" is the neuter (unsexed) pronoun for people in English. "He" is
neuter for all animate objects (animals and people), and "she" is neuter for
inanimate objects.

~~~
cpeterso
> _"she" is neuter for inanimate objects._

I had never considered that English has genders for objects. Airplanes, ships,
and cars can be feminine objects (by convention of calling them "she"), but I
can't think of other (common) examples inanimate objects referred to by "she".
My telephone is an "it", not a "she". Perhaps "she" only applies to
anthropomorphic inanimate objects?

~~~
sp332
Nope, it works for anything. You don't have to anthropomorphize a boat to call
it "she". Countries are also referred to as women in general. But these are
all just defaults. You can use masculine pronouns for any object, boat, or
country, if you want to emphasize some masculine traits.

