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| Arthur C. Clarke |
It is well known that future forecasts are all the more risky the further in time they go. Readers of my blog know that I love keeping scientific forecasts to use in the future, so as to check them when the corresponding dates arrive. Sometimes I have waited for half a century to perform these checks, which in general prove that the forecasts tend to be unsuccessful, generally due to too much optimism, although sometimes they are correct. In this previous post, I checked some of the predictions made by such distinguished popularizers as Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov.
The three predictions I’m going to check today were made for the year 2020, with less time to go: 25 years in the first, just 10 years or a little above in the other two. Let’s look at them:
- The first prediction appears in the book Science in the third millennium (my
translation of the Spanish book title) by Manuel Calvo Hernando, creator
of the Spanish Association of Scientific Journalism, which has now changed
its name to the Spanish Association for Scientific Communication (AECC).
The book was published in 1995, and contains quite short-term and a few longer-term
predictions that reach up to 2020, so we are in a position to check them
all. Let’s look at some of them:
·
By 2002 we
should have managed, through genetic manipulation, to obtain edible
plants resistant to all possible pathogens.
·
Before
2006 the
AIDS vaccine should have been achieved. Surgeons and nurses should have
been replaced
by robots. All kinds of artificial organs should be
available, which could be implanted through transplants. Human eating traditions
would have changed completely, based on an efficient use of biomass.
·
Before
2013 Alzheimer's
disease would have been understood, if not defeated. An effective
treatment against arteriosclerosis should be available. The
ozone hole would have been artificially repaired. And we should have
the means to effectively prevent all kinds of natural disasters.
·
By 2020 we
should have superconductors at room temperature. We’d have got a
cure for all types of cancer. The problem of aging and all brain processes
should be fully understood. Many inheritable diseases could be corrected by gene
therapy. Finally, it would be possible to cryo-conserve the human body
indefinitely and bring it back to life at will.
It is clear that Calvo Hernando was overly optimistic in predicting the scientific advances of the next 25 years, for very few have come to happen. Surprisingly, he ends his predictions with this paragraph:
...most of the great questions that man and human societies ask or have ever asked remain valid. Where are we? Who has made the laws of nature? Is there anything beyond death? Is someone watching the universe from outside? And ultimately, who are we? Where are we going? What is the universe?
- The second set of predictions for 2020 was
made by Ray Kurzweil at
the end of 2009. In that interview, published in the NY Daily News,
Kurzweil made the following predictions over a period of just 10 years: End
of obesity; computerized devices built into the body;
ever
smaller mobile phones without a screen, communicating with our
brain through glasses that will make the image to be seen on the screen
appear in the air. The latter prediction was deduced by assuming that the
trend prior to 2009 would continue just the same: you
may have noticed that mobile phones are always getting smaller.
But this has not been the case: mobile phones are now getting bigger. The
one I bought in 2014 had a 3.3” screen; a phone sold in 2018 had a 5.8”
screen. The phone I’ve just bought in 2020 has 6.2”. Right now it’s
difficult to find phones with small screens. If you rely on current trends
to predict the future, you must take into account that trends can be reversed.
- The third list of predictions was published by the major Spanish newspaper ABC on October 21, 2010 under the headline The incredible technologies that will change the world in twenty years. They are attributed to Dr. Michio Kaku, who predicted that his forecasts should be fulfilled between 2020 and 2030 (in just 10 to 20 years). Some of these forecasts appear in the subtitle of the article: Contact lenses that describe what we see, transparent televisions, or a toilet that recommends a diet, will be available. And he adds that hardware computers will no longer be used: You’ll just write anywhere and the file will be uploaded to the cloud. And then, as if it knew who it belongs to, it will follow its owner "anywhere and at any time"... Your toothbrush will make an appointment at the dentist if it detects a cavity; your clothes will take your body temperature, and if you have a functional failure, will notify the emergency room if needed. We are already on schedule and I can see no signs that these developments, some of which seem to me undesirable, will take place in the next 10 years.
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