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