Princeton physicist Gerard K. O'Neill's 1981 book, 2081: A Hopeful View of the Human Future was an attempt to predict the technological and social state of humanity 100 years in the future. O'Neill's positive attitude towards both technology and human potential distinguished this book from gloomy predictions of a Malthusian catastrophe by contemporary scientists. Paul R. Ehrlich wrote in 1968 in The Population Bomb, "in the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death". The Club of Rome's 1972 Limits to Growth predicted a catastrophic end to the Industrial Revolution within 100 years from resource exhaustion and pollution.
O'Neill's contrary view had two main components. First, he analyzed the previous attempts to predict the future of society—including many catastrophes that had not materialized. Second, he extrapolated historical trends under the assumption that the obstacles identified by other authors would be overcome by five technological "Drivers of Change". He extrapolated an average American family income in 2081 of $1 million/year. Two developments based on his own research were responsible for much of his optimism. In The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space O'Neill described solar power satellites that provide unlimited clean energy, making it far easier for humanity to reach and exceed present developed-world living standards. Overpopulation pressures would be relieved as billions of people eventually emigrate to colonies in free space. These colonies would offer an Earth-like environment but with vastly higher productivity for industry and agriculture. These colonies and satellites would be constructed from asteroid or lunar materials launched into the desired orbits cheaply by the mass drivers O'Neill's group developed.
Read more about 2081: A Hopeful View Of The Human Future: Part I: The Art of Prophecy, Part II: The Drivers of Change, Part III: The World in 2081, Part IV: Wild Cards
Famous quotes containing the words hopeful, view, human and/or future:
“As the will to truth thus gains self-consciousness—there can be no doubt of that—morality will gradually perish now: this is the great spectacle in a hundred acts reserved for the next two centuries in Europe—the most terrible, most questionable, and perhaps also the most hopeful of all spectacles.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“To see self-sufficiency as the hallmark of maturity conveys a view of adult life that is at odds with the human condition, a view that cannot sustain the kinds of long-term commitments and involvements with other people that are necessary for raising and educating a child or for citizenship in a democratic society.”
—Carol Gilligan (20th century)
“Of a truth, Knowledge is power, but it is a power reined by scruple, having a conscience of what must be and what may be; whereas Ignorance is a blind giant who, let him but wax unbound, would make it a sport to seize the pillars that hold up the long- wrought fabric of human good, and turn all the places of joy as dark as a buried Babylon.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“It is given to few to add the store of knowledge, to strike new springs of thought, or to shape new forms of beauty. But so sure as it is that men live not by bread, but by ideas, so sure is it that the future of the world lies in the hands of those who are able to carry the interpretation of nature a step further than their predecessors.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)