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| Arthur C. Clarke |
In a previous post I pointed out that short-term predictions are dangerous, because the expected date does not take long to arrive, and the "prophet" runs the risk that someone (like me) takes a note of the predictions and checks if they really took place.
In this post I am going to apply the same principle to long-term forecasts, where the effect is even more dramatic. Of course, it is more difficult that those predictions are remembered, but there is always someone (like me) who keeps press clippings from 1963 and can check if they were fulfilled.
In the early 1960s, Arthur C. Clarke
became famous for a fulfilled prediction. In 1945, in a letter to the editor of
World magazine titled Peacetime uses for V2,
he had predicted global communications via three geostationary satellites,
which were then beginning to be put into practice. That encouraged him to make
more predictions of the scientific future. Going far beyond the limits of what
is reasonable, Clarke predicted, decade by decade, the entire development of
science until the year 2100. We are now in 2022, so we can check if some of
these predictions were fulfilled. Let's take a look at them:
- Predictions for 1970:
- Space
Lab. The International Space Station was officially
launched in the year 2000. During the 1970s there were some precedents,
such as Skylab and Salyut, so this prediction can be considered
relatively confirmed.
- Landing
on the moon. This prediction was fulfilled a
year in advance, although that was predictable, taking into account that
the United States had launched the Apollo project in 1960.
- Automatic
translation. This prediction is starting to
come true 50 years late, and in fact it will be quite a while before
machine translations can be used without manual corrections. I talked
about this in another
post.
- Very
efficient batteries. As in the previous case, this prediction
is beginning to be fulfilled now.
- Understanding
the language of cetaceans. Half a
century after the planned date we are as far from achieving this as we
were then.
- Predictions
for 1980:
- Landing
on Mars. Of course, this means a manned
landing. 40 years later we are still talking about it, but we are not
very close to do it.
- Individual
radio. This prediction can be considered fulfilled by
the mobile phone, although it was put in global use 20 years late.
- Nuclear
fusion. Since 1980, we have been told once and again
that we are about to have it, but so far the predictions have not come
true. It's a textbook case of what I call the
horizon effect.
- Humanoid
robots. We are beginning to have them, 40 years late,
but they aren’t too smart.
- Unification
of gravity with the nuclear and electromagnetic interactions. We
are not much closer to achieving it than we were in 1980.
- Predictions for 2000.
- Colonization
of Mars. If we haven’t been able to land on
Mars, it will be difficult for us to colonize the planet.
- Artificial
intelligence. Obviously he meant strong
AI, which is as far from being achieved as it was in 2000. Perhaps it
is impossible.
- Subatomic
structure. Here Clarke fell short, for the
quark theory became standard during the 1970s, a quarter of a century
earlier than he anticipated.
- Predictions for 2010.
- Journey
to the center of the Earth. Clarke
obviously got carried away here by his role as a science fiction writer
and went back to the time of Jules Verne.
- Control
of the weather. We haven't even managed to predict
the weather well far beyond a few days.
- Predictions for 2020.
o Automatic
capsules to the stars. Not for the time being. The Voyager
capsules don't count, because they aren't headed for any stars.
o Intelligent
robots.
It is evidently a combination of strong AI and humanoid robots. What was said
about artificial intelligence can be applied here.
Finally, let's look at some of Clarke's
predictions that we still can't check:
- For
2030: Contact with alien intelligences; mines in asteroids;
biological engineering. The first two are now much farther away, assuming
they are feasible; in his last prediction Clarke fell short: bioengineering
started in the 1980s, half a century earlier than Clarke thought.
- For
2040: Long-time human hibernation.
- For
2050: Downloading human memory to a computer.
- For
2060: Terraformation of Mars and other planets.
- For
2070: Vehicles travelling almost at the speed of
light.
- For
2080: Interstellar travel; machines more intelligent than
man.
- For
2100: Encounters with alien intelligences; manipulation
of stars; unified world brain.
In general, I would say that Clarke was
overly optimistic in almost all his predictions, even those he got right (such
as the cell phone), except in a couple of cases (bioengineering and quark
theory), which were solved sooner than he thought. But overall we can say that not
many of the things he announced have been fulfilled, and that it’s likely that most
of his pending predictions won’t be fulfilled either.
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