And while we're on the subject, where's my flying car?

As the old saying goes, it's hard to make predictions, especially about the future. Case in point, Robert Anton Wilson's Cosmic Trigger (Vol. I), published in 1977.

This funny, provocative, and deeply strange book recounts Wilson's experiments with marijuana, peyote, and LSD, in the course of which he became at least somewhat convinced that he was receiving telepathic messages from extraterrestrials in the Sirius star system. Or maybe he didn't actually believe this; since Wilson insists that he does not actually believe anything, it's hard to say.

But for a man who doesn't believe anything, his book is chock full of optimistic forecasts of our immediate future - which, from the vantage point of 1977, means the period leading up to, and just slightly beyond, the year 2000. Sadly, these prognostications have proven less than accurate.

By the turn of the next century, Wilson writes on p. 218, referring to the year 2000,

we will be a completely new species in many dimensions: living in space, not on a planet; able to program our nervous system for any degree of function we wish; possessing a lifespan in centuries, and well on our way to Immortality.

Well, not so much. On p. 233 he gives more details:

The British Interplanetary Society already has a design for a starship that could be sent to Barnard's Star (6 lightyears away) in 2000. The first O'Neill space cities will be orbiting the earth by then, and by 2004, according to Dr. [Isaac] Asimov's calculations, the biological revolution will be producing DNA for any purpose we want, possibly including immortality.

Elsewhere he predicts an "Immortality Pill" available by around the year 2000, which will at least double and perhaps quintuple the human lifespan.

The "O'Neill space cities" he mentions are also known as L5 colonies. (L5 refers to an advantageous point in Earth orbit.) These colonies were a big idea in 1977. I was a college freshman then, and I remember reading Gerard K. O'Neill's book High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space, which laid out a vision of immense space cities that would capture solar energy and beam some of it to Earth, while using the rest to power hydroponic gardens and space-based industries. The cities would eventually become self-sufficient, supporting an increasingly large segment of humanity. All this was supposed to happen within a couple of decades. As the Amazon review of the book's latest edition points out, paraphrasing George Friedman, "the L5 society's slogan 'L5 in '95!' certainly wasn't referring to 2095."

Such predictions weren't limited to Wilson, O'Neill, and a few other visionaries. On P, 217 Wilson reports a McGraw-Hill Publications poll

in which a cross-section of scientists are asked to predict the technology of the next quarter-century.... [T]he majority predicted that by A.D. 2000 we will have:

• drugs to cure cancer
• artificial eyesight for the blind
• drugs to permanently increase intelligence
• chemical control of aging
• chemical control of senility
• successful cryogenic preservation.

A swing and a miss! I suppose we could argue that chemotherapy constitutes "drugs to cure cancer," though I suspect the scientists were predicting a more dramatic and surefire remedy. Artificial vision is slowly being developed, but is hardly commonplace. I'm not sure what is meant by "successful cryogenic preservation," but if it means cryogenically preserving and then resuscitating the dead, it hasn't happened.

Were a time traveler to have met with Wilson on one of his peyote trips and announced that he had come from the tail end of 2006, I suspect Wilson would have been dismayed to learn that as of this date there are no space cities, only a modest space station still under construction; no immortality pills, only a gradual increase in the average lifespan owing to better medical care and higher living standards; no pharmacological methods of boosting intelligence. Since Wilson predicts elsewhere in his book that humans would be landing on other planets by 2000, he would have been still more dismayed to learn that not only have no boots set down on Mars, but even the Moon has been off limits to our species since the mid-70s.

All of which is worth keeping in mind when we hear contemporary predictions of "the singularity" - the mind-blowing scientific breakthrough slated to occur in 2045. Will it happen? Unless we get that Immortality Pill in a hurry, not all of us will be around to find out.

Comments

[John_C]

All attainable goals, however lofty. I believe the main reason we have not made progress towards these futuristic goals in a meaningful way is that we as a species channel our energy and resources in destructive ways, such as wars like the one we are currently engaged in in Iraq.

As many astute observers have pointed out, for the money we've pissed away on Iraq (now officially for oil per President Bush), we could have freed ourselves from oil dependence by now with the proper investments and research into other energy technologies. The same applies to the other futuristic technologies, they don't happen because we are focused elsewhere. Perhaps because we're not so interested in implementing them anyway. Yeah, a spaceship to a distant star sounds great to science nerds, but how many in the real world feel a need for that and would actually want to spend the money and resources to make it a reality? We have enough problems on earth to solve as it is.

[sg]

We do have drugs to boost intelligence and memory.
Piracetam, Aniracetam, choline, and a variety of other nootropics permanently boost memory and intelligence.
We have drugs to control senility and parts of aging.
Perhaps 2000 was optimistic, but regardless we have are fast approaching the tech to do a lot of it.

[John Sawyer]

sg says:

"We do have drugs to boost intelligence and memory. Piracetam, Aniracetam, choline, and a variety of other nootropics permanently boost memory and intelligence."

My experience with these substances has been that the benefits vary widely from day to day, and their effects certainly may not be permanent, except possibly only mildly so--you have to keep taking them to get continued benefit. Of course, each person's experience will vary. These substances also don't make you more intelligent by way of "teaching" you anything--the second part of the intelligence equation, and mostly the larger part of it, is still to make a purposeful effort to be more intelligent, though some of these substances can sometimes give you the extra oomph to help you along (specifically, more active glucose utilization in the brain, protective effects against neuron burnout, faster transmission in the brain (though that's a pretty broad generalization), etc.). But it's not like the scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz--you don't "get more intelligent" just by taking a pill to get a bigger brain--you also have to study things at the same time, and so the real benefits of intelligence via this dual route (substances and study), as with study alone, come with time.

"We have drugs to control senility and parts of aging."

The drugs we currently have don't really "control senility" as effectively as we'd like--some of them are sometimes fairly effective, but the effects, like all the drugs discussed here, are variable and not guaranteed for each person. More effective drugs are always being promised, and that will probably happen, but again, as with intelligence, personal effort is also required for real protection against senility and aging.

"Perhaps 2000 was optimistic, but regardless we are fast approaching the tech to do a lot of it."

That's a more accurate assessment. We're headed in the right direction for these medications in many ways, with many more discoveries to be made.

[Bill Ingle]

My dim understanding of "The Singularity" is based on reading comments by Ray Kurzweil pertaining to continually enhanced computer technology finally reaching some kind of tipping point.

This seems to be a technologist's version of what others call "The Shift," "The Change," "The Transition," and so on (all variations, really, of what David Spangler once called "The New Age" years before that term acquired its present negative connotations).

This deals with widespread changes in consciousness, not technology, but the pattern is similar -- accelerating changes approaching some kind of critical mass.

An ardent student of The Change might practice something like Seth's _Preliminary Probable Self_ exercise (#2. at http://www.realitytest.com/doors.htm ).

Anyone sufficiently persistent to attain undeniable results with this exercise will likely realize there can be no single 2045; rather, there are (or will be) multiple probable 2045s.

The range of probable 2045s is as broad as the imagination; some versions lack any event such as The Singularity or The Change; others include some variation of either; any number of other probable futures (will) also exist.

Bill I.

[Caradoc]

Forget the flying car. I want my robot maid and 3D TV.

[McBain Howson]

You would make a good con-artist ;)