Isaac Asimov Predicts in 1964 What the World Will Look Like in 2014

Picture by Rochester Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, through Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

When New York Metropolis host­ed The World’s Honest in 1964, Isaac Asi­mov, the professional­lif­ic sci-fi creator and professional­fes­sor of bio­chem­istry at Boston Uni­ver­si­ty, took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to gained­der what the world would seem like 50 years therefore — assum­ing the world sur­vived the nuclear threats of the Chilly Struggle. Writ­ing in The New York Occasions, Asi­mov imag­ined a world that you simply would possibly half­ly rec­og­nize at present, a world the place:

• “Gad­getry will con­tin­ue to alleviate mankind of tedious jobs. Kitchen items can be devised that may pre­pare ‘automeals,’ warmth­ing water and con­vert­ing it to cof­price; toast­ing bread; fry­ing, poach­ing or scram­bling eggs, grilling bacon, and so forth. Break­fasts can be ‘ordered’ the evening earlier than to be prepared by a spec­i­fied hour the subsequent morn­ing.”
• “Com­mu­ni­ca­tions will turn out to be sight-sound and you will notice in addition to hear the per­son you tele­telephone. The display can be utilized not solely to see the peo­ple you name but in addition for research­ing doc­u­ments and pho­tographs and browse­ing pas­sages from books. Syn­chro­nous satel­lites, hov­er­ing in house will make it pos­si­ble so that you can direct-dial any spot on earth, includ­ing the weath­er sta­tions in Antarc­ti­ca.”

• “[M]en will con­tin­ue to with­draw from nature as a way to cre­ate an envi­ron­ment that may swimsuit them wager­ter. By 2014, elec­tro­lu­mi­nes­cent pan­els can be in com­mon use. Ceil­ings and partitions will glow comfortable­ly, and in a vari­ety of col­ors that may change on the contact of a push however­ton.”
• “Robots will nei­ther be com­mon nor superb in 2014, however they are going to be in exis­tence.”
• “The appli­ances of 2014 could have no elec­tric cords, after all, for they are going to be pow­ered by long-lived bat­ter­ies run­ning on radioiso­topes.”

• “[H]ighways … within the extra superior sec­tions of the world could have handed their peak in 2014; there can be increas­ing empha­sis on trans­porta­tion that makes the least pos­si­ble con­tact with the sur­face. There can be air­craft, after all, however even floor trav­el will increas­ing­ly take to the air a foot or two off the bottom.”
• “[V]ehicles with ‘Robotic-brains’ … might be set for par­tic­u­lar des­ti­na­tions … that may then professional­ceed there with­out inter­fer­ence by the gradual reflex­es of a human dri­ver.”
• “[W]all screens could have changed the ordi­nary set; however trans­par­ent cubes can be mak­ing their seem­ance through which three-dimen­sion­al view­ing can be pos­si­ble.”
• “[T]he world pop­u­la­tion can be 6,500,000,000 and the pop­u­la­tion of the Unit­ed States can be 350,000,000.” And lat­er he warns that if the pop­u­la­tion progress con­tin­ues unchecked, “All earth can be a sin­gle choked Man­hat­tan by A.D. 2450 and soci­ety will col­lapse lengthy earlier than that!” In consequence, “There’ll, there­fore, be a world­broad professional­pa­gan­da dri­ve in favor of delivery con­trol by ratio­nal and humane meth­ods and, by 2014, it can undoubt­ed­ly have tak­en seri­ous impact.” [See our Walt Dis­ney Fam­i­ly Plan­ning car­toon from ear­li­er this week.]
• “Ordi­nary agri­cul­ture will sustain with nice dif­fi­cul­ty and there can be ‘farms’ flip­ing to the extra effi­cient micro-organ­isms. Processed yeast and algae prod­ucts can be avail­in a position in a vari­ety of fla­vors.”
• “The world of A.D. 2014 could have few rou­tine jobs that may­not be completed wager­ter by some machine than by any human being. Mankind will there­fore have turn out to be massive­ly a race of machine ten­ders. Colleges must be ori­ent­ed on this direc­tion.… All of the high-school stu­dents can be taught the enjoyable­da­males­tals of com­put­er tech­nol­o­gy will turn out to be professional­fi­cient in bina­ry arith­metic and can be skilled to per­fec­tion in the usage of the com­put­er lan­guages that may have devel­oped out of these just like the con­tem­po­rary “For­tran.”
• “[M]ankind will suf­fer unhealthy­ly from the dis­ease of bore­dom, a dis­ease unfold­ing extra broad­ly annually and develop­ing in inten­si­ty. It will have seri­ous males­tal, emo­tion­al and soci­o­log­i­cal con­se­quences, and I dare say that psy­chi­a­strive can be far and away probably the most impor­tant med­ical spe­cial­ty in 2014.”
•  “[T]he most glo­ri­ous sin­gle phrase within the vocab­u­lary could have turn out to be work!” in our “a soci­ety of enforced leisure.”

Isaac Asi­mov was­n’t the one per­son dur­ing the 60s who peered into the longer term in a good­ly pre­scient method. You’ll find a couple of extra on-the-mark pre­dic­tions from con­tem­po­raries beneath:

Sci-Fi Author Arthur C. Clarke Pre­dicts the Future in 1964

Mar­shall McLuhan Pre­dicts That Elec­tron­ic Media Will Dis­place the E-book & Cre­ate Sweep­ing Adjustments in Our Each­day Lives (1960)

Wal­ter Cronkite Imag­ines the Residence of the twenty first Cen­tu­ry … Again in 1967

The Inter­internet Imag­ined in 1969

Notice: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this put up appeared on our web site in 2014.

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