IEEE Spectrum June, 2014 - 8

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predictions in the article, only four were
indisputably accurate:
1. "Robots will be neither common nor
very good in 2014."
2. "By 2014, only unmanned ships will
have landed on Mars."
3. "As for television, wall screens will have
replaced the ordinary set."
4. "On earth...laser beams will have to be
led through plastic pipes, to avoid material and atmospheric interference."
The rest of the article is a mishmash of
quaint yearnings and vague warnings. He
thought by now we'd have a moon colony,
underwater housing, moving sidewalks
(what is it with "slidewalks"?), at least one
fusion power plant, jet-powered hovercraft,
home appliances powered by radioisotope
"batteries," and popular foodstuffs made
from algae. He thought the entire area from
Boston to Washington would be "a single
If you're married, you may have concluded
city with a population of over 40 000 000."
that marking an anniversary is an opportunity
Asimov would have had to live to 94 to
that must be handled with delicacy and
see whether his predictions panned out,
imagination. And so it is for a magazine, too
but alas, he died in 1992 at age 72.
I'm not knocking Asimov. His envisioned
future wasn't so much a likely one as a deh i s y e a r i s t h e 50th anniversary of IEEE Spectrum. A half century is a
milestone that cannot go uncelebrated, but how to do it? Two of the standard
sired one. If you looked at what was going
approaches for a magazine's commemorative issue are to take a fond look back- on then and assumed it would continue-
and had the optimism to believe that future
ward or a bold look forward. The Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, also 50 this
advances would be applied aggressively to
year, took the former tack, with a look at bikinis over the decades (it turns out
that they get smaller, they get a little bit bigger, and then they get smaller again). improve people's lives or lift human civiliForecasting is harder but more interesting. For our 50th, we wanted an
zation in whatever way possible-you would
inspiring and compelling view of the world of tech 25 to 50 years from now, end up with something like Asimov's vision.
beyond the window of straightforward prediction. We
And so we are coming clean at the outset
liked the idea of making inferences, at least, about a fuof this issue: What we describe is a desired future as distant from today as we are now from the year
ture. Like Asimov did, we started with broad
of the magazine's founding.
areas of major technological ferment. We
We understood the risks. The Internet has made a
picked eight of them, including autonomous
minefield of the prediction business. It has long been acvehicles, wearable technology, and energy.
IEEE SPECTRUM 1964 / 2014
We describe the state of the art today and
cepted that any long-term forecasts you make about techlikely near-term developments, and then
nology will probably be wrong and might very well be comical. That's true even if you're
sketch out a future in which things go well.
one of the world's smartest and most acclaimed futurists, as was Isaac Asimov [above].
It so happens that this year is also the 50th anniversary of Asimov's legendary essay outlin- In other words, a future in which a string of
fortuitous events prevents a promising teching his vision of the world in 2014. Written on the occasion of the 1964 World's Fair in Asimov's
beloved hometown of New York City, the piece is titled "Visit to the World's Fair of 2014."
nology from being crushed by larger companies, stifled by the status quo, sidetracked
And there's mistake No. 1: There is no 2014 World's Fair.
by swifter or better-connected competitors,
The anniversary of Asimov's article has prompted a flurry of fatuous articles praising
his prescience. But Asimov was actually rather off the mark. Of the two or three dozen
choked by regulations, undone by unforeseen

The Pitfalls of Prediction

JuN 2014

NoRTh AmERICAN

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Deborah FeingolD/Corbis

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum June, 2014