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The Pattern of Prediction 1763–1973
The Pattern of Prediction
The Pattern THE THE
of Prediction
FIRST FORECAST FUTURE
1763-1973
OF
I. F. Clarke The heritage of technological forecasting is brief and haphazard. But examination of the rich variety of past assessments of trends and potential may prove useful in directing attention towards more probable futures. This is the first of a series of articles that will assess the pattern of prediction from the primitive forecasts of 1763 to the more modern scientific approach.
THE everyday
facts of social and industrial change have become so much a part of our general thinking that we forget the extraordinary novelty of seeking to foresee the shape of things to come. About two hundred years ago the image of the future was a blank. The centuries ahead returned a verdict of no change: the windmill, the waterwheel and the horse would continue to provide their entirely predictable minimum of energy; and travellers could not hope for any improvement in the two weeks of rattling by springless stage coach on the journey from London to Edinburgh or in the six weeks of danger and discomfort during the voyage to the colonies in America. Today we accept without question the methods of technological forecasting. They are the practical and necessary means of preparing industry for the consequences and the opportunities of the developments that will come in world population, planetary communications, food production, automation, new materials, new technologies, new markets. Western technology changed the pattern and direction of civilisation as decisively as the development of agriculture in the river valleys of Eurasia once changed the condition of human life on the planet Earth. The sustained process of technological innovation and of scientific discovery gave Europe-and later the world-a habit of regarding future time that in many ways separates our present epoch of industrial civilisation from the whole historical past of the human race. We know what was hidden from the Roman emperors, the medieval popes and Renaissance princes : that today’s discoveries beget tomorrow’s industries, and that as the rate of technological development continues to accelerate, the need to make rational provision for future change becomes increasingly urgent. I. F. Clarke is Head of the English Studies Department,
FUTURES
June 1969
University
of Strathclyde,
UK
325
326
The Pattern of Prediction
The technological forecaster is heir to a brief tradition and to a haphazard practice of guesswork and amateur prediction. Only since the Second World War, have industrialists, engineers, state planners, statisticians and others sought to turn the old-style game of extrapolation into as accurate a business as possible. Before 1939 the forecasting of social and industrial change was left mostly to imaginative writers like H. G. Wells, Anton Liibke and Ritchie Calder who were outside industry and government. Before rgoo the shape of things to come was the private vision of fiction writers; and in the seemingly archaic period before 1800, when Europe was beginning to realise that tomorrow’s world might be very different from the pattern of life in an agrarian society, men could only regard the future as an area of opportunity, as a time when they could hope that the steam engine and the Montgolfier balloons would help to improve the condition of mankind. An examination of past predictions shows how the increasing accuracy of forecasts during the past two centuries has depended on steady improvement in basic methods and-even more important-on more comprehensive information about scientific and industrial potentials as well as about social and political possibilities. The technological forecaster has much to learn from his predecessors in the craft. Indeed, the first large-scale forecast ever made in the English language is a salutary example of what can go wrong when the would-be prophet does not know all the facts. For it is worth remembering that the practice of describing the future originated in I 763, when an anonymous writer brought out The Reign of George VI, Igoo-‘925, in which he took what was for those days a long look into very distant times. Unfortunately the author had decided to describe life in the twentieth century at that moment in European history when unprecedented changes were about to transform the world he knew. Already, in that year, James Watt had begun work on the Newcomen engine with the certain knowledge that to improve its thermal efficiency would tap an immense source of power. What lay before the world in 1763 was a series of great changes-revolutions in politics, medicine, and technology-that would end monarchy in France, establish a new nation in America, multiply and introduce new means of transport population beyond all expectation, and new sources of energy. The course of history since 1763 has turned the Reign of George VI into a series of unintentional ironies; and the major irony is in the contrast between the exceptional originality of describing the imagined circumstances of life in the twentieth century and the total failure to anticipate any real changes. Perhaps this contains a warning for forecasters, since the author is so well satisfied with the state of society in his time that he cannot imagine anything different. He looks forward to the first quarter of the twentieth century as a time when architecture, literature, politics and government have been frozen into a splendid classical perfection. George III would have felt completely at home in this vision; for population has not increased, cities are still small, and the good news from America is that the colonists are “in possession of perhaps the finest country in the world, and yet had never made the least attempt to shake off the authority of Great Britain”. The only changes that the author can foresee in his static world of the future are political and military moves within the European monarchical
FUTURES
June 1969
The Pattern of Prediction
Figure 1. A print from one of the propositions that were put to the public from time to time. The idea of training eagles was actually put forward, and there are accounts of attempts to harness them to balloons.
FUTURES
June 1999
327
328
The Pattern of Prediction
FUTURES
June 1999
The Pattern of Prediction
system, and here there is one perceptive anticipation. Although the Spanish empire in South America is still intact and the Turks continue to control the Balkans, Russia has advanced into Poland, Finland and the Scandinavian countries. The great menace of the twentieth century is Russia, expecially Russia in alliance with France; and the task for any sensible British monarch is to restore the balance of power in Europe by crushing the French. At this point the history of the future develops into the wish-fulfilment fantasy of a Tory patriot. The young George VI proves to be an ideal monarch, a brilliant general, an original administrator, and the hope of all Europe. Acting as his own commander, he leads the small British army of some 80,000 men against the troops of the Russian Czar and the King of France. Year by year he brings more and more of Europe under British rule. By 1920 he has crushed the Russian armies and conquered France and Spain. A new Pax Britannica begins throughout Europe, and the French find that life under British rule is as happy as an English forecaster can make it for them. George VI gives his French subjects every advantage; for “by an edict which will be immortal, he introduced the laws of England into France, with no changes but such as respected religion and his own authority. He even gave up every prerogative which he did not possess in England, except the raising of money. . . . As the French nation had always preserved a notion of liberty, and had never fallen absolutely into slavery, the effect of these changes was surprising. They seemed to enjoy them with particular exultation, as they came from the hand of their conqueror. Happy for France that it was conquered by such a patriot King!” The Reign of George VI was the first major forecast of its kind-the beginning of a form of fiction that in the last century became a dominant device for commenting on the state of society and for tracing the pattern of future developments. It is however, no accident that the Reign of George VI should have settled into such fixed and rigid lines. Like so many forecasts it is a pseudo-prophecy. Although the author pretends to anticipate the system of life in the centuries ahead, he only describes what he would like to see. In consequence he presents a projection of acceptable, commonplace notions about eighteenth century society. And yet the author had one moment of insight when he came close to seeing how the future might be very different. He had drawn the correct conclusion from the completion of the Worsley Canal in 1761. He predicts real changes in the system of internal transportation: “Rivers that formerly were almost useless were now navigated by large barges, which increased the trade of innumerable towns, and raised in many places new ones. Canals were cut, which joined rivers and formed a communication from one part of the kingdom to the other”. But there he stopped. The economic consequences of such a large-scale development were beyond him. However, within twenty years of the publication of the Reign of George VI the fateful process of modern technological development had begun. From the 1780’s onward every major invention-Watt’s separate condenser, the Montgolfier balloon, the railway, the steamship, the electric telegraph-became a public and visual demonstration to all Europe that science was a social device for changing the condition of human life: it was a process that would lead to even greater changes in the future. So, the news of the first manned balloon flight on 2 1st November I 783 spread throughout Europe, and in the young
FUTURES
June 1969
329
330
77~ Pattern of Prediction
PilPtre de Rozier’s ascent was seen the presage of future changes. In the Letters Patent that ennobled the father of the Montgolfier brothers, the French king, Louis XVI, expressed the new expectation of change: “We have no doubt but that this invention will cause a memorable epoch in physical history; we also hope that it will furnish new means to increase the power of man”. That was what everyone expected. Already the business of extrapolation had begun. In I 784 Benjamin Franklin was sending regular .reports about the balloons to the President of the Royal Society, and in one letter he foresaw a military use for the new invention: “Where is the prince who can afford so to cover his country with troops for its defence, as that ten thousand men descending from the clouds might not in many places do an infinite deal of mischief before a force could be brought together to repel them?” By the last quarter of the eighteenth century it had become evident that mankind was on the march. An entirely new literature of forecast and prophecy appeared in order to satisfy the growing interest in the shape of things to come. In 1810, for instance, Julius von Voss, once a lieutenant in the Prussian army, published an account of life in the twenty-first century, hi, in which he looked forward to dirigible balloons, aerial reconnaissance squadrons, and such improvements in artillery that the inhabitants of cities are obliged to live in great subterranean excavations. In 1827 a woman writer, Jane Webb, gave her version of life in the future. The world has been transformed. Man has conquered nature : steam and electricity provide power for marvellous appliances, balloons transport their passengers across the Atlantic, and the waste places of the Earth have become the workshop of mankind. Here is the Egypt of the future: “No longer did the sands of the desert rise in might waves, threatening to overwhelm the wayworn traveller; macadamised turnpike roads supplied their place, over which post-chaises with anti-attritioned wheels bowled at the rate of fifteen miles an hour. Steam boats glided down the canals and furnaces raised their smoky heads amidst the groves of palm trees”. The age of extrapolation had commenced. From the first decades of the last century the number of these forecasts and imaginative predictions increased until by the end of the century they became the favourite means of studying the tendencies and potentialities of their day. The technological forecasters of our time follow in a rich and varied tradition. They should look to their inheritance.
FUTURES
June lm
The Pattern THE THE
of Prediction
FIRST FORECAST FUTURE
1763-1973
OF
I. F. Clarke The heritage of technological forecasting is brief and haphazard. But examination of the rich variety of past assessments of trends and potential may prove useful in directing attention towards more probable futures. This is the first of a series of articles that will assess the pattern of prediction from the primitive forecasts of 1763 to the more modern scientific approach.
THE everyday
facts of social and industrial change have become so much a part of our general thinking that we forget the extraordinary novelty of seeking to foresee the shape of things to come. About two hundred years ago the image of the future was a blank. The centuries ahead returned a verdict of no change: the windmill, the waterwheel and the horse would continue to provide their entirely predictable minimum of energy; and travellers could not hope for any improvement in the two weeks of rattling by springless stage coach on the journey from London to Edinburgh or in the six weeks of danger and discomfort during the voyage to the colonies in America. Today we accept without question the methods of technological forecasting. They are the practical and necessary means of preparing industry for the consequences and the opportunities of the developments that will come in world population, planetary communications, food production, automation, new materials, new technologies, new markets. Western technology changed the pattern and direction of civilisation as decisively as the development of agriculture in the river valleys of Eurasia once changed the condition of human life on the planet Earth. The sustained process of technological innovation and of scientific discovery gave Europe-and later the world-a habit of regarding future time that in many ways separates our present epoch of industrial civilisation from the whole historical past of the human race. We know what was hidden from the Roman emperors, the medieval popes and Renaissance princes : that today’s discoveries beget tomorrow’s industries, and that as the rate of technological development continues to accelerate, the need to make rational provision for future change becomes increasingly urgent. I. F. Clarke is Head of the English Studies Department,
FUTURES
June 1969
University
of Strathclyde,
UK
325
326
The Pattern of Prediction
The technological forecaster is heir to a brief tradition and to a haphazard practice of guesswork and amateur prediction. Only since the Second World War, have industrialists, engineers, state planners, statisticians and others sought to turn the old-style game of extrapolation into as accurate a business as possible. Before 1939 the forecasting of social and industrial change was left mostly to imaginative writers like H. G. Wells, Anton Liibke and Ritchie Calder who were outside industry and government. Before rgoo the shape of things to come was the private vision of fiction writers; and in the seemingly archaic period before 1800, when Europe was beginning to realise that tomorrow’s world might be very different from the pattern of life in an agrarian society, men could only regard the future as an area of opportunity, as a time when they could hope that the steam engine and the Montgolfier balloons would help to improve the condition of mankind. An examination of past predictions shows how the increasing accuracy of forecasts during the past two centuries has depended on steady improvement in basic methods and-even more important-on more comprehensive information about scientific and industrial potentials as well as about social and political possibilities. The technological forecaster has much to learn from his predecessors in the craft. Indeed, the first large-scale forecast ever made in the English language is a salutary example of what can go wrong when the would-be prophet does not know all the facts. For it is worth remembering that the practice of describing the future originated in I 763, when an anonymous writer brought out The Reign of George VI, Igoo-‘925, in which he took what was for those days a long look into very distant times. Unfortunately the author had decided to describe life in the twentieth century at that moment in European history when unprecedented changes were about to transform the world he knew. Already, in that year, James Watt had begun work on the Newcomen engine with the certain knowledge that to improve its thermal efficiency would tap an immense source of power. What lay before the world in 1763 was a series of great changes-revolutions in politics, medicine, and technology-that would end monarchy in France, establish a new nation in America, multiply and introduce new means of transport population beyond all expectation, and new sources of energy. The course of history since 1763 has turned the Reign of George VI into a series of unintentional ironies; and the major irony is in the contrast between the exceptional originality of describing the imagined circumstances of life in the twentieth century and the total failure to anticipate any real changes. Perhaps this contains a warning for forecasters, since the author is so well satisfied with the state of society in his time that he cannot imagine anything different. He looks forward to the first quarter of the twentieth century as a time when architecture, literature, politics and government have been frozen into a splendid classical perfection. George III would have felt completely at home in this vision; for population has not increased, cities are still small, and the good news from America is that the colonists are “in possession of perhaps the finest country in the world, and yet had never made the least attempt to shake off the authority of Great Britain”. The only changes that the author can foresee in his static world of the future are political and military moves within the European monarchical
FUTURES
June 1969
The Pattern of Prediction
Figure 1. A print from one of the propositions that were put to the public from time to time. The idea of training eagles was actually put forward, and there are accounts of attempts to harness them to balloons.
FUTURES
June 1999
327
328
The Pattern of Prediction
FUTURES
June 1999
The Pattern of Prediction
system, and here there is one perceptive anticipation. Although the Spanish empire in South America is still intact and the Turks continue to control the Balkans, Russia has advanced into Poland, Finland and the Scandinavian countries. The great menace of the twentieth century is Russia, expecially Russia in alliance with France; and the task for any sensible British monarch is to restore the balance of power in Europe by crushing the French. At this point the history of the future develops into the wish-fulfilment fantasy of a Tory patriot. The young George VI proves to be an ideal monarch, a brilliant general, an original administrator, and the hope of all Europe. Acting as his own commander, he leads the small British army of some 80,000 men against the troops of the Russian Czar and the King of France. Year by year he brings more and more of Europe under British rule. By 1920 he has crushed the Russian armies and conquered France and Spain. A new Pax Britannica begins throughout Europe, and the French find that life under British rule is as happy as an English forecaster can make it for them. George VI gives his French subjects every advantage; for “by an edict which will be immortal, he introduced the laws of England into France, with no changes but such as respected religion and his own authority. He even gave up every prerogative which he did not possess in England, except the raising of money. . . . As the French nation had always preserved a notion of liberty, and had never fallen absolutely into slavery, the effect of these changes was surprising. They seemed to enjoy them with particular exultation, as they came from the hand of their conqueror. Happy for France that it was conquered by such a patriot King!” The Reign of George VI was the first major forecast of its kind-the beginning of a form of fiction that in the last century became a dominant device for commenting on the state of society and for tracing the pattern of future developments. It is however, no accident that the Reign of George VI should have settled into such fixed and rigid lines. Like so many forecasts it is a pseudo-prophecy. Although the author pretends to anticipate the system of life in the centuries ahead, he only describes what he would like to see. In consequence he presents a projection of acceptable, commonplace notions about eighteenth century society. And yet the author had one moment of insight when he came close to seeing how the future might be very different. He had drawn the correct conclusion from the completion of the Worsley Canal in 1761. He predicts real changes in the system of internal transportation: “Rivers that formerly were almost useless were now navigated by large barges, which increased the trade of innumerable towns, and raised in many places new ones. Canals were cut, which joined rivers and formed a communication from one part of the kingdom to the other”. But there he stopped. The economic consequences of such a large-scale development were beyond him. However, within twenty years of the publication of the Reign of George VI the fateful process of modern technological development had begun. From the 1780’s onward every major invention-Watt’s separate condenser, the Montgolfier balloon, the railway, the steamship, the electric telegraph-became a public and visual demonstration to all Europe that science was a social device for changing the condition of human life: it was a process that would lead to even greater changes in the future. So, the news of the first manned balloon flight on 2 1st November I 783 spread throughout Europe, and in the young
FUTURES
June 1969
329
330
77~ Pattern of Prediction
PilPtre de Rozier’s ascent was seen the presage of future changes. In the Letters Patent that ennobled the father of the Montgolfier brothers, the French king, Louis XVI, expressed the new expectation of change: “We have no doubt but that this invention will cause a memorable epoch in physical history; we also hope that it will furnish new means to increase the power of man”. That was what everyone expected. Already the business of extrapolation had begun. In I 784 Benjamin Franklin was sending regular .reports about the balloons to the President of the Royal Society, and in one letter he foresaw a military use for the new invention: “Where is the prince who can afford so to cover his country with troops for its defence, as that ten thousand men descending from the clouds might not in many places do an infinite deal of mischief before a force could be brought together to repel them?” By the last quarter of the eighteenth century it had become evident that mankind was on the march. An entirely new literature of forecast and prophecy appeared in order to satisfy the growing interest in the shape of things to come. In 1810, for instance, Julius von Voss, once a lieutenant in the Prussian army, published an account of life in the twenty-first century, hi, in which he looked forward to dirigible balloons, aerial reconnaissance squadrons, and such improvements in artillery that the inhabitants of cities are obliged to live in great subterranean excavations. In 1827 a woman writer, Jane Webb, gave her version of life in the future. The world has been transformed. Man has conquered nature : steam and electricity provide power for marvellous appliances, balloons transport their passengers across the Atlantic, and the waste places of the Earth have become the workshop of mankind. Here is the Egypt of the future: “No longer did the sands of the desert rise in might waves, threatening to overwhelm the wayworn traveller; macadamised turnpike roads supplied their place, over which post-chaises with anti-attritioned wheels bowled at the rate of fifteen miles an hour. Steam boats glided down the canals and furnaces raised their smoky heads amidst the groves of palm trees”. The age of extrapolation had commenced. From the first decades of the last century the number of these forecasts and imaginative predictions increased until by the end of the century they became the favourite means of studying the tendencies and potentialities of their day. The technological forecasters of our time follow in a rich and varied tradition. They should look to their inheritance.
FUTURES
June lm