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Is there any future in futurism?
Biologist Paul Ehrlich (The Population Bomb) tours campuses warning of a planet smothered by proliferation and overconsumption; Barry Commoner's new volume, The Poverty of Power, sees capitalism as an irresponsible, even destructive force in global affairs. Nuclear physicists describe the radiation catastrophes inherent in nuclear power plants; meteorologists calculate the insults to the ozone present in every flight of the SST; biochemists estimate the brain cells destroyed with every martini. Even the Pill, once announced as the answer to population control, now appears to have hazardous side effects. Such perceptions may be glimpses of tomorrow, or they may be magnifications1 of the present - shadows thrown upon a screen labeled AD 2000. They may be accurate, or they may be as invalid as the predictions of almost a century ago that saw city dwellers transported everywhere by that new-fangled invention, the balloon. Forecasters have a habit of extrapolating from their surroundings: the scientist from the laboratory, the statistician from his calculator, the administrator from his think tank. Such predictions rise, in Lewis Mum-ford's phrase, from a mind 'operating with its own conceptual apparatus, in its own restrictive field... determined to make the world over in its own oversimplified terms, willfully rejecting interests and values incompatible with its own assumptions'. Does this mean that prediction has no future? Hardly. In an epoch of uncertainties, the hunger for prediction is rising to the famine level. Never before has speculative fiction been so popular. Thirty-five science-fiction books were published in 1945; in 1975,900 such books were published. Even the pseudo sciences are flourishing. Shrewdly un-specific astrological charts can be found in most major newspapers (PISCES: Do your work despite passing moments of stress). The National Enquirer's annual contest to gauge readers' psychic ability is among the weekly's most popular features In fact, it has become impossible to lead a modern life without some form of prophecy. Every stock market letter, every long-range weather report and baseball schedule is a prediction; every garden and every child is an expressed belief in the future. As Toffler observes, 'Under conditions of high-speed change, a democracy without the ability to anticipate condemns itself to death.' But just how much can it anticipate? How deeply into the future can it peer? Unhappily, not very far at all. No matter how sophisticated the devices or demographics, certain events and event makers will always lie outside the scope of seers. The maniac, the genius, the random event are unpredictable, yet they have formed much of this century's history. There is no reason to suspect that they may not form the history of the next. Futurists can help to forestall these troubles. Or they can press for changes in some remote purgatory or Eden. Examining Herman Kahn's thesis, Adam Yarmolinsky. University of Massachusetts professor, asks a series of rhetorical questions: 'How do we get from here to there? What is the best mind set to move us in that direction? Are we more likely to succeed if we keep oar eyes firmly on the target centuries away? Or ought we to be more concerned about pitfalls, obstacles, difficulties we seem to be encountering in the immediate future?' All responsible seers know the answers. The future of futurism lies rooted in the current human condition - the saving of cities, the administration of foreign policy, the forestalling of war and famine and natural catastrophe. Given decent underpinnings, tomorrow may yet take care of itself. What Novelist Antoine de Saint-Exupery wrote three decades ago must remain the moral force behind all truly prophetic workers: 'As for the future, your task is not to foresee, but to enable it.' Stefan Kanfer, Time
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