As the old joke goes, it's hard to make predictions, especially about stuff that hasn't happened yet.
I was reminded of this while reading some passages from HG Wells' famous work of speculative fiction, The Shape of Things to Come (complete text here). Wells, writing in 1933, cast his book as a sober historical tome received through precognitive dreams by a certain Dr. Raven. Although the book is obviously fiction, it seems pretty clear that Wells did intend to provide as prescient an overview of the next hundred-plus years as he could manage. The book was popular and became the basis of a beautifully crafted, enjoyably stylized movie, Things to Come, perhaps best known for Raymond Massey's stirring speech: “All the universe–or nothingness! Which shall it be?”
Since Wells was the premier science-fiction writer of his era, a highly educated man who had written nonfiction history books and who closely followed world events, we might expect that his powers of prediction would be greater than most. And indeed, he did correctly predict the outbreak of the European and Asian wars (though in his version, both England and the US remain neutral in Europe). But in other respects his predictions went rather badly awry.
For one thing, he assumed that the stock market crash and subsequent depression marked the end of capitalism as a viable economic system. He forecast that the “Hoover Slump,” as he called it with a heavy dose of irony, would last for many decades, during which civilization would grind to a halt.
At around the midpoint of the book, he offers us a glimpse of America in the year 1958, as described by a visiting ambassador whose notes have been fortuitously preserved. We are introduced to the US president, one Benito Caruso, who presides over a dysfunctional federal government whose jurisdiction barely extends outside the district of Washington DC. The Congress has essentially ceased to exist; independent republics have sprung up on the West Coast and in New York State; the rest of the country, cut off from any centralized authority, operates as a collection of isolated rural villages. In most regions electricity is only a memory. A few automobiles are still being produced, but not more than about a thousand a year. The railroads are defunct, as is the commercial aviation industry. People travel on foot, on horseback, or by mule cart. Communication by radio, telephone, or telegraph is largely unknown. The skyscrapers of New York are empty and abandoned. Paper is nearly impossible to come by, and at Harvard University the students must learn by rote memorization. Most of the country has been reduced to a medieval standard of living.
Similar consequences have played out in Europe and throughout the rest of the world. But there is a glimmer of hope, as we are assured that before long society will be rebuilt by a technocratic cadre of aviators known, rather alarmingly, as the Air Dictatorship. Wells' predilection for the subjugation of the individual to the state leads him to foresee a super-technological utopia ushered in by a frankly fascistic worldwide police state–though eventually the state will, in good dialectical fashion, wither away.
It's good fiction, and it made for a superb movie (which I actually prefer, by the way, in its recent computer-colored edition, produced by Legend Films). But as predictions go, it's about on par with the efforts of Sylvia Browne. Consider that the “Hoover Slump” actually lasted for only one decade, and that by the Eisenhower years America was enjoying an unprecedented economic and technological boom. Consider that the power of the federal government, far from atrophying, was greatly expanded throughout the second half of the 20th century and continues to expand today. Consider that communications nowadays are vastly superior to the radio, telephone and telegraph communications that Wells mourned for.
If even a genius like HG Wells, who devoted his life to imagining the future, could get his predictions so badly wrong, what hope is there for the rest of us? Perhaps a reading of The Shape of Things to Come can serve as a corrective to the hubris that attends confident predictions of either continued progress or inevitable collapse. The truth is, we don't know what the future holds, whether it is President Benito Caruso in the decaying manse of the White House or the militaristic technocrats of the Air Dictatorship–or more generally, a descent into impoverishment and chaos or an ascent to new heights of prosperity and achievement.
We would like to think that we can at least see the future through a glass darkly. The truth is, we can't see it at all.