TOUGH CALL FOR THE FUTURE

The only person to get a reputation for predicting the future so far is Nostradamus. He's now an industry in his own right, supporting any number of publishers. As perhaps the most widely interpreted person on the subject, he's become an authority by default. It'd be difficult to describe other future predictions as much more than contemporary wishful thinking.

There are two basic types of prediction: scientific, and popular. Scientific prediction is the most widely acclaimed, and certainly the best produced. Since the thunderous crash of the postwar predictions, the society has taken the pragmatic views as more believable.

The dangers of the old impressionistic predictions were well illustrated by the stage management of the ideas. People would drive flying cars, live on the Moon, and wander around idyllic parklands looking like super heroes. The Nuclear Family, Gracious Living, Implied Democracy, and interminable pizzicato soundtracks for kitchen appliances pretty much covered it. Having effectively left it to Beaver, the entire concept fell flat on its face. The marketers didn't know the science, and science definitely didn't understand the marketing. Result, pantomime, disguised as science, and predictions which were pure speculation from under equipped minds.

The pity of it was that the actual ideas did exist, but that they were being sold to a largely ignorant audience who thought they'd just come along during the commercials. Predictions were as much based on ideology as any facts, and therein a recipe for getting things wrong on a colossal scale. Nostradamus didn't have back seat drivers.

Hence part of the extreme cynicism with which any prediction is usually met. The other part is the perceived failure to predict the present global sewer, or any of the massive changes in the last 20 years. The world has changed beyond recognition. Almost none of the present situations were predicted, with perhaps the "prediction" that the Middle East was going to be its usual funloving self as the exception.

Ironically, there were accurate predictions made. The advent of the working poor, the decline of US industry, and global epidemics, were predicted. Naturally, as these came from such eccentrics as economists and epidemiologists, they were ignored, after the customary few seconds of attention and slimy platitudes rather patronizingly called "policies".

The problem was that the predictions were made using old

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