<story><title>Isaac Asimov Predicts in 1964 What the World Will Look Like in 2014</title><url>http://www.openculture.com/2014/01/isaac-asimov-predicts-what-the-world-will-look-in-2014.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>sillysaurus2</author><text>Note that this article is a lightweight edit of Asimov&amp;#x27;s original piece:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/23/lifetimes/asi-v-fair.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nytimes.com&amp;#x2F;books&amp;#x2F;97&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;23&amp;#x2F;lifetimes&amp;#x2F;asi-v-fair.h...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;In particular, the article is edited to only show you reasonable predictions, rather than all his predictions.  I thought his mistakes were just as interesting, because they give us a window into what life was like in 1964.  Asimov predicted that moon colonies would be common by now, for example.  The overoptimism may have been due to the rate of technological growth leading up to 1964.  On the other hand, perhaps it was due to the times.  People were abuzz with the possibilities of the future partly because Kennedy had recently (1961) set a national goal of &amp;quot;landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth by the end of the 1960s.&amp;quot;  So it&amp;#x27;s pretty interesting to try to see the world through the eyes of someone 50 years ago and try to diff societal trends to the modern day.&lt;p&gt;(It&amp;#x27;s also fun to imagine someone 50 years from now looking back on us.  I wonder which of our societal trends will survive 50 years?  It&amp;#x27;s an interesting game to try to figure out which of our current beliefs are crazy even though no one presently thinks so.)&lt;p&gt;There are many interesting aspects of Asimov&amp;#x27;s piece, so it&amp;#x27;s well worth the read.  For example, does this point about future societies sound familiar?&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;The situation will have been made the more serious by the advances of automation. 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.&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;He&amp;#x27;s mistaken about 2014, but only time will tell whether this is temporary.&lt;p&gt;I was also surprised that there were fewer than half as many people in 1964 than 2014.  Asimov mentioned that the population is predicted to double every 40 years.  I wonder it that&amp;#x27;s still the case, or if growth has slowed?</text></comment>
<story><title>Isaac Asimov Predicts in 1964 What the World Will Look Like in 2014</title><url>http://www.openculture.com/2014/01/isaac-asimov-predicts-what-the-world-will-look-in-2014.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>unfunco</author><text>The one that stands out for me:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    [M]ankind will suffer badly from the disease of boredom,
    a disease spreading more widely each year and growing in
    intensity. This will have serious mental, emotional and
    sociological consequences, and I dare say that psychiatry
    will be far and away the most important medical specialty
    in 2014.
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
Whilst psychiatry isn&amp;#x27;t yet the most important specialty in medicine, we are beginning to fall into boredom all too easily, most people can&amp;#x27;t go a few minutes without looking at their smartphones, most can&amp;#x27;t live in the moment – yesterday I watched the New Years Eve fireworks on the Thames in London, and the ground was lit up brighter with the screens of phones than the sky was with fireworks.</text></comment>