Isaac Asimov's Predictions for 2019
Isaac Asimov was probably the best science fiction writer of all time. His works like “I, Robot” (1950) or “The Bicentennial Man” are among the most influential science fiction stories of all time. In fact, Isaac Asimov coined the very term “robotics”. His fiction writing was informed to a large degree by his deep knowledge of science. After the Second World War, he was employed for many years as Professor of Biochemistry at Boston University, but he quickly made more money from his writing than his academic career. Unlike so many people who call themselves “futurists”, Asimov was not a quack.
So, it is worthwhile to examine what Asimov has imagined the world of 2019 to be. In 1983 the Toronto Star asked Asimov to look 35 years into the future and imagine the world of 2019. This was no coincidence for 35 years earlier, George Orwell published his book “1984”.
Given the backdrop of the cold war, Asimov opens his predictions with a caveat that he assumes no thermonuclear war will have taken place because in that case, all bets are off. Luckily, we have avoided that fate.
Interestingly, many of Asimov’s predictions have come true or are at the cusp of becoming reality. His main prediction was the advance of computerization that will significantly influence many facets of our lives. He predicted that computers would become more common not only in industrial applications but also make their way into our homes. In fact, he even imagined that robots would replace menial work in factories and increasingly also at home (Alexa, Cortana and Siri are examples of this trend). Asimov rightly anticipated that this increased computerisation would lead to stresses in society. While menial labour would be replaced by robots and computers, jobs that are involved in the design, manufacture and maintenance of software and computers would grow and become the new dominant source of employment. As a result, he predicted that education must focus on making people “computer-literate” and enable them to deal with a high-tech world. Asimov foresaw that his transition would have to be made faster than any knowledge transition before in history but, somewhat over-optimistically, he concluded that by 2019 this transition to a fully computer-literate world will have been concluded.
The second visionary foresight of Asimov was that he concluded that the negative effects of pollution, waste and overpopulation would become much more apparent and as a result, efforts to save the environment and technologies to reverse environmental damage would become commonplace. While this is indeed taking place, Asimov was again overly optimistic on the pace of these developments and the changes they would trigger. He envisioned that methods to control overpopulation would be taken (this did not happen outside of China) and that nations would collaborate in some form of global government “not out of any sudden growth of idealism or decency but out of a cold-blooded realization that anything less than that will mean destruction for all”. I wish humanity would have come to that conclusion but it seems we have chosen to face destruction for all instead.
But there was one area where his predictions were hopelessly off the mark. Asimov envisioned that by 2019 space would have become a source of industrial activity with a mine on the moon and potentially a solar power plant on the moon as well. In his mind these endeavours would reinforce the quest for world peace and international collaboration simply because the need for energy would force this collaboration as a condition sine qua non. While Asimov was clearly wrong on this prediction, my wish for 2019 is that we take some steps in this direction this year. We’d be better off for it.
Asimov's predictions for 2019 in the Toronto Star 1983
Source: Toronto Star.