Predicting Future, Checking Results

ISAAC ASIMOV WROTE ALMOST FIVE HUNDRED books, maybe more than anybody in history. Definitely, Asimov wrote more intelligent books than anyone else. He was a certified genius. He hated travel, and in fact hated leaving his New York apartment. He spent all day, every day, writing. Whatever works. His 1964 essay, which appeared in the New York Times, is drawing interest now, because Asimov made predictions about what the world would be like in the year 2014, fifty years in his future. At about the same time, I was a child, and spent much of my own time reading science fiction, dreaming about the distant future. Asimov and I made the same mistake: we both thought that by 2014 a bunch of people would be living on the moon, and we both thought that by now everybody would be driving a flying car. Back then, everybody thought that. But Asimov did predict flat screen wall TVs and video cell phones. Asimov himself didn't much like being out in nature, didn't like getting out much, and this biased his predictions. He predicted that by the year 2014 we would, for the most part, be living apart from nature, in sealed off, underground communities, with our high tech lifestyle. Well, here we are, in the year 2014, and we seem to be more in love with nature than ever, more determined to embrace it, experience it, preserve it. In 1964, people didn't have any idea about global warming or the threat of environmental catatastrophe, and Asimov said nothing about that. He was worried about atomic bombs. So were we all. In 1964, fifty years ago, I often hid beneath my desk at school, with everyone else, practicing hiding from an atom bomb. It worked like a charm.