[BRIEF NOTE] The Airless Future

[rfmcdonald]

I'm reading 1999: The World of Tomorrow, a book published in 1978 and composed of selections from The Futurist. The authors were clearly trying, and some of their suggestions--the fragmentation of the job market, life-long education, innovative new sources of energy and medical techniques--have or are coming true. Even these predictions, though, seem to be airless and unimaginative, straight-line projections with little room for unexpected change. That may be the only way to do futurism, but even so it's a curiously unsatisfying way.