Well, it’s 2012.
Hard to believe this year has finally arrived. It has a special place in my heart because I actually made quite a few predictions about it—back in 1987. I was in college at the time, and Honeywell was sponsoring an essay-writing competition. The task was to write two essays: one describing developments in some technology 25 years in the future, and the other describing the social impacts of those developments. The prize was substantial: $3000 in cash, a summer internship, and a trip to company headquarters to tour the facilities, meet the executives, and receive an award at a banquet in our honor. Ten winners would be chosen.
I chose computer technology and, after rewriting them several times, submitted my essays along with those of over 700 other college students. And I won. Or at least, was one of the 10 winners. I was attending the University of Washington at the time. My co-winners were from schools like Harvard, Cornell, Stanford, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne (where the first web browser was developed). I used the cash prize to buy my first computer (a Macintosh, naturally), and the summer internship became the start of my career as a software developer. And I made friends there that I have to this day.
The year 1987 was kind of a pivotal time. The personal computer existed (the IBM PC had come out in 1981, the Macintosh in 1984), but there was as yet no such thing as the World Wide Web. The Internet existed in a more primitive, text-based form, but was mostly used by college students and engineers–most people had never heard of it. Cell phones existed, but they were the size of bricks and coverage was very limited.
Looking back over the essays, I think I got a lot of things right. On the technology developments side, for example, I predicted e-books with the ability to download new titles wirelessly, and a global communications network that would enable friendships to form among people who otherwise might never have met. But in some cases, I was too optimistic about the pace of progress and the things I predicted (such as computers assembled at the molecular level) are still very much in the laboratory. I also predicted we would have reached the quantum limit of storage technology by now (i.e. one bit of information per atom), but we’re nowhere close to that yet.
On the social impacts side, I got some things right and some wildly off. This was pretty close to the mark: “By 2012, anyone with a portable computer will probably be able to access a network linking all the world’s electronically stored information, from anywhere within reach of radio waves. Information retrieval aids built into the system will enable the user to quickly burrow through this mountain of data to any desired piece.” In effect, I was describing the World Wide Web, wireless technology, and search engines.
But I was a bit blasé about the displacement of workers due to technology (e.g. more robot repair workers) and I totally missed the mark on how much education would be affected–I thought the effect would be much greater than it has been. And I was completely wrong about the job of teaching being largely automated by 2012. But for some of my predictions, I think I could still be proven right; there just hasn’t been enough time yet for it to come true. For example: “As the retrieval of more and more specific information from larger and larger collections of data becomes faster and faster, it will gradually become obvious that it is unwise for large numbers of children to undergo the costly process of committing an excessive amount of narrow, detailed information to memory.” I still think that’s going to be proven true–eventually.
I was also much too optimistic about the beneficial effects of computer-based improvements in education. I wrote that they would lead to “a better-educated electorate, more competent workers, and more knowledgeable and effective citizens.” In fact, as I look the state of political discourse in this country, and the current crop of candidates being seriously considered for presidential office, it seems many people have grown significantly less knowledgeable and educated.
Anyway, if you’re curious, here are the essays I wrote about 2012 in 1987 (as separate notes). I’ve resisted the urge to edit them, even though some of my word choices (e.g. “synergism”) make me cringe.
Enjoy!