[ExI] TIME magazine, 1966 "THE FUTURISTS: Looking Toward A.D. 2000"

[Michael LaTorra]

THE FUTURISTS: Looking Toward A.D. 2000

TIME magazine, Friday, Feb. 25, 1966 Article
http://preview.tinyurl.com/5nraqb


Some futurists like to make predictions about homey details of living. The
kitchen, of course, will be automated. An A.D. 2000 housewife may well make
out her menu for the week, put the necessary food into the proper storage
spaces, and feed her program to a small computer. The experts at Stanford
Research Institute visualize mechanical arms getting out the preselected
food, cooking and serving it. Similarly programmed household robots would
wash dishes, dispose of the garbage (onto a conveyer belt moving under the
street), vacuum rugs, wash windows, cut the grass. Edward Fredkin, founder
of Cambridge's Information International Inc., has already developed a
computer-cum-mechanical-arm that can "see" a ball thrown its way and catch
it. Soon, Fredkin expects his gadget to be able to play a mean game of
pingpong.


As for shopping, the housewife should be able to switch on to the local
supermarket on the video phone, examine grapefruit and price them, all
without stirring from her living room. But among the futurists, fortunately,
are skeptics, and they are sure that remote shopping, while entirely
feasible, will flop—because women like to get out of the house, like to
handle the merchandise, like to be able to change their minds. Not
everything that is possible will happen—unless people want it. One thing
they almost certainly will want is electronic "information retrieval": the
contents of libraries and other forms of information or education will be
stored in a computer and will be instantly obtainable at home by dialing a
code.

In automated industry, not only manual workers, but also secretaries and
most middle-level managers will have been replaced by computers. The
remaining executives will be responsible for major decisions and long-range
policy. Thus, society will seem idle, by present standards. According to one
estimate, only 10% of the population will be working, and the rest will, in
effect, have to be paid to be idle. This is not as radical a notion as it
sounds. Even today, only 40% of the population works, not counting the labor
performed by housewives or students. Already, says Tempo's John Fisher, "we
are rationing work. By 1984, man will spend the first third of his life, or
25 years, getting an education, only the second one-third working, and the
final third enjoying the fruits of his labor. There just won't be enough
work to go around. Moonlighting will become as socially unacceptable as
bigamy."

By 2000, the machines will be producing so much that everyone in the U.S.
will, in effect, be independently wealthy. With Government benefits, even
nonworking families will have, by one estimate, an annual income of
$30,000-$40,000 (in 1966 dollars). How to use leisure meaningfully will be a
major problem, and Herman Kahn foresees a pleasure-oriented society full of
"wholesome degeneracy."

There are some who gloomily expect a society run by a small elected elite,
presiding over a mindless multitude kept happy by drugs and circuses, much
as in Huxley's Brave New World. But most futurists believe that work will
still be the only way to gain responsibility and power.
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