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The history of the future

How much we would give to able to spy through a hole on a day in the time of the Pharaoh Ramses II? Lamentably, we cannot reach the past. From yesterday only indications remain, memories that constitute a summary of what was the fullness of a present. Audio-visual and written documents from fifty years ago remain, but they are nothing other than indications. The life of most people has been buried in forgetfulness, and of the most eminent people we only have a concise summary that will continue being concise although it occupies ten thousand pages. However, the history of the past interests us, we are willing to carefully conserve and to study many of those indications. We are aware that the nation that does not know its history is condemned to repeat it.

So, the history of the future deserves as much respect and curiosity as the one of the past. It is likewise useful for the present. The metaphysical abyss that separates us from the future is no greater that the one that separates us from the past. As well as never being able to know a day in the life of Ramses II, we cannot know what will happen in the year 2100. But in the same way as we place ourselves into the past with a method of study using indications, so we can do with the future. We have many indications about what can happen. For example, it is very likely that tomorrow I will rise at seven o’clock and have hot milk with cake for breakfast. It may happen that an accident or some other circumstance prevents it, but it is reasonable to grant a high probability of that event occurring in the future. It is not vain to know it: I must buy cakes. With trends and probabilities a forecast world can be made. There are very reasonable forecasts on the advances in medicine, on the consequences of human activity on the equilibrium of nature, on transport in the near future, et cetera.

Not everything in this discipline will be technology. Long ago historians understood that not everything in history is battles and kings. Economic history, that of customs, of clothes, art, ideas or agriculture also concern us. It is equally complex when thinking about the future. Let’s enunciate something like this: The nation that does not know its future is condemned to suffer it. To discern the possibilities in the short, medium and long term is essential in order to take the right decisions, or at least not to walk blindly, impelled by forces of a destiny that we cannot control.

Throughout the 20th century science fiction writers were the main thinkers on the future. A Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley, contributed a mistrust to western civilization. 1984, by George Orwell, added a real concern. The atomic age has its literary echo in thousands of apocalyptic works. Humankind can be exterminated by itself.

Extreme pessimism is of no use for thinking methodically about the future, but does serve to fight extreme optimism. A century ago the conviction that the advance of science would release humanity from disease, misery and war was very popular. There was an unconditional enthusiasm, the embryo of a religious belief, around science and its priests. New drugs appeared that were used with true faith, until it was discovered using human flesh that not everything was wonderful. There were undesired effects; sometimes the remedy was worse than the disease.

At present we do not conceive a medicine that does not come accompanied with a list of directions, warnings and possible side effects. Would it not be reasonable to demand that in the same way next to the instructions for any device or any new computer program a detailed report be added about its possible negative effects?

Thinking about the future methodically serves, among other things, to do studies on environmental impact. At the start of this technophile century many books are necessary that light the  way into the semi-darkness of the future to explain what can happen to homo ciberneticus, the human being whose life does not have the fundamental technology of its own eyes, ears, hands, legs and brain, but that of the thousand accessories that artificial intelligence offers.

The computerization enthusiasts predict that within a few decades everybody will carry some tiny hardware inlaid somewhere in his/her body that will allow access… to everything. Yes, to everything: instantaneous communication with any person anywhere; instantaneous reading of any knowledge filed in the central computer of humanity, from the most comprehensive map of the most remote mountain to the details of the current news.

Detractors of computerization, a rare species, consider that all its advantages are traps into which humanity ingenuously falls, that in the future the person who wants to live freely will try to get rid of their access to everything, and will not be able to do so.

Between both positions an ample field of research and debate is opened. Here are some examples:
- Since, in the same way that not everything in history is battles, not everything in the future is technology, humanity will develop a complex legislation in defence of the capacities of the human brain, that will restrict some applications of computer science that compete with it undesirably.
- The book War and anti-war, by Alvin and Heidi Toffler, talks about a third wave civilization, one of computer science, that is replacing the industrialist second wave one, as this one has replaced, although not everywhere, the agricultural first wave. The economy of the third wave will not be based on mass production, that lowers cost of producing of each product, but on customized production. The war in this new phase will also be different, with multiple points of small conflicts and with possibilities of atomic and computerized terrorism.
- In a few decades we will be witness to the extinction of all vehicles with more than twenty seats, as well as of the hybridization of the motorway and the railroad in a mixed system. The users of the transport network will request their trips in advance so that the network will combine enormous quantities of data to offer public trips that take their travellers from the door of their origin to the door of their destination.

It is possible that each of these summarized arguments of The history of the future is based on several studies of the trends. This is the moment for studying a subject as important as the history of the past, and so related to it. Whether we call that subject The history of the future or give it a different name, it is worth giving it methodical thought, imaginative or rational, according to the style of each person, but always methodical.

 

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