by G. Jack Urso
From the Aeolus 13 Umbra YouTube channel.
The Futurists, produced by CBS News and distributed by McGraw Hill Educational Films, explores how prominent academics,
researchers, and authors of the 1960s saw the future unfolding. With interviews and narration
by Walter Cronkite, the documentary is a generally positive, if guarded view of the
21st century imbued with Space Age-era optimism. As an artifact of
the past, it fits in with the mission of Aeolus 13 Umbra to explore influences and trends.
Clocking in at
25 minutes, Cronkite includes one breakaway, so the program seems designed for
a half-hour block on commercial television, but it’s hard to imagine this wonky
look at the future getting much airtime on network television except perhaps to
fill an early-hour Sunday morning public affairs network programming hole. Also,
the absence of any graphics and headshots-only betrays a low-budget
approach. No stock footage of space launches or computers and no images of the technological references made in the interviews grinds the
energy of the show to a near–complete halt.
With distribution by the McGraw
Hill Educational Film division, it seems that the program was also meant to do
double-duty in schools, perhaps for a senior-level high school science class or college students.
The panel is comprised
entirely of White men in high-profile academic, publication, and/or research positions. While fewer in number, there were, of course, also female academics and scholars of other races and creeds the program
could have turned to for a broader perspective. In this respect, it reflects
the times but demonstrates how these high-profile academic and research
positions were still largely segregated in 1967. Nevertheless, one will be
hard-pressed to find bias among the individuals interviewed, who, being
futurists, have a generally progressive view of society and politics.
Featured in the
program in order of appearance:
- Dr. Olaf Helmer, researcher, Rand Corp.
- Theodore Gorman, researcher, Rand Corp.
- R. Buckminster Fuller, architect.
- Sir Peter Bryan Betteware, biologist.
- Dennis Gabor, author of Inventing the Future.
- Daniel Bell, Sociology Dept. Chair, Columbia University.
- Gerard Piel, editor, Scientific American.
- Lord Ritchie Calder, Edinburgh University.
- Herman Kahn, director of The Hudson Institute and author of On Thermonuclear War.
- Sir Peter Bryan Medewar, Nobel Laureate.
- Isaac Asimov, author and academic, Boston University.
- Harrison Brown, author of The Challenge of Man’s Future.
- Bertrand De Jouvenel, philosopher, political economist, and futurist.
- Walter Sullivan, science editor, New York Times.
Cronkite sets
the stage in the opening which features Helmer and Gordon from the Rand
corporation throwing dice to predict the likelihood of possible future
outcomes.
A panel of experts has studied a list of
possible 21st century developments, from personality-controlled drugs to
household robots. They have estimated the numerical probability of each, from
zero to 100 percent. The twenty-sided dice are then rolled to simulate these
probabilities. A use of random numbers known as the Monte Carlo technique,
often used in think tank games. All of this is highly speculative.
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| Gif created by G. Jack Urso from screen shots from the film. |
The program
displays a decidedly First-World perspective on the future; however, to pass it off as irrelevant is to miss some buried treasure. Some predictions are spot-on,
others much less so, but altogether they provide an insight into then-current
academic views as well as the era itself.
R. Buckminster Fuller discusses the
technological challenges, and solutions, of human settlement on the Moon. He
also predicts automation will results in humans becoming mostly consumers
rather than hands-on producers. This was not an unusual concern in the 1960s
as criticism of our conspicuous consumer culture rose in the post-war era. Fuller accurately notes that the Chinese, African, and South American markets are crucial
and those who can dominate those markets will dominate the future economy. More
interestingly, Muller opines on the possibility of teleportation, a burgeoning
sci-fi trope more widely used by Star
Trek which premiered in 1966.
Isaac Asimov, despite writing on computers
and robots in his stories, instead focuses on “the human heart” and our collective
desire for improvement. He cautions that the future of humanity needs to be
based on global cooperation and that by 2067 we will either have conquered our problems
through that cooperation or be destroyed by our inability to work together.
Herman Kahn
makes some spot-on predictions about the rise of Japan as an economic power, but
misses the mark on China, suggesting it would be unable to emerge as a strong
world economic power due to competition from Japan.
Walter Sullivan predicts
some of the scientific advances in the next 35-40 years (2002-2007) to involve
resolving the question of whether the universe is expanding or static, a
greater understanding of the nature of matter, producing clean energy via
nuclear fission, fuel cells, and improved batteries for electric vehicles,
which could dominate the transportation networks of the future.
Sir Peter Bryan
Medewar suggests over-population and population control will become greater
concerns as medical advances extend the human lifespan.
Lord Ritchie
Calder posits, “Freedom begins with breakfast. You can have all the freedom in
the world, but if you’re not fed or taken care of — if society is not taking
care of your needs — then you’re not free.” While exemplative
of Calder’s socialist beliefs, in all modern Capitalist
nations forms of socialist programs like food assistance, disability assistance, and unemployment assistance now exist, and the need growing due to overpopulation and the effects of
global pandemics on the economy.
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| Pop culture’s concerns in the
mid-1960s about the future were a bit more mundane (photo by Donald Silverstein, 1966). |
Dr. Olaf Helmer,
at the beginning of the program, sums up the conclusions of the Rand Corp. think
tank’s experiment:
We wind up with a world which has the
following features: fertility control, 100-year lifespan, controlled thermal
nuclear power, continued automation, genetic control, man-machine symbiosis,
household robots, wideband communications, opinion control, and continued
organization.
Does any of that
sound familiar? While one can get bogged down with a cynical view of the future
based on these scholar’s predictions, there is an underlying optimism, a faith
that the inventive ingenuity that has carried civilization thus far will
continue to meet its challenges.
One can only
wonder what these futurists in 1967 would have thought of 2023 had they been able to see this far into the future.
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