A Brief History of Tomorrow: the future, past and present by Jonathan
Margolis, Bloomsbury, 拢14.99, ISBN 0747550875
A FUNNY place, the future鈥攅specially as seen through the predictions of
previous generations. And some of the futures described by Jonathan Margolis in
his entertaining A Brief History of Tomorrow are bizarre indeed. For
example, there was Jacob Astor鈥檚 idea to create global summer by realigning the
Earth鈥檚 axis, or the magazine Popular Mechanics鈥� vision of a plastic
world where housework would be done with a garden hose.
But, lest we feel superior, consider how odd our own visions will seem to the
people of 2100 and beyond. Margolis uses the efforts of futurologists past to
illuminate his evaluations of the latest predictions about trends in technology,
ecology and society.
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He concludes that鈥攊f you allow for the unpredictable vagaries of
fashion and the almost universal tendency to get timescales
wrong鈥攆uturologists have done pretty well. And he gives plenty of examples
to support this assertion. Many come from the late 19th century, when the truly
prescient among their ilk predicted everything from the emancipation of women to
air transport, frozen meals and colour photography.
The major hurdle to accurate prediction, Margolis suggests, is 鈥渢he arrogance
of the present鈥�. Each generation believes that it鈥檚 somehow special and uniquely
positioned at a turning point in history鈥攚hether it be toward triumph or
disaster. If we can avoid the dangers of assuming today鈥檚 consuming passions
will be tomorrow鈥檚, then he believes we can be confident that current
multidisciplinary thinking about the future will be broadly accurate. If we
don鈥檛, we risk expecting trouble-free development of new technologies
鈥攕uch as increased longevity鈥攁nd will be disappointed.
He interviews many futurologists, including some from Pakistan, India, Israel
and Australia who remind us that not everybody鈥檚 priorities for the future are
the same. The West鈥檚 preoccupation with the latest high-tech gadgets is not
shared by those millions for whom clean water and enough to eat are still
paramount.
The major lesson Margolis draws from futurology is that the future is never
as bad as the worst-case scenarios, and that doom-mongers are invariably wrong.
When he finally sticks his neck out in the last chapter and makes some
predictions, he seems to surprise himself with his own optimism. The present is
largely better than the past, and he believes the future will be better yet,
though probably in unexpected ways. And one day, perhaps, we鈥檒l have a
replacement for the clich茅 鈥渙nly time will tell鈥�.
If you want to find out how we reached the present before you embark on the
trail of the future, try Inventing the Modern World: Technology since
1750 (by Robert Bud, Science Museum, London, 拢25, ISBN 0751330043).
There could scarcely be a better collection of images to sum up 250 years of
technological change than this. From its dramatic opening spread depicting the
hellish fire from the furnaces of an 18th century ironworks at night, to its
closing image of Lara Croft, the digitally generated heroine of the computer
game Tomb Raider, every page demands your attention. Among the curiosities:
photos of a top-hatted Hiram Maxim demonstrating his machine gun to his grandson
and a Trabant car filled with earth and turned into a street garden.
It will be a few hours before you can leave the pictures and turn to the
text, but you won鈥檛 be disappointed. The big shifts in technology are neatly
segmented by era. Oh, and we鈥檙e living in 鈥淭he Age of Ambivalence鈥濃�攁mbivalence
about the benefits of technology, that is. It must be all that debate over GM foods.