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Selects: How Futurology Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, it's me Joshuam. For this week's select I've
0:03
Speaker 1: chosen our January twenty sixteen episode on futurology. It's one
0:08
Speaker 1: of those topics that has a name that makes it
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Speaker 1: sound way cooler and far out than it actually is.
0:13
Speaker 1: But happily we found that when you dig into it,
0:16
Speaker 1: even the blandest parts of futurology are super interesting. Still,
0:21
Speaker 1: I hope you like this one.
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Speaker 2: Guys, welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
0:37
Speaker 3: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
0:39
Speaker 1: There's Charles w Chuck Bryant and Jerry's here, and it's
0:43
Speaker 1: stuff you should know from the future, but not really.
0:49
Speaker 3: How you doing, I'm fine, Well, good, that's good. I
0:54
Speaker 3: enjoyed this topic. I thought it was kind of neat. Yeah,
0:57
Speaker 3: it was. It was funny.
1:00
Speaker 1: When you're reading about futurology and futurelogists aka futurists, you
1:06
Speaker 1: tend to want to make it like more than it
1:10
Speaker 1: actually is, and when you look into the topic it
1:13
Speaker 1: keeps having to be beaten down just because of the
1:15
Speaker 1: name alone.
1:16
Speaker 3: Yeah, you sound like a little bit like a wackad
1:18
Speaker 3: do A whack could do, say you're a futurist, a seer.
1:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, sometimes they're thinking about they're using
1:25
Speaker 1: these these really neat techniques to predict the future. They're
1:32
Speaker 1: talking about some really mundane stuff, Yeah, boring stuff, economic forecasts,
1:37
Speaker 1: things like that, how much oil will be left in
1:39
Speaker 1: thirty years, that kind of thing. But then on the
1:41
Speaker 1: other hand, if you're a futurerologist, you may also be
1:44
Speaker 1: tasked with figuring out what technology we're going to be
1:47
Speaker 1: using in thirty years, or you know, what color the
1:52
Speaker 1: shiny jumpsuits we're all going to wear will be.
1:55
Speaker 3: That kind of stuff. Yeah. I think one of my
1:57
Speaker 3: favorite things is to look at past future predictions. Yeah,
2:02
Speaker 3: it's fun. Yeah, there's nothing that'll make someone look less
2:06
Speaker 3: knowledgeable than going back to what they thought the future
2:09
Speaker 3: would look like in the year two thousand, right, like
2:12
Speaker 3: back in the nineteen thirties or forties or sometimes some
2:15
Speaker 3: of those things happen. Yeah, and then it's amazing. Yeah,
2:18
Speaker 3: that's like wow, you know, because something to this.
2:21
Speaker 1: These guys are like really really dead on. And I
2:24
Speaker 1: was reading an article I think it was in Harvard
2:27
Speaker 1: Business Review, and it was a post by Paul Sappho,
2:32
Speaker 1: who runs a venture capital firm I believe called discern. Yeah,
2:37
Speaker 1: and Paul Sefa was saying like he was trying to
2:41
Speaker 1: get across that sci fi authors and future ologists their
2:50
Speaker 1: paths overlap quite a bit, but really there's pretty big distinctions.
2:54
Speaker 1: And even in this article they got lumped in together. Yeah,
2:57
Speaker 1: because sci fi writers do definitely use futurology techniques. But
3:04
Speaker 1: Paul Cefo was saying like, yeah, but a real futureologist
3:07
Speaker 1: you have to use logic.
3:09
Speaker 3: If you're a sci fi.
3:10
Speaker 1: Writer, you can just use your imagination, you don't have
3:12
Speaker 1: to back it up with anything. Yes, you're a creature ologist.
3:14
Speaker 1: You have to use logic that makes sense to whoever's
3:18
Speaker 1: hearing your prediction.
3:19
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think that's one reason why some sci
3:22
Speaker 3: fi writers have been right on the nose with some
3:26
Speaker 3: future predictions, because they're not hampered by logic and they
3:32
Speaker 3: can just free form, you know. Yeah, but then it's
3:36
Speaker 3: just a lucky guess. No, I don't think so. I
3:39
Speaker 3: think they're still applying a lot of the same rules
3:41
Speaker 3: of future ology. Yeah, but they're just not bound by
3:46
Speaker 3: you know, the laws of well not the laws, but
3:50
Speaker 3: you know, the laws of logic. Yeah, exactly. I'm with you.
3:54
Speaker 1: But that's the best science fiction though, I think, is
3:57
Speaker 1: something that logically makes sense. Yeah, because then it's just fantasy. Yeah,
4:02
Speaker 1: that's true.
4:03
Speaker 3: So futurology is recognizing and assessing potential future events. I
4:12
Speaker 3: could have sworn Jonathan Strickland wrote this, by the way,
4:14
Speaker 3: it ready, but it was not. No, it's very Strickland esk.
4:18
Speaker 3: Nicholas Gerbis. Yeah, that's Strickland's alter ego. I wonder if
4:22
Speaker 3: it is. I've never met this, Nicholas Gerbis. But the
4:26
Speaker 3: point Gerbus makes, which I think is good as it's
4:29
Speaker 3: a product of our times in many cases, like depending
4:31
Speaker 3: on where we are as a society, and like he
4:36
Speaker 3: makes a great point. During the Civil War there probably
4:39
Speaker 3: weren't a lot of like rosy predictions for the future
4:41
Speaker 3: American Civil War, sure, but in the Gilded Age people
4:44
Speaker 3: a lot more optimistic, optimistic, so they may have you know,
4:48
Speaker 3: it's a whole different deal like during the Cold War,
4:50
Speaker 3: for instance, right, a lot of paranoia, a lot of cynicism.
4:54
Speaker 3: Probably not going to be a rosy outlook for the future, right,
4:58
Speaker 3: like during the Gilded Age when it was rosier. Yeah,
5:01
Speaker 3: way more optimistic than the Cold.
5:03
Speaker 1: War, which is kind of ironic because the Gilded Age
5:06
Speaker 1: didn't have anything to be optimistic about. They were just pretending,
5:09
Speaker 1: hence the name. Yeah, the thing is what you've just said, though,
5:15
Speaker 1: is is kind of an argument against futurology because one
5:19
Speaker 1: of the big critiques of it is that a futureologist,
5:22
Speaker 1: they're not doing anything. Even if you're commenting on the
5:25
Speaker 1: past or the future, you're still really commenting about your present,
5:30
Speaker 1: your contemporary time, because that's what you.
5:32
Speaker 3: Or recent past.
5:33
Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, that's what you what you've lived through and experienced.
5:37
Speaker 1: That's all you can really reflect on. And futurology seeks
5:42
Speaker 1: to go beyond that.
5:44
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, that makes sense. So if you like, look
5:46
Speaker 3: at this thing that is happening now or just happened,
5:50
Speaker 3: then what is going to be happening in that thing
5:53
Speaker 3: in ten years? And it's a lot of times based
5:56
Speaker 3: on how the direction it's currently going. Yes, okay, so.
6:02
Speaker 1: Gerbis makes a pretty good It gives you a good
6:04
Speaker 1: example that the cell phone grew out of the telegraph,
6:08
Speaker 1: which ultimately is related further.
6:10
Speaker 3: Back to the smoke signal.
6:12
Speaker 1: Sure, right, yeah, but if you were a future all
6:15
Speaker 1: just hanging out around somebody who was sending smoke signals.
6:19
Speaker 3: Would you be able to predict the cell phone? Probably
6:22
Speaker 3: not or not? Could you predict the impact of the
6:26
Speaker 3: automobile or the highway system? Right? Maybe? But would you
6:31
Speaker 3: predict that people would have sex in the back seat
6:35
Speaker 3: of a car because it provides a little well, I
6:38
Speaker 3: don't think they did. Or urban sprawl? Yeah? Could you
6:41
Speaker 3: predict exurbs and edge cities just because the highways got built?
6:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, and not a lot of people did, even though
6:48
Speaker 1: a lot of people said there's going to be horseless
6:51
Speaker 1: carriages one day, and it's going they're going to change
6:54
Speaker 1: things big time. People are going to be able to
6:56
Speaker 1: move around a lot more. Yeah, But that doesn't mean
6:59
Speaker 1: that everybody saw every result of the automobile. It was
7:04
Speaker 1: a game changer, yeah, is what you could agreed. So
7:10
Speaker 1: what we're saying here, And if it sounds a little
7:12
Speaker 1: weird that we're at once supporting and criticizing futurology, that's
7:16
Speaker 1: basically the fun thing to do when you talk about
7:19
Speaker 1: futurology is to criticize it and be awed by it
7:24
Speaker 1: because a lot of times they really are super right.
7:27
Speaker 3: That's right. Futurology has been around for a long time.
7:33
Speaker 3: I mean, since people were writing fiction, there were people
7:36
Speaker 3: predicting the future, right, but as far as things didn't
7:42
Speaker 3: really get going as far as being meaningful until after
7:46
Speaker 3: World War Two, when the US started developing technological forecasting. Basically,
7:52
Speaker 3: like it was really important to try and see where
7:55
Speaker 3: things were going militarily, right, because it was super expensive
7:59
Speaker 3: to develop new technologies. It could take a long time.
8:03
Speaker 3: So they started thinking, hey, we need to get some
8:05
Speaker 3: people on board that can kind of hopefully predict where
8:09
Speaker 3: we're headed here so we can make the right decisions.
8:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, because if it takes a really long time, like
8:13
Speaker 1: you said, to develop a weapon, by the time you
8:15
Speaker 1: have that weapon in deployed in the field, you're going
8:19
Speaker 1: to need to know it's not already obsolete. The only
8:22
Speaker 1: way to do that is to predict what kind of
8:25
Speaker 1: warfare you're going to be engaged in. Because this is
8:27
Speaker 1: a time like at the end of World War two,
8:29
Speaker 1: so many inventions came out of World War one and
8:31
Speaker 1: two war machine inventions that things were changing so quickly
8:35
Speaker 1: that there was actually you can kind of put modern
8:38
Speaker 1: futureology into the lap of one guy, an Air Force
8:41
Speaker 1: general named hap Arnold, who saw that things were changing
8:46
Speaker 1: so fast that his Air Force needed to basically predict
8:50
Speaker 1: the future and see what direction it needed to go.
8:53
Speaker 1: So he looked around and he started tapping people to
8:55
Speaker 1: do that. One of the first people he tapped is
8:57
Speaker 1: a scientist anautical engineer named Theodore von Carmon.
9:03
Speaker 3: Yes, he was a super smart dude, and he led
9:05
Speaker 3: a team that did predict a lot of stuff like
9:09
Speaker 3: drones and as far as you know, the military using drones,
9:13
Speaker 3: not your uncle who flies it around the neighborhood, just
9:17
Speaker 3: a film stuff. He predicted the rise of Brookstone, target
9:21
Speaker 3: seeking missiles, supersonic aircraft, and even the atom bomb.
9:27
Speaker 1: All of this was in one report. Yeah, to hap
9:30
Speaker 1: Arnold like, this is like and this guy knocked it
9:33
Speaker 1: out of the park. But he and his group were
9:36
Speaker 1: very much limited to small academic and military circles. Like
9:40
Speaker 1: the general public wasn't aware that this was going on,
9:43
Speaker 1: but his group. Von Carmon's group so accurately foresaw the
9:49
Speaker 1: direction that modern warfare was going that you can also
9:55
Speaker 1: very easily make the case that no, he basically created
9:57
Speaker 1: a roadmap to the future that the Air Force follows.
10:00
Speaker 1: So is his prophecies were self fulfilling? Yeah, because he
10:04
Speaker 1: said go this way, and the Air Force went that way, yeah,
10:07
Speaker 1: and created all this stuff.
10:09
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then the military and well, the Brand Corporation specifically,
10:15
Speaker 3: it grew out of the US Air Force and Douglas Aircraft.
10:17
Speaker 3: In the mid forties. They said, well, having one person
10:21
Speaker 3: to say these things is great, but what we need
10:24
Speaker 3: is a team and a consensus among this team. So
10:28
Speaker 3: they kind of, well, not kind of. They very much
10:31
Speaker 3: patented a technique they called the Delphi technique d E.
10:35
Speaker 3: L Phi, and that is basically a technique where they're
10:39
Speaker 3: trying to get agreed on consensus from a number of people.
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Speaker 1: So there's this very famous story about how the Navy,
10:50
Speaker 1: I think lost a submarine, a nuclear submarine, or the
10:53
Speaker 1: Russians had lost a submarine something like that. There was
10:55
Speaker 1: a loss sub that they wanted to find and they
10:58
Speaker 1: had no idea where it was. So the Navy polled
11:02
Speaker 1: all these different different experts and all these different fields
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Speaker 1: that might have something to do with nuclear submarines, whether aeronautics,
11:14
Speaker 1: people from Noah, all these people right, and ask them
11:18
Speaker 1: where do you think the sub is? And no one
11:21
Speaker 1: hit it on the nose. But why when they basically
11:24
Speaker 1: used statistical distribution of these various opinions guesses of professionals.
11:31
Speaker 1: It led them right to that sub And that's what
11:34
Speaker 1: the Delphi technique does too. It takes opinions of experts
11:38
Speaker 1: in various fields and says, what do you think of this?
11:41
Speaker 1: And everybody sends in a questionnaire and anonymously, and there's
11:45
Speaker 1: no group meeting, so the group doesn't bow to pressure,
11:48
Speaker 1: no leaders emerge. They're giving their unvarnished opinion. And then
11:52
Speaker 1: after those opinions come in, they take that information and
11:57
Speaker 1: send it out again. So it goes in rounds and
11:58
Speaker 1: rounds and rounds until they finally come to a group
12:02
Speaker 1: consensus that in the future, we're all going to be
12:05
Speaker 1: wearing metallic blue jumpsuits.
12:08
Speaker 3: Yeah. And what they're doing is generating what's known as
12:11
Speaker 3: a scenario. And a guy named Herman Khan Kahn worked
12:15
Speaker 3: with Rand in the nineteen fifties and he's the one
12:19
Speaker 3: that kind of coined the term scenario as it applies
12:22
Speaker 3: to futurology. A pretty good definition I found was a
12:26
Speaker 3: scenario is a detailed portrait of a plausible future world,
12:30
Speaker 3: one sufficiently vivid that a planner can clearly see and
12:33
Speaker 3: comprehend the problems, challenges, and opportunities that such an environment
12:37
Speaker 3: would present. So it's you know, it's saying, in the future,
12:43
Speaker 3: we're going to have a scenario where there are going
12:46
Speaker 3: to be robots in every house hold. Yeah. And one
12:49
Speaker 3: of the biggest ways that they work on scenarios is
12:52
Speaker 3: with something called back casting, which is starting at the end,
12:56
Speaker 3: which is you got a robot in every house, and
12:58
Speaker 3: then go backwards to how you got there? Yeah, how
13:01
Speaker 3: you got there? Really? Yeah makes sense?
13:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, and a scenario that's a pretty cool scenario. They
13:06
Speaker 1: can also be as mundane as running a fire drill
13:10
Speaker 1: where you're envisioning the fire broke out in the high
13:13
Speaker 1: school gym, right, and so everybody needs to get out.
13:17
Speaker 1: That's a that's a scenario. It's as simple as that. Yeah. There.
13:20
Speaker 1: The weather forecasts are economic forecasts that are run through
13:24
Speaker 1: computer algorithms. The computer algorithms, the model, the process that
13:29
Speaker 1: it's going through is the scenario, and it spits out
13:31
Speaker 1: a possible prediction.
13:33
Speaker 3: It's almost like an effect then, cause right, yeah, you know, yeah,
13:37
Speaker 3: excellently put thank you. So Herman Kahn worked with rand
13:40
Speaker 3: and and he did you look him up at all? Oh?
13:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's one of the inspirations for Doctor Strangelove. Yeah,
13:46
Speaker 1: he was described as a super genius.
13:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was super smart, and he he kind of
13:51
Speaker 3: was a bit of a celebrity at the time. He
13:53
Speaker 3: wrote a book in nineteen sixty one called on Thermonuclear
13:57
Speaker 3: War and then went on to forum left ran to
14:00
Speaker 3: from the Hudson Institute, where he basically was like, we're
14:03
Speaker 3: a group that is going to forecast the future. So
14:08
Speaker 3: he became it was like super popular book. Yeah, and
14:11
Speaker 3: he spawned a lot of other books, similar books.
14:14
Speaker 1: We need to take a break, but we're getting We'll
14:16
Speaker 1: get right back to this in a second. So, Chuck,
14:34
Speaker 1: you were just talking about Herman Kahn being the super
14:37
Speaker 1: genius who is something of a celebrity. I read that
14:40
Speaker 1: Timothy Leary animated that he had taken acid with him.
14:44
Speaker 3: I believe it.
14:45
Speaker 1: He was a part of the inspiration for Doctor Strange Love.
14:48
Speaker 1: And this book that he wrote called the Year two
14:53
Speaker 1: thousand a Framework for Speculation on the next thirty three years.
14:58
Speaker 1: It basically established this outlook that America and capitalism could
15:04
Speaker 1: do anything thanks to basically technological inventiveness.
15:12
Speaker 3: Yeah, here's a let's hear some of these There was
15:15
Speaker 3: a list in that book, one hundred technical innovations very
15:19
Speaker 3: likely in the last third of the twentieth century, one
15:22
Speaker 3: hundred some of the first ten multiple applications of lasers, boom,
15:30
Speaker 3: high strength structural materials nailed it, wouldn't you think, Hellois
15:36
Speaker 3: new or improved materials for equipment and appliances. That's easy. Yeah,
15:42
Speaker 3: anyone can.
15:42
Speaker 1: Say that, sure should be better material and predict that
15:45
Speaker 1: now for twenty fifty.
15:48
Speaker 3: Longer range, longer range weather forecasting, more reliable weather forecasting.
15:54
Speaker 3: I don't know about that one. I think that was
15:55
Speaker 3: a miss. How about this here here are a few
15:58
Speaker 3: of the other ones. New techniques for cheap and reliable
16:03
Speaker 3: birth control for sure. Yeah, the pill. I don't know
16:07
Speaker 3: if the pill is around, we should do A whole
16:10
Speaker 3: thing may have been the same year because it came
16:12
Speaker 3: out in sixty seven, was it.
16:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, this book came out in sixty seven, right, right?
16:17
Speaker 3: A widespread use of nuclear reactors for power duh. Improved
16:21
Speaker 3: capability to change sex of a children or adult gender reassignment,
16:25
Speaker 3: Pervasive business use of computers. Yeah, they're all over. Personal pagers. Yeah,
16:31
Speaker 3: they came and went, and then one of the other
16:34
Speaker 3: ones was home computers to run households and communicate with
16:37
Speaker 3: the outside world. Yeah, the Internet of Things. Yeah.
16:40
Speaker 1: They also predicted the rise of the credit economy. Oh
16:43
Speaker 1: really Yeah, that we currently are in interesting yeah. So,
16:47
Speaker 1: and that was just like a list, like a sidebar basically, yeah,
16:51
Speaker 1: in the book, in this book, but the whole idea
16:54
Speaker 1: that America and capitalism in the West could invent its
16:58
Speaker 1: way out of any problem. Will we possibly ran across
17:00
Speaker 1: in the future was the premise or the position of
17:04
Speaker 1: this book, and it caused an enormous furor in academic circles,
17:10
Speaker 1: and not just academic circles, because this book was one
17:13
Speaker 1: of the first to introduce to the public that there
17:15
Speaker 1: were such things as think tanks like Randy and that
17:19
Speaker 1: Club of Rome. Yeah, and that these people were sitting
17:22
Speaker 1: there thinking about the future and we're writing books about it,
17:25
Speaker 1: and it kind of became a hip thing. But the
17:28
Speaker 1: Club of Rome was basically diametrically opposed to the outlook
17:33
Speaker 1: that Herman Kahn had. And the Club of Rome was
17:36
Speaker 1: a business consortium that conspiracy theorists say is basically the seat.
17:41
Speaker 3: Of the new world order.
17:42
Speaker 1: They're still around, they are, And the Club of Rome
17:46
Speaker 1: basically said No, we are establishing the gloom and doom
17:49
Speaker 1: camp that there's such thing as resource depletion overpopulation and
17:54
Speaker 1: we are basically doomed.
17:55
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean we've covered this a lot on the show.
17:58
Speaker 3: Different people that have made wild predictions about we're going
18:01
Speaker 3: to run out of this by this year. Thomas Malthus, Yeah,
18:04
Speaker 3: very Malthusian. One of the books that came out of
18:06
Speaker 3: the Club of Rome in nineteen seventy two was called
18:09
Speaker 3: Limits to Growth by Danella H. Meadows, Dennis Meadows, Jurgen Randers,
18:14
Speaker 3: and William Barn's at MIT and they had a very
18:18
Speaker 3: dire apocalyptic outlook of the future, as did a lot
18:23
Speaker 3: of other people at the time, and a lot of
18:26
Speaker 3: these were way off base. A lot of these dire predictions, right,
18:30
Speaker 3: you know, which happened over and over again. Yeah, and so.
18:33
Speaker 1: On the Club of Rome's website they defend the Limits
18:37
Speaker 1: to Growth. No, not the Limits to Growth, the yeah,
18:40
Speaker 1: the Limits to Growth book, basically saying that it's often
18:45
Speaker 1: miscited as predicting the collapse of civilization due to renewable
18:51
Speaker 1: resource over use, right, and it doesn't do that. But
18:54
Speaker 1: they did use these same kind of techniques that Herman
18:57
Speaker 1: Kahn and some of his other colleagues. We're coming up
19:01
Speaker 1: with by by taking population information, food production data, industrial production, pollution,
19:09
Speaker 1: and non renewable resource consumption and then running scenarios through
19:13
Speaker 1: this model that they built using computers and coming up
19:17
Speaker 1: with the scenarios they came up with were kind of grim.
19:21
Speaker 1: The thing is is, even though they missed the mark,
19:24
Speaker 1: they still helped establish a very young idea that you
19:31
Speaker 1: can't just throw your McDonald's styrofoam on the ground, You
19:34
Speaker 1: can't drive a car that gets two miles per gallon, like,
19:38
Speaker 1: we can't live like everything is just forever abundant, that
19:42
Speaker 1: there's no such thing as scarcity.
19:45
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a double edged sword though, Like I totally agree.
19:47
Speaker 3: But then it also when you're wrong about these things,
19:50
Speaker 3: it gives Cynex something to point to to say, well, see,
19:53
Speaker 3: we didn't run out of oil in the early nineteen
19:56
Speaker 3: eighties like you said we would, and we don't do
19:57
Speaker 3: anything about it. Yeah.
19:59
Speaker 1: I mean, man, that is a great point. It's a
20:02
Speaker 1: very great point. But at the same time, what you're
20:05
Speaker 1: seeing here between the limits to growth and the year
20:08
Speaker 1: two thousand, we still see this today with climate change.
20:14
Speaker 1: You know, it's like, let's do something about climate change.
20:17
Speaker 1: The other people say, no, we can invent our way
20:19
Speaker 1: out of it. And besides, if we do something about
20:21
Speaker 1: climate change, it's going to mess with the economy. And
20:24
Speaker 1: these people are saying, forget about the economy. We are
20:27
Speaker 1: all going to.
20:27
Speaker 3: Die, yeah, or not necessarily forget about the economy. But
20:30
Speaker 3: maybe you can do both, right, you know, yeah, you know.
20:34
Speaker 3: My whole deal with that has always been just like
20:36
Speaker 3: why take that risk?
20:38
Speaker 1: Well, who we humans aren't very good at like preparing
20:41
Speaker 1: for future risk, which is I think one of the
20:44
Speaker 1: reasons why future ologists are so revered and odd but
20:48
Speaker 1: also mocked and scorned, because they're doing something that's almost
20:52
Speaker 1: almost flies in the face of human nature.
20:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're really putting yourself out there when you predict
20:57
Speaker 3: some of this stuff.
21:00
Speaker 1: One other episode that that just reminded me of the
21:02
Speaker 1: ten thousand year clock.
21:03
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, that was a great one. Yeah. So
21:07
Speaker 3: the military, the United States military obviously has used it
21:10
Speaker 3: for years. Then beginning when was this in the sixties
21:15
Speaker 3: or seventies, that business got into it.
21:18
Speaker 1: So in nineteen seventy two, I think Royal Dutch Shell
21:22
Speaker 1: heard somebody at the top heard that there wasn't going
21:24
Speaker 1: to be any oil in by nineteen eighty five, and
21:27
Speaker 1: they went w Yeah.
21:28
Speaker 3: Businesses basically said, wait a minute, there are people that
21:32
Speaker 3: can actually use models to determine what the future might
21:36
Speaker 3: look like, right, how can we use that to make money? Well,
21:39
Speaker 3: let's throw money at them and find out exactly.
21:42
Speaker 1: A couple of other places too that were nascent think
21:46
Speaker 1: tanks like RAND was the Stanford Research Institute Futures Group
21:50
Speaker 1: in the California Institute of Technology early like kind of
21:56
Speaker 1: think tank breeding grounds of smart people walking around thinking
22:01
Speaker 1: about the future.
22:02
Speaker 3: But that wasn't enough.
22:03
Speaker 1: You can't just say this is what I think it's
22:06
Speaker 1: going to be like, you have to back it up
22:09
Speaker 1: and we'll talk about how they back it up right
22:10
Speaker 1: after this.
22:27
Speaker 3: How do they back it up?
22:29
Speaker 1: Well, they use different techniques. If you're a futurist or
22:32
Speaker 1: a future ologist, you're going to be using techniques that
22:35
Speaker 1: are pretty recognizable. But the way you put them together
22:39
Speaker 1: and the things you sort out is what's going to
22:42
Speaker 1: make you successful or not successful. Right, So you like
22:45
Speaker 1: brainstorm ideas.
22:46
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's probably where you start. Yeah, it's just like
22:49
Speaker 3: blue Sky Territory as.
22:50
Speaker 1: They say, yeah, you imagine things using scenarios or games,
22:55
Speaker 1: apparently game theory.
22:56
Speaker 3: But we got to do that at some point.
22:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've been avoiding it cano so like we's a
23:01
Speaker 1: mind bender. We could mess it up really bad, Yeah,
23:04
Speaker 1: but we'll do it. That changed the futurism feel tremendously
23:11
Speaker 1: when they came up with game theory, because it's a
23:13
Speaker 1: pretty good way of predicting how people will work. And
23:16
Speaker 1: that's one of the big confounding factors is you can
23:21
Speaker 1: predict something, follow every single one of these steps that
23:23
Speaker 1: we're talking about right now, and then people will just
23:27
Speaker 1: cut to the left all of a sudden, and your
23:30
Speaker 1: prediction just fell to the wayside because humanity went this
23:33
Speaker 1: way real quick.
23:34
Speaker 3: Yeah. Or somebody invented a game changer, a game changing
23:38
Speaker 3: product or innovation, Yeah, that nobody saw coming. Yeah. What's
23:42
Speaker 3: that called disruptive technology? Is it? Yeah? That's a good
23:46
Speaker 3: I like that, not a bad band name. Oh, I
23:50
Speaker 3: wonder if it's out there.
23:51
Speaker 1: If so, it's made of like Silicon Valley rich guys.
23:54
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is like my sideband. Right.
23:57
Speaker 1: Do you want to gather professional opinions using say the
24:00
Speaker 1: Delphi technique? Yeah, you want to do historical analysis current
24:05
Speaker 1: trends are very huge and can help you as well.
24:09
Speaker 1: And then like you were saying, I think you call
24:10
Speaker 1: it back masking.
24:13
Speaker 3: No, that's turn me on dead man right from the bets.
24:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what they do. They listen to the beatles
24:21
Speaker 1: backwards where what it was it. It's not back masking,
24:27
Speaker 1: I know, but where they where you envision the future
24:30
Speaker 1: and then you work your way backward from it. When
24:33
Speaker 1: you do this, you do all this stuff together and
24:36
Speaker 1: again back casting, backcasting, and when you're when you're using
24:41
Speaker 1: this along with computer algorithms that can model like the
24:44
Speaker 1: economy or the weather, oil consumption or something like that,
24:49
Speaker 1: you can come up with something that you could rightly
24:52
Speaker 1: say is a prediction or a forecast for the future
24:55
Speaker 1: where we're going to be. That's right again, though, just
24:59
Speaker 1: things happen, Like for example, Herman Kahn did not predict
25:03
Speaker 1: the oil crisis that came the year after he wrote
25:08
Speaker 1: another famous book. Yeah, in nineteen seventy two, he wrote
25:13
Speaker 1: a response, I think to limits the growth and just
25:16
Speaker 1: totally missed the oil crisis.
25:18
Speaker 3: Man. But how could he predict that? Because the oil crisis.
25:20
Speaker 1: Came out of the OPEC oil embargo that was punishment
25:24
Speaker 1: for the US's being involved in the Yam Kipper War.
25:27
Speaker 3: So you couldn't see that coming. No, and that's the
25:29
Speaker 3: big problem with futurology. Yes, exactly, our own US government
25:34
Speaker 3: has been wrong. The US Department of Interior announced twice
25:37
Speaker 3: in nineteen thirty nine and then in nineteen fifty one
25:40
Speaker 3: that we only had thirteen years of oil left. Yeah,
25:44
Speaker 3: so weird that both times it was thirteen years.
25:47
Speaker 1: They don't like to bother people, so they wait until
25:49
Speaker 1: there's thirteen years left, and they sound it's.
25:52
Speaker 3: Just such a specific number.
25:54
Speaker 2: It.
25:56
Speaker 3: What else, Well, we've talked about Moore's law before. That
25:58
Speaker 3: has aged a little better than some other futurology predictions
26:03
Speaker 3: because it has been revised over the years, which is
26:07
Speaker 3: sort of a cheat a little bit. But still, what
26:10
Speaker 3: I really meant was this right.
26:12
Speaker 1: I think he went from eighteen months to two years
26:14
Speaker 1: or something like that. But what's funny is Gerbis stakes
26:17
Speaker 1: his position in this article. He's saying, like the limits
26:21
Speaker 1: to Growth and the other Club of Rome stuff, they
26:23
Speaker 1: missed the mark because they predicted catastrophe, and Moore's law
26:29
Speaker 1: predicts technological innovation, so it's successful. So yeah, clearly Gerbis
26:35
Speaker 1: agrees with the Herman Khan group rather than the Club
26:38
Speaker 1: of Rome group.
26:39
Speaker 3: I don't think it's subtle.
26:40
Speaker 1: I think you can't just say, like the Gloom and
26:43
Speaker 1: Doom camp has just been completely eradicated or proven wrong.
26:47
Speaker 3: Agreed, you know, yeah, Moore's law. I don't eve think
26:49
Speaker 3: we said specifically. It predicts the number of transistors on
26:53
Speaker 3: integrated circuits and computers doubles every two years, right, And
26:57
Speaker 3: like we said, it's been updated and it's been pretty consistent.
27:00
Speaker 1: And so with Herman Khan's popularity, and then the big
27:04
Speaker 1: high profile book publishing argument that he got in with
27:11
Speaker 1: the Club of Rome that led to like a spade
27:13
Speaker 1: of other futureology books that I.
27:15
Speaker 3: Remember it being a big deal when I was a kid.
27:17
Speaker 3: I remember a lot of people talking about the near
27:20
Speaker 3: and far future.
27:22
Speaker 1: The one that I ran across in this article that
27:24
Speaker 1: I had heard of, but I didn't know anything about Alvin.
27:27
Speaker 3: Toffler's Future Shock. I remember that.
27:29
Speaker 1: I think, did you read it? N The cover I
27:32
Speaker 1: guarantee would just give you a nostalgia. I'm really but
27:35
Speaker 1: it came out in nineteen seventy and it predicts a
27:37
Speaker 1: future where too much rapid change technological change and advancement.
27:43
Speaker 1: It happens too quickly, and people get all sorts of
27:46
Speaker 1: stressed and just worn out and basically have all manner
27:52
Speaker 1: of terrible reactions to it. And I'm like, oh, well,
27:56
Speaker 1: I predicted twenty fifteen.
27:59
Speaker 3: So like a person's emotions couldn't handle.
28:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're just overwhelmed, okay, through too much rapid technological
28:07
Speaker 1: innovation happens too quick.
28:09
Speaker 3: Do you think we're overwhelmed?
28:11
Speaker 1: Like I get stressed out by like say social media
28:13
Speaker 1: or something like that.
28:14
Speaker 3: Yeah. I wonder if it's like people of a certain
28:16
Speaker 3: age maybe Yeah.
28:18
Speaker 1: I would guess if you're born into it, you're used
28:20
Speaker 1: to it, So it would probably more likely apply to
28:23
Speaker 1: a transition population, like.
28:26
Speaker 3: Right, a transitional generation? Is that what we are? Don't
28:30
Speaker 3: you get stressed by social media? Don't you get like
28:32
Speaker 3: just tense and uh yeah, I mean I kind of
28:35
Speaker 3: just hate.
28:35
Speaker 1: It or having like having information, all this information and
28:39
Speaker 1: all of it's just so thin ye, content wise or
28:44
Speaker 1: value wise, but there's tons of it. Yeah, and it's
28:47
Speaker 1: always coming at you.
28:49
Speaker 3: Ye. Always wears me out. It wears me out. I
28:52
Speaker 3: got the future, shock, chuck, you got the Jimmy legs yeah, no,
28:57
Speaker 3: I totally agree. I'm like that. I just want to
29:00
Speaker 3: shut it all down, just sh everybody. Not podcasts though, right, yes,
29:08
Speaker 3: that should live on. So we talked about science fiction
29:11
Speaker 3: writers and how they are easily off the hook because
29:14
Speaker 3: they're just writers, right, They're not supposed to predict the future,
29:18
Speaker 3: but they have been. You can't dismiss it because they've
29:20
Speaker 3: been on the money or close to it a lot
29:23
Speaker 3: over the years. Yeah, because, like we said, they're not
29:25
Speaker 3: hampered by the rational laws of today. They can just
29:30
Speaker 3: say whatever they want and if they're wrong, it's like, hey, dude,
29:33
Speaker 3: I'm just writing stuff. Yes, this is fiction, right, But
29:38
Speaker 3: a few of the highlights. Jules Verne mid nineteenth century
29:42
Speaker 3: predicted going to the Moon in a spacecraft.
29:46
Speaker 1: Not only that, so he predicted it would be shot
29:49
Speaker 1: out of a cannon basically yeah, but done. But the
29:53
Speaker 1: thing that he really got though, was that he placed
29:58
Speaker 1: the moon shot in Florida. Yeah, like one hundred and
30:01
Speaker 1: thirty seven miles from Cape Canaveral, where they do launch
30:04
Speaker 1: rockets to the Moon. Not bad now, and for the
30:06
Speaker 1: same reason too, Like that was it's close to the equator.
30:10
Speaker 3: Oh is that why? That's one of the reasons why.
30:12
Speaker 1: Plus Cape Canaveral is largely protected by the Gulf Stream
30:17
Speaker 1: from hurricanes. Like as a hurricane comes ashore right before
30:21
Speaker 1: it starts to get to Canaveral, it goes.
30:23
Speaker 3: Out again right and then hits North Carolina. Interesting that
30:27
Speaker 3: that'd be an interesting conversation to have been in on
30:30
Speaker 3: Like oh, when they were picking play, like where should
30:32
Speaker 3: we launch this? I mean, where should we put all
30:35
Speaker 3: of our money in? Right? HG. Wells He predicted tanks. Yeah,
30:41
Speaker 3: he was here three.
30:42
Speaker 1: Supposedly he was the first guy to really think of
30:44
Speaker 1: himself as a futurist.
30:46
Speaker 3: He predicted the Adam bomb in nineteen oh eight, aerial
30:48
Speaker 3: bombing in nineteen oh eight. What The name robot was
30:54
Speaker 3: actually coined by a science fiction writer, a check writer
30:57
Speaker 3: named Carl Kopek. In nineteen twenty one, he named robots.
31:04
Speaker 1: I think the all time winner, though, is Hugo Gernsbach.
31:09
Speaker 1: And Hugo Gernsbach. If you're into science fiction, you recognize
31:12
Speaker 1: his first name because he's who the Hugo Award is
31:15
Speaker 1: named after. You may also recognize his last name too,
31:17
Speaker 1: if you're a Hugo Gernsbach fan. But back in I
31:21
Speaker 1: think the nineteen tens.
31:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was rinning.
31:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, he wrote a book called Ralph one two four
31:27
Speaker 1: C forty one plus. He predicted everything in this.
31:32
Speaker 3: Yeah you know what that means. It's actually a play
31:35
Speaker 3: on words one two It means one two for C
31:41
Speaker 3: for one another. You get it. Wow. Yeah, that's great.
31:46
Speaker 3: One two four C for one and then another is
31:48
Speaker 3: the plus sign. Yeah. Yeah that alone, I was sold. Yeah,
31:52
Speaker 3: it's like, I love this guy.
31:53
Speaker 1: It's just like that Van Halen album. OHU eight one
31:55
Speaker 1: two exactly.
31:58
Speaker 3: So what is he predicted? He predict did solar power,
32:01
Speaker 3: like the realistic use of solar power? Uh huh. He
32:04
Speaker 3: predicted plastics, video phones, tape recorders, jukeboxes, loud.
32:11
Speaker 1: Speakers, tinfoil, rust, poof steel, synthetic fabrics, all in one book.
32:18
Speaker 1: And he's famous in the Hugo Awards named after him
32:21
Speaker 1: because he wanted to make science fiction more science based.
32:24
Speaker 1: Yeah you know, I'm using that same logic. So he
32:28
Speaker 1: would have been a very like almost a father of
32:31
Speaker 1: future ology.
32:33
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, for sure. You know, here's a few other
32:35
Speaker 3: things from that book. This one, to me, I'm surprised
32:39
Speaker 3: no one's done this yet. The appetizer, which is at
32:42
Speaker 3: a restaurant in an advanced scientifically advanced restaurant will be
32:46
Speaker 3: a room that you wait in before you get your
32:48
Speaker 3: table that's flooded with gases that make you hungry. Oh yeah,
32:52
Speaker 3: not bad. Yeah, just have a seat in the appetizer room, right,
32:55
Speaker 3: we'll be ready shortly.
32:57
Speaker 1: Just like bloody fingernails, a scratch send in the walls
33:00
Speaker 1: as people are trying to get to the other room
33:02
Speaker 1: where the food is.
33:04
Speaker 3: The telautograph, which is basically a fax machine, the telefat
33:10
Speaker 3: which was a picturephone, had a universal translator where they
33:14
Speaker 3: translate any language right there in your hand. Yeah, not bad.
33:19
Speaker 3: And then this one I love. The Vacation City was
33:24
Speaker 3: a suspended city and a domed suspended city twenty thousand
33:28
Speaker 3: feet in the air that used a device that nullified gravity.
33:32
Speaker 3: And in vacation City, no mechanical devices are permitted because
33:36
Speaker 3: it was supposed to be a true escape. That's awesome
33:39
Speaker 3: from the mechanized world. Waiting for that one. And this
33:42
Speaker 3: was in nineteen eleven. Yeah, he predicted just that there
33:45
Speaker 3: would be a need for that.
33:46
Speaker 1: That's like that town in West Virginia, Green something, West
33:50
Speaker 1: Virginia where the people who have electromagnetic sensitivity. Go because
33:54
Speaker 1: you're not allowed to have any electromagnetic stuff. Oh really,
33:57
Speaker 1: because there's like a radio telescope whe there's something there
34:01
Speaker 1: could be interfered with.
34:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you could be amish. Can you just be amish? No,
34:07
Speaker 3: like I want to be amish. If you're Harrison Ford,
34:09
Speaker 3: you could be yeah, or Woody Harrelson. Yeah, right, you
34:15
Speaker 3: got anything else? How about these predictions for the future.
34:17
Speaker 3: There's a couple in here there kind of funny. Ten
34:20
Speaker 3: predictions that missed the mark, and these are real predictions.
34:24
Speaker 3: In nineteen sixty seven, US News and World Report said
34:28
Speaker 3: that by the end of the century, we will launch
34:30
Speaker 3: our freight across the continent with missiles. Like you order
34:35
Speaker 3: something from Amazon in New York instead of having a
34:37
Speaker 3: fulfillment center nearby, Right, they just put it in a
34:40
Speaker 3: missile and shoot it to you. Yeah, didn't happen. No,
34:44
Speaker 3: but drones are coming? Are they really? Are they still
34:47
Speaker 3: on that? Probably? Okay.
34:49
Speaker 1: In nineteen fifty five, a guy named Alex Lewett predicted
34:53
Speaker 1: nuclear power vacuum cleaners.
34:57
Speaker 3: This one I think would be pretty great, dissolving dishes. Yeah,
35:01
Speaker 3: and asked what it would be like in the year
35:04
Speaker 3: two thousand, a science writer named Valdemire. Come, there's a
35:09
Speaker 3: lot of man one, two, three, four five. He's a
35:13
Speaker 3: fabulous science writer with the funny name Consonants in a row.
35:16
Speaker 3: He said, you would basically, uh, put your plate in
35:21
Speaker 3: two hundred and fifty degree water at the end and
35:23
Speaker 3: it will just dissolve it. No more dishwashing. Uh.
35:28
Speaker 1: Bucky Fuller predicted that Canada would be a subtropical climate
35:34
Speaker 1: because we build a dome over it.
35:37
Speaker 3: That didn't happen.
35:38
Speaker 1: No, it didn't, which is strange because Bucky Fuller was
35:41
Speaker 1: pretty sharp.
35:42
Speaker 3: Dude. Here's another one. Was he really? Yeah? Buckminster Fuller?
35:47
Speaker 3: Oh I didn't pick up on that.
35:49
Speaker 1: He's who bucky balls are named after. Really, why I don't.
35:55
Speaker 1: He may have invented him. I'm not sure.
35:57
Speaker 3: What's the bucky ball.
35:58
Speaker 1: It's the those little balls that are magnetic spheres that
36:01
Speaker 1: like you, Oh, they'll shape in bucket balls.
36:03
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. Here's one. A Scottish geneticist that said in
36:08
Speaker 3: the nineteen twenties that in the future, one third of
36:11
Speaker 3: the babies would not be born. Oh, only one third
36:15
Speaker 3: would be born as a result of pregnancy and the
36:17
Speaker 3: other babies would be born in a lab.
36:20
Speaker 1: Would they be grown basically exogenesis? Yeah, here's the last one.
36:25
Speaker 1: Check you ready. Nineteen seventy five, the Research Institute of America,
36:29
Speaker 1: which sounds pretty smart, said that by nineteen seventy five,
36:35
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, this is several years before that, we would
36:38
Speaker 1: all be driving personal helicopters.
36:41
Speaker 3: Yeah.
36:42
Speaker 1: Did not pan out, Probably never will. I don't know
36:45
Speaker 1: if i'd want a personal helicopter.
36:48
Speaker 3: You know. I was for Emily's birthday. I rented a
36:51
Speaker 3: cabin in the North Georgia Mountains. Did you take a
36:53
Speaker 3: personal helicopter there? No? But I was sitting on the
36:56
Speaker 3: deck we all were, and way across the valley on
37:00
Speaker 3: the side of a mountain was this huge, huge house.
37:03
Speaker 3: And I heard a sound of a helicopter. I was like,
37:06
Speaker 3: and I saw a blinking light. I got out the
37:08
Speaker 3: binoculars and this dude had a helicopter. Wow. And he
37:13
Speaker 3: took it and he flew it down about two miles
37:16
Speaker 3: to the lake at the bottom of the valley. And
37:19
Speaker 3: I guess he has a lake house and a mountain house,
37:22
Speaker 3: and the easiest way to get there is to make
37:24
Speaker 3: the four minute helicopter flight. That's crazy. Yeah. Wow, it
37:28
Speaker 3: was pretty amazing. Wow, I want to know who that
37:30
Speaker 3: guy is? Nut guy could be a lady. Yeah, it
37:33
Speaker 3: could be what am I saying? It could be Carly Fiorina. Yeah.
37:36
Speaker 1: Is that she's the woman who's running for GOP president candidate?
37:42
Speaker 1: Oh right, Fiurina, that's right, gotcha?
37:47
Speaker 3: Go ahead? Oh oh sorry, let's see.
37:51
Speaker 1: Well, if you want to know more about futurology, you
37:53
Speaker 1: can type that word into the search bar at house
37:55
Speaker 1: to work dot com. And since Chuck had an anecdote
37:57
Speaker 1: about helicopters, it's time for listeners.
38:03
Speaker 3: It sort of looked like one of those Magnum p
38:05
Speaker 3: I ones too.
38:05
Speaker 1: Well, if I did have a personal helicopter, it would
38:08
Speaker 1: look an awful lot like that.
38:09
Speaker 3: I'm sure what Hey, guys, my name is Shelby. I'm
38:12
Speaker 3: honored for you to be reading this. My husband and
38:14
Speaker 3: I love your show, and you've solved our dilemma as
38:16
Speaker 3: to what to listen to in our car together. I
38:18
Speaker 3: want to let you know you did a great job
38:20
Speaker 3: on the HIV AIDS podcast. However, I think you missed
38:23
Speaker 3: telling a really important story about the AIDS crisis. Just
38:26
Speaker 3: before the AIDS crisis broke, a method for treating heemophilia,
38:29
Speaker 3: called a clotting factor concentrate was developed. I finally let
38:32
Speaker 3: those suffering from the disease live into adulthood and completely
38:36
Speaker 3: change the landscape of the disorder. By the time HIV
38:39
Speaker 3: was discovered to be a blood born virus, many of
38:41
Speaker 3: those suffering from hemophilia already had it, not to mention
38:44
Speaker 3: that many also contracted hepatitis. However, the pharmaceutical companies did
38:48
Speaker 3: not begin to pasteurize the drug in spite of their
38:51
Speaker 3: knowledge that it was spreading HIV until a strong public
38:54
Speaker 3: outcry prompted a government intervention. I think the story is
38:57
Speaker 3: not told often enough. In the injustice that these individuals
39:00
Speaker 3: suffered at the hands of big Pharma is undoubtedly one
39:03
Speaker 3: of the greatest our country has seen. Man. There's an
39:06
Speaker 3: extremely informative and sad documentary on the topic called Bad
39:09
Speaker 3: Blood Colon A cautionary tale. Anyway, that's about it, And
39:13
Speaker 3: I'm sorry if I bummed everyone out. That is from Shelby.
39:18
Speaker 1: Shelby thank you for not only that illuminating email, yeah,
39:23
Speaker 1: but also the documentary recommendation.
39:26
Speaker 3: We're always looking for those absolutely.
39:28
Speaker 1: If you want to get in touch with us, you
39:29
Speaker 1: can send us an email to Stuff podcast at houstuffworks
39:32
Speaker 1: dot com and has always tuned us at our home
39:34
Speaker 1: on the web. Stuff Youshould Know dot com.
39:39
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