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How Futurology Works · Stuff You Should Know

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