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The Amateur Prophets

The bibliography at the end of this chapter recommends several films made in the early years of the twentieth century - Fritz Lang's ``Metropolis'' and Menzies's film version of the H.G. Wells novel, ``Things to Come'' - which offered visions of the future. But the future of the early twentieth century is our past, so we can now look back and judge their success. We will notice that the predictions an age makes of its future tell us more about that age than about the future. This is illustrated by art forgeries; the best forgeries of a particular age are evident to later experts as forgeries, and moreover as forgeries of that particular age - their creators unconsciously incorporate the style of their own age in all that they do. In the following few pages, then, we will examine the past's vision of its future:

In the future, everyone will dress alike.

We see this in ``Metropolis'' and Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek. More recently, the same observation has been made by the social commentator Jerry Seinfeld. A superficial explanation for this phenomenon might be that it's a ploy to reduce the cost of costume design in movie sets, but this would not account for the prevalence of a uniformed future in novels such as Zamiatin's ``We'' or Huxley's ``Brave New World''.

A better explanation might be that this reflects an assumption about the future commonly held in the first part of the twentieth century: that the future would be a time of increased social cooperation, individuals giving up some of their individuality to better serve the shared goals of humanity. In support of this interpretation, we note that the two major new political movements of the first half of that century, communism and fascism, both advocated the subsumption of private goals to the goals of the State. This is implicit even in the names of the movements: communism aims at the communal ownership of the means of production, fascism takes its name from the fasces, the bundled sticks and axe symbolising the strength of the collective as compared with the weakness of the individual. We recall from Chapter Five that Howard Scott's techocrats and the technocrats of the film ``Things to Come'' also liked to wear uniform, no doubt for similar reasons.

Humanity will evolve into two sub-species: an effete class of owners, and a degraded class of workers

This is a vision found in ``Metropolis'', ``Brave New World'', by Aldous Huxley, and ``The Time Machine'', by H.G. Wells. It can probably be traced back to Marx, writing in the mid-nineteenth century, when he predicted that unchecked competition between capitalists would lead to the immiseration of the proletariat. So far, it has proven false: the standard of living of the working classes in most of the world rose for most of the last century.

The latest new technology will lead to a change in the moral character of mankind.

In the early part of the twentieth century, the new technology was the aeroplane. Two British aviators, Graham-White and Harry Harper, writing in 1914, speculated that

Airplanes, by linking the Earth, will bring about lasting peace between these close-knit nations.

H.G. Wells's novel and the associated film, ``Things to Come'', also see aviators as bringing in a new social order, and this theme is repeated in Rudyard Kipling's short story, ``As Easy as ABC''.

These ideas have an echo today. For example, here's Graham-White and Harper's prediction with one word changed:

The Web, by linking the Earth, will bring about lasting peace between these close-knit nations.

Haven't we heard this recently?

Closely allied to this view is the expectation that the latest technology will bring about a qualitative change in education, opening up new possibilities for society: here's Thomas Edison, writing in 1922.

Motion pictures will revolutionise our educational system, and in a few years will supplant largely, if not entirely, the use of textbooks.

We note several things about this quotation. Firstly and most importantly, it's quite false. Nothing of the sort occurred. Secondly, we note that the quote comes from someone whose business included the sale of motion picture apparatus. Thirdly, we can again turn it into a familiar contemporary quotation by changing `Motion pictures' to `Computers' or `The Web'.

Future technology consists of more of what we've got.

In `Things to Come' and in `Metropolis', the technology of the future consists of steam engines and electricity. A particular example is streamlining; this was a breakthrough in plane design in the 1940's and 1950's; it was then adopted by Detroit, largely for aesthetic reasons, leading to the `tailfin era'. We still tend to think of `futuristic' and `streamlined' as synonymous. Similarly, our current visions of the future are of better computers and electronic gadgets.

We conclude that when artists and visionaries offer us a window to the world of tomorrow, they are more likely to be showing us a mirror reflecting the predjudices and preconceptions of our own time.

Next: The Professional Prophets

Up: The Future

Previous: Popper's Refutation of Historicism

John Jones 2003-11-25