The Next Hundred Years ... Then and Now

About the Book

“Time present and time past are both perhaps present in time future, and time future contained in time past.”–T. S. Eliot.

Everybody is interested in the future. Based on present estimates of the world population and predictions of human life expectancy, most people now alive will spend more than half their lives in the 21st century. Starting today, everybody has a future. But what will that future be?

Of course, nobody really knows, so people have to guess. There is no shortage of people who are volunteering guesses now, at the beginning of the new century. Newspaper editors and columnists, TV reporters, financial pundits, government agencies, and many others are filling the media with their forecasts for the next hundred years. The question is: How good are these predictions? This, in turn, leads to more questions: Are there any criteria to distinguish a good, likely-to-come-true, prediction from a bad, not likely-to-come-true, prediction? Are forecasts of future events in the field of the sciences more likely true than forecasts, say, in politics, economics, or social relationships?

The author firmly believes that the best way to answer these questions is to take advantage of the past. At the beginning of the 20th century, experts made the same kinds of forecasts for the “next hundred years then.” These forecasts have been collected, grouped into six categories, and consistently graded by comparing the predictions against the history of the 20th century. After this grading, the author analyzed the forecasts to discover which methods worked best and those that failed. Beyond just determining right, wrong, or in between, I checked for things that happened but were not predicted. This is critical for estimating the limitations of today’s predictions. Did anybody predict that a man would walk on the moon or that countless communications satellites would be in orbit? Did anyone forecast the rise and fall of Communism in Russia? By seeing where our forebears went seriously wrong or were uncannily accurate, we should more ably judge the current forecasts for the next century or at least not fall into grave error. Then, by combining this analysis with the best evaluation techniques of today’s futurists, the author examines and evaluates current forecasts for the “next hundred years now.” Strangely enough, this simple, logical, and straightforward method of evaluating the present predictions has never been done before. Also included is a tantalizing quiz that asks readers to predict some possible events of the 21st century.

About the Author

Robert Cartmill has been a keen observer of the American scene for many years. He has served his country as a naval officer in the Korean War and held jobs as a farmer, mechanical engineer, hydrologist, and investment adviser. The author worked for NASA’s Earth Research Laboratory analyzing data from the first LANDSAT environmental satellite. He has authored numerous technical reports and papers on such topics as weather radar, remote sensing and environmental assessment. Currently, he is an Adjunct Professor of Meteorology at the University of New Orleans.