Amazing predictions for 2011...from 1931

A 1930s vision of the 21st Century

Eighty years ago this year, the editor of The New York Times had a brainstorm: ask some of the day’s great intellectuals for their personal vision of what the United States would be like eighty years in the future. What follows are some of the thoughts of the (then) best and brightest about the wondrous world of 2011…

What inventor Michael Pupin saw

Michael Pupin, a well-known scientist and celebrated inventor, who also happened to be a darling of the NY Times, shared his vision with the paper’s readers who were eager to get a rare glimpse into a future they’d never see.

“The great inventions which laid the foundation of our modern industries and of the resulting industrial civilization were all born during the last eighty years,” he proclaimed.

“This civilization is the greatest material achievement of applied science during this memorable period. Its power for creating wealth was never equaled in human history. But it lacks the wisdom of distributing equitably the wealth which it creates.”

Believing that only government could correct the inequities beyond the haves and have-nots, Pupin saw a future where the government adopted the role of financial referee. He believed that during the ensuing eighty years that those that had created wealth would be forced to give up most of what they created to help those that could not create wealth, that were “disenfranchised,” had no incentive to produce, and were satisfied to leach off of the rest of society..

In essence he bought into the “economic justice” fallacy that—in one form or another—has infiltrated modern society at different political and socioeconomic levels.

Seeing that he was extrapolating on what Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s policies were during the decade after his prediction, Pupin probably thought his prediction was right on the mark.

“One can safely prophesy that during the next eighty years this civilization will correct this deficiency by creating an industrial democracy which will guarantee to the worker an equitable share in the wealth produced by his work.”

The battle is still going on, although objective history shows that “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” is a credo that flies in the face of human nature and has only worked for a while when a society is coerced into living the creed by either an authoritarian or totalitarian government.

Pupin also overlooked the stubborn penchant for individual liberty that many Americans still defend fiercely.

William Fielding Ogburn saw eradication of poverty

Sociologist William Fielding Ogburn was an intellectual. Many of the Northeastern elite hung on his every word. It was quite a coup for the NY Times to have him participate in the panel of visionaries sharing their views on the far distant world of 2011.

Although he was wrong on both counts, he did come remarkably closer to the mark on with some of his prognostications.

“Labor displacement will proceed even to automatic factories. The magic of remote control will be commonplace. Humanity’s most versatile servant will be the electron tube…the heterogeneity of material culture will mean specialists and languages that only specialists can understand…”

2011 does reflect all of that, although the electron tube went the way of the dinosaur when first transistors and then silicon chips an IC boards were created.

Ogburn also saw the “Inevitable technological progress and abundant natural resources [will] yield a higher standard of living. Poverty will be eliminated and hunger as a driving force of revolution will not be a danger. Inequality of income and problems of social justice will remain.”

Again, amazingly prescient for a forecast from eighty years ago, although poverty has not been eliminated. Far from it. In fact, since Lyndon B. Johnson’s launch of the War on Poverty program during the mid-1960s, about $4 trillion has been spent and poverty as a percentage of total population is almost exactly what it was 45 years ago.

“The role of government is bound to grow,” Ogburn predicted. Technicians and special interest groups will leave only a shell of democracy. The family cannot be destroyed but will be less stable in the early years of married life, divorce being greater than now. The lives of women will be more like those of men, spent more outside the home.”

Mayo Clinic pioneer weighs in

The founder of the famed Minnesota clinic, William James Mayo, made some of the best predictions on the panel. He foresaw many of the infectious diseases that were then the bane of medicine as having been conquered by 2011. He also predicted an increase in the average lifespan of Americans. Back in 1931 the average life expectancy was listed as 58 years old. Mayo predicted that “within the measure of time for this forecast the average life time of civilized man would be raised to the biblical term of three-score and ten.”

He didn’t fall too far short of the actual mark for average life expectancy which actuarial tables during 2010 listed as 77 years and 8 months.    

Turning to spirituality and the reverence for a superior being that people might have in a 21st Century America, Mayo said this: “Although we may desire to believe only what we can see, our emotions will predominate when crises beyond human understanding confront us, and some form of religion will continue to sustain people in time of stress.”

Overall, the accuracy of some of the predictions is quite amazing. Perhaps the current editor of the NY Times will entertain the thought of convening a 2011 panel to share their own visions of what the future may hold in the world of 2091, eighty years from now.

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© Copyright AYM Communications, 2011.