In 1968, while Hot Wheels debuted, 2001: A Space Odyssey hit theaters, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was signed, and Night of the Living Dead scared audiences, more than 800 scientists gathered at the Hilton Midtown in Manhattan to predict what the world would look like 50 years later. Their insights were compiled into a book titled "Toward the Year 2018". Now that 2018 is upon us, the internet has been looking back to see how accurate they were.
The 1968 Conference
Imagining a group of scientists and researchers gathered in May 1968 to discuss the future isn't hard. However, the meeting organized by the Foreign Policy Association to celebrate its 50th anniversary faced several challenges. Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated a couple of weeks earlier, activism was at a peak, and everyone was under federal surveillance due to suspicions of "communist sympathies". Despite the difficulties, the experts made their predictions, some of which were recorded and later edited into the book titled "Toward the Year 2018".
Predictions: Hits and Misses
In general, the text didn't leave any stone unturned. Among the most obvious errors: the future of energy would be dominated by breeder reactors (which never happened), the ability to hurl hurricanes as weapons at enemy fleets, and the elimination of lightning by the end of the 1980s. Yet each mistake seems to be accompanied by chilling accuracies. Meteorologist Thomas Malone (the same one who wanted to eliminate lightning) suggested large-scale climate modification caused by rising carbon dioxide levels. In other words, he anticipated climate change and global warming. Another example is geophysicist Gordon F. MacDonald, who dismissed the possibility of manned interplanetary exploration, announced "the end of political usefulness" of the Apollo program, and predicted a much deeper interest in satellite technology to transmit information worldwide, advance television, and study the climate.
Also predicted were massive fiber-optic networks, access through mobile devices, and loss of privacy. Social scientist Ithiel de Sola Pool described the manipulative potential of information stored in computers, and Anthony Oettinger imagined a "giant Memex" (a concept that is now part of the Web's DNA) that governments would struggle to adapt to. Still, the predictions were not free of criticism.
Criticism of the Predictions
Activist Arthur Waskow was scathing: "Those people imagined the future, but in such a way that they remained in charge, shaped by the corporate and capitalist parameters of the 60s and 70s."
