Can you predict what 2074 will be like?

By now, we were supposed to be living in a world where well-managed, pollution-free oceans were ushering in a golden age, where dream cities dominated the landscape and where spacecraft were as common as airplanes or telephones.

Or, alternatively, we were to live in a world where people worked remotely through computers that were capable of doing video calls and transmitting television shows.

Hmm. That prediction was pretty close, actually.

But, according to one well-known columnist, we were to have made a mess of things. The year 2024, he said, would be “more likely to bring a massive compounding of the perils and deprivations that afflict us now.”

Predicting the future is a fool’s game. A half-century ago, I attended a state fair with some friends. Among the carnival games was a crystal ball computer, of sorts, that, for a small fee, would print out information and some rather obvious predictions about anyone who entered a birthdate. All I remember is that it predicted my retirement would be on my birthday in 2024. But even that turned out to be wrong, messed up a decade later by a Social Security reform bill that moved it back a couple of years.

So here I am, still plugging away.

But while I was frolicking at the fair in 1974, several of the world’s most influential minds were writing essays for a special edition of the Saturday Review. Each had been asked to provide predictions as to how the world would look 50 years hence, in 2024.

I haven’t actually seen this magazine, but I’ve read plenty of descriptions from those who have. Most of the essays were optimistic. According to thenewstack.io, the French oceanographer Jacques Cousteau predicted a great future for oceans, although he acknowledged risks. Neil Armstrong, the first person on the moon, wrote about spacecraft and envisioned developments on the moon. Aerospace engineer and former Nazi Wernher von Braun seemed to be predicting the internet, as did Soviet scientist Andrei Sakharov.

Heart surgeon Michael DeBakey expressed his undying faith in human virtue, saying “the problems created by pollution will be conquered by devising new ways of providing energy.”

All of which added up to a pile of bunk, according to James J. Kilpatrick, a syndicated columnist at the time.

If he had been asked to write an essay, he said in a widely published column, “I probably would have been more pessimistic about the world of 2024.”

Kilpatrick acknowledged there would be many technological advances, but he added, “Is man essentially good? Kindly? Neighborly? Selfsacrificial? Are nations wedded to the golden rule? I deny it absolutely.”

Instead, he said, history showed a long record of “selfishness, exploitation and conquest.” The best crystal balls, he said, “cannot foretell a Hitler, a Churchill, a Roosevelt.”

Except, I would add, that for every Hitler, the world does seem to find a Churchill, a Roosevelt, a Gen. Eisenhower and thousands of people willing to die to make a better future for others.

The juxtaposition of Kilpatrick and those who wrote for the Saturday Review offers a fascinating look at human optimism posed against the backdrop of a history that also includes more than a fair share of human-caused suffering.

Looking back, each side was both right and wrong. Cousteau’s optimism has been blown out of the water by pollution, especially from plastic debris. And yet modern landfills are far safer for human health than a half-century ago, and efforts are underway to clean the ocean. Armstrong’s visions for the moon fell short because of money and politics, but international competition could revive them again, soon.

And Kilpatrick’s gloom has been tempered somewhat by internet technology that brings greater transparency to exploitation and selfishness, although it hasn’t come close to stopping those things. And, to be fair, even he couldn’t see how widespread disinformation and cynicism would become a threat to democratic institutions today. But he also didn’t foresee an international effort that has dramatically reduced childhood deaths in developing nations.

No, we can’t predict the future with certainty. But the way we approach it does help define what it becomes.

The future is the sum total of the collective thoughts, desires and imaginations of everyone now living, which is why I applaud even the most unrealistic optimists back in 1974. Without them, we wouldn’t have miraculous little computers in our pockets, remote robotics, DNA research or the promise (soon, I hope) of totally self-driving cars.

Without DeBakey’s faith in human virtue, and faith in general, nation’s wouldn’t be uniting to resist Vladimir Putin, and people wouldn’t make prayer a daily habit.

As someone who was alive 50 years ago, I think the sum total of the last half-century has been overwhelmingly good, despite all the bad.

But I wonder. What do you think life will be like in 2074?