Failure of Prediction
Hobsbawm points out the abysmal record of recent attempts to predict the world's future. "The record of forecasters in the past thirty or forty years, whatever their professional qualification as prophets, has been so spectacularly bad that only governments and economic research institutes still have, or pretend to have, much confidence in it." He quotes President Calvin Coolidge, in a message to Congress on December 4, 1928, on the eve of the Great Depression, as saying "The country can regard the present with satisfaction and anticipate the future with optimism."
Speaking of the future himself, Hobsbawm largely confines himself to predicting continued turmoil: "The world of the third millennium will therefore almost certainly continue to be one of violent politics and violent political changes. The only thing uncertain about them is where they will lead," and expressing the view that "If humanity is to have a recognizable future, it cannot be by prolonging the past or the present."
In one of his few more concrete predictions, he writes that "Social distribution and not growth would dominate the politics of the new millennium."
Read more about this topic: The Age Of Extremes
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