In 1966, Arthur C. Clarke was hard at work helping Stanley Kubrick make the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. Since he did (and indeed still does) a lot of writing about the future, he's often asked to provide his real predictions - "Sure, that's what you say for the story/novel/movie, but what do you really think the world will be like then?" And since 2001 was simultaneously one of his highest-profile works and also included a definite time frame directly in the title, it was inevitable that he write something about his actual predictions for that far-off year.

Now that the real 2001 has been and gone (and good riddance, most of us would say), we can look back at the article he wrote containing his predictions, and see how he did. So, I humbly present to my readers (all two of you, probably; I have no illusions of being a pundit):

Arthur C. Clarke's 1966 Report Card for Future-Predicting


Rather than critquing the entire article, I'm going to be a lazy lazy person and only concentrate on one small part of it, where he makes a concrete list of predictions. Let's examine each in turn.

Without going into details, let us list just a few of the services which will be available by 2001 -- not in the office or factory but in every home:

Direct TV reception, via satellite, from all major countries and political groups. This will imply several hundred channels, some of them of an extremely high cultural level.


Verdict: Correct. It's been possible for years now to get a satellite dish hooked up to your home (or do like some people I know and set up a pirated rig) and get zillions of channels, varying from non-local local stations (WPUD, Macon, Georgia) to many different specialized movie channels (all of which show the same movie at the same time). And of course he was correct about the high cultural level.

Cheap telephone calls between all locations and even moving individuals everywhere on earth. They will be billed at a flat rate, or possibly not even billed at all, if the equipment is hired.


Verdict: Correct. He overlooked the remarkable ability of phone companies to screw you out of every possible dime, but we do have cellphones and, despite my complaining, they're much much cheaper than anyone (except apparently Arthur) would have guessed back in the '60s.

On a slightly more expensive basis, worldwide face-to-face TV conversations.


Verdict: Mostly correct. Videoconferencing setups aren't very common in most homes, but you can get it if you really want (and the advent of webcams and broadband are gradually introducing the capability anyway). But for the moment, most people who need to videoconference will go to a place that has specialized gear and experience the phenomenon of dollar bills fleeing from their wallets.

Facsimile services whereby letters, printed matter, etc. can be reproduced instantly. The physical delivery of mail and newpapers will thus be largely replaced by the orbital post office, and the orbital newspaper, beaming down signals from space.


Verdict: Correct in technical aspects, but a little bit off in the social regard. Fax machines have been around for some time now (aren't you glad I'm here to tell you these things?) and have replaced a lot of correspondence that used to go by mail (although they aren't hooked directly up to satellite dishes). Junk mail has branched out to fill this new medium, too, although the old one hasn't exactly been abandoned - if I go two days without picking up my mail, the box gets stuffed so full of tree-spam that my mail-lady screams vulgarities at me and burns pictures of me in effigy late at night upon a grisly altar lit by black candles, and fires shoulder-launched rockets into my house. (Well, okay, maybe not. But she does give me a dirty look.)

Immediate access in the home via simple computer-type keyboards, and TV displays, to all the world's great libraries and information centers. And items needed for permanent reference could be printed off as soon as located on a copying machine - or filed magnetically in the home storage system.


Verdict: Correct. Who among us hasn't spent hour upon hour browsing through, say, the objects d'art at The Louvre, or reading through the works of Keats? And, of course, downloading hundreds of megs of porn into our 'home storage systems' for use as wank material. But chances are that most of you have, at least at one point or another, done something culturally worthwhile with this wondrous technological advance we call the Internet. I know I have (but only if I can count looking up those two URLs).

A computer to supervise and perhaps control all the normal household chores: hygenic, secretarial, culinary. A kind of benevolent central intelligence, it would combine most of the functions of butler, accountant, and social secretary. It would probably be called Jeeves.


Verdict: Well, five out of six ain't bad. There is a computerized Jeeves we're all familiar with, but he doesn't control my vacuum cleaner or clean my toilet. Although he does occasionally give some odd answers. Way back in olden times (this would have been about 1997 or so) I started coding a project of some sort, and my brain blanked on how to read command-line arguments. So rather than dig out my old textbook ('old' at the time meaning from about two months ago), I figured I'd try out this Ask Jeeves thing I'd heard about. So I asked it (and I quote): "How do I use command-line arguments in C?" It came back with (I swear) a whole bunch of links to instructions on how to use the female condom. Why it came to that topic from keywords like 'command' and 'argument' I'd really rather not think about. (You can't get the same response anymore; apparently they've tweaked their search engine just a tad over the past five years. Rather a pity.) So while there is a computer Jeeves trying to take care of various hygenic issues for me, it's still not close enough to call Arthur's prediction correct.

So overall, this list of predictions gets five out of six, or eighty-three and a third percent (you can tell I minored in math, can't you), for an overall grade of B. Taking into account some incorrect predictions from the rest of the article ("The production of natural meat is so inefficient a process that it may be uneconomical, or even prohibited, by the twenty-first century") might lower it a bit, but taking into account how easy it is to botch predictions, even a D is damn good.

A friend of mine suggested, only half-jokingly, that we write a letter to Arthur C. Clarke, apologizing on behalf of the human race that the real year 2001 sucked so much compared to his fictional 2001. So, as my part of the apology, I'll leave his grade at a B.

I leave you with the (rather ominous, in light of recent events) last paragraph of the predictions article.

In the race against catastrophe, of which H. G. Wells warned us, the last lap has already begun. If we lose it, the world of 2001 will be much like ours, with its problems and evils and vices enlarged, parhaps beyond endurance. But if we win, 2001 could mark the great divide between barbarism and real civilization. It is inspiring to realise that, with some luck and much hard work, we may live to see the final end of the Dark Ages.


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("The World of 2001", by Arthur C. Clarke, 1966. First published in Vogue magazine, also available in The View From Serendip by Arthur C. Clarke, Random House, 1977. Used without permission but I really don't think Arthur will mind.)