Note: There may be minor discrepancies with the figures from the blog post due to corrections made since it was published (Arb is paying $5 per corrected cell to anyone who points out errors). Holden intends to revise the post if discrepancies grow to the point where the high-level take seems off, but not for minor changes that don't affect the high-level take.

The summary statistics script is on Github here

I suggest ignoring from here on - it was done for subanalysis

Resolution notes

Strict correct

Resolved score

tech plus resolved Imputed scores

Strictly correct and dated tech

Strict and resolved boolean

Embarrassment

Very embarrassing

Very impressive

HK sorting metric

HK bucketing metric

Prioritize real dates >=30y out, then prioritize category relevance

Sorts by difficulty and then HK sorting metric, so we can look at one difficulty slice at a time. Groups difficulty 4-5 together b/c there were only 3 difficulty-5 q's.

In case I want to undo my sort

...By 2000 A.D., the carbon dioxide content of the air may have increased by one third as compared with today's content. This won't interfere with our breathing noticeably, but it will conserve more of the heat the Earth receives from the Sun so that Earth's average temperature will go up somewhat. This will change the weather pattern, probably for the...

...By 2000 A.D., the carbon dioxide content of the air may have increased by one third as compared with today's content. This won't interfere with our breathing noticeably, but it will conserve more of the heat the Earth receives from the Sun so that Earth's average temperature will go up somewhat. This will change the weather pattern, probably for the...

did increase between 1980 and 2000, but not by 1/3: https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide

...the face of the common necessity of making space society workable Second, to keep the space-based society functioning, it will require that people are in space at all times Settlements will be built, each capable of holding thousands of individuals These space people may spend their entire lives in space, have children, grow old, and die there, without ever returning...

...the face of the common necessity of making space society workable Second, to keep the space-based society functioning, it will require that people are in space at all times Settlements will be built, each capable of holding thousands of individuals These space people may spend their entire lives in space, have children, grow old, and die there, without ever returning...

The March of the Millennia

""road-building factories"" in the tropics

Gadgetry will continue to relieve mankind of tedious jobs. Kitchen units will be devised that will prepare ‘automeals,’ heating water and converting it to coffee; toasting bread; frying, poaching or scrambling eggs, grilling bacon, and so on. Breakfasts will be ‘ordered’ the night before to be ready by a specified hour the next morning.”

Smart kitchens can do parts of everything listed, but not without human organisation.

An experimental fusion-power plant or two will already exist in 2014.

There's JET in the UK: https://ccfe.ukaea.uk/about-ccfe/location/ Also ITER in the USA: https://www.iter.org/ both of which began operating before 2014. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_nuclear_fusion#2000s

In 2014, there is every likelihood that the world population will be 6,500,000,000

Off by 764,000,000 https://www.google.com/search?q=world+population+in+2014&client=firefox-b-d&sxsrf=ALiCzsbF_0uwUOpDAMTbwY8xlskf3Km_Tw%3A1654091989578&ei=1XCXYsj0IpqygQaT0KuoBg&oq=world+population+in+2014&gs_lcp=Cgdnd3Mtd2l6EAEYADIFCAAQgAQyBggAEB4QBzIICAAQHhAPEAcyCAgAEB4QDxAHMggIABAeEA8QBTIICAAQHhAPEAUyCAgAEB4QDxAFMgYIABAeEAgyBggAEB4QCDIICAAQHhAPEAg6BwgAEEcQsAM6BwgAELADEEM6CAgAEB4QCBAHOgoIABAeEA8QCBAHOgQIABANOgoIABAeEA8QBxAFSgQIQRgASgQIRhgAUM4FWO4JYJoZaAFwAXgAgAFbiAHoApIBATWYAQCgAQHIAQrAAQE&sclient=gws-wiz

...the end of the century, 2,400 million people may be in that fix. Nor can we imagine that wood can be replaced by more sophisticated energy sources. Developing such sources would take time and capital investment, which the poor nations don't have, and charitable donations of coal and oil from an industrial world (that feels 15 itself to be increasingly...

The Dangers of Intelligence and Other Science Essays

https://ourworldindata.org/energy-poverty-air-pollution

3. An international effort in the exploitation of space, of building solar power stations in orbit around the Earth, as well as observatories, laboratories, factories, and space settlements. Forty years from now this push would still be in its early stages, but it would be visibly progressing, and it would encourage people to think of themselves as Earthmen rather than this nationality or that.

3. An international effort in the exploitation of space, of building solar power stations in orbit around the Earth, as well as observatories, laboratories, factories, and space settlements. Forty years from now this push would still be in its early stages, but it would be visibly progressing, and it would encourage people to think of themselves as Earthmen rather than this nationality or that.

THE ELEVATOR EFFECT

Progress being made, but no "Earthling" mentality

the population of the United States will be 350,000,000.

Off by about 30m https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=us+population+in+2014

4. Nuclear fusion would offer a controlled and practical source of unlimited energy, and there would already be important fusion power stations in existence.

4. Nuclear fusion would offer a controlled and practical source of unlimited energy, and there would already be important fusion power stations in existence. In addition to these technological advances there would be a social change of great importance- a dropping of the

THE ELEVATOR EFFECT

at least 80 per cent of truck deliveries will be to certain fixed centers at the city's rim.

Expensive to check

...Usable fresh water supplies will decrease, since larger and larger portions of them will be polluted to the point where they will be undrinkable without expensive treatment that many regions will not be able to afford. Nor will life be able to thrive in polluted water. Acid rain will grow worse and kill more lakes and more fish. Even the...

https://www.epa.gov/acidrain/acid-rain-program-results#:~:text=Wet%20sulfate%20deposition%20%E2%80%93%20a%20common,Trends%20Network%20(CASTNET)%20website.

Efforts to prevent this from happening by encouraging a lower birthrate will become steadily more strenuous and it is to be hoped that by 2019, the world as a whole will be striving toward a population plateau.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30677-2/fulltext

Traffic will continue (on several levels in some places) only because all parking will be off-street

Processed yeast and algae products will be available in a variety of flavors. The 2014 fair will feature an Algae Bar at which “mock-turkey” and “pseudosteak” will be served.

Correct, but wasn't developed until after 2014

electroluminescent panels will be in common use. Ceilings and walls will glow softly, and in a variety of colors that will change at the touch of a push button.

Possible but not popular

At the present rate of population increase, there will be eight billion people on Earth by 2015, and the chances are there will be no way in which our oil-depleted, soil-depleted, resource-depleted planet can support them; so we are facing catastrophe in the course of the next generation.

At the present rate of population increase, there will be eight billion people on Earth by 2015, and the chances are there will be no way in which our oil-depleted, soil-depleted, resource-depleted planet can support them; so we are facing catastrophe in the course of the next generation.

SOCIETY IN THE FUTURE

Off by 661,000,000 https://www.google.com/search?q=world+population+in+2015&client=firefox-b-d&sxsrf=ALiCzsZlnZwFuWYGz20HEIy3xkAx0eVk8g%3A1654092253134&ei=3XGXYvHnB7qAhbIPkaCCoA8&ved=0ahUKEwixyrHptYz4AhU6QEEAHRGQAPQQ4dUDCA0&uact=5&oq=world+population+in+2015&gs_lcp=Cgdnd3Mtd2l6EAMyBAgAEEMyBggAEB4QFjIGCAAQHhAWMgYIABAeEBYyBggAEB4QFjIICAAQHhAPEBYyCAgAEB4QDxAWMgYIABAeEBYyBggAEB4QFjIGCAAQHhAWOgcIIxCwAxAnOgQIIxAnOgQILhBDOgUIABCABEoECEEYAEoECEYYAFD8B1iVCWDLC2gBcAF4AIABZ4gBsQGSAQMxLjGYAQCgAQHIAQHAAQE&sclient=gws-wiz

few routine jobs that cannot be done better by some machine than by any human being. Mankind will therefore have become largely a race of machine tenders.

Because of this, we now have a world population of four billion, twice the number that existed on Earth when I was born, and a continuing increase of eighty million a year. If this goes on (and there seems no way of stopping it quickly), there will be mass starvation before the century is over and civilisation may not make it into the twenty-first century.

Because of this, we now have a world population of four billion, twice the number that existed on Earth when I was born, and a continuing increase of eighty million a year. If this goes on (and there seems no way of stopping it quickly), there will be mass starvation before the century is over and civilisation may not make it into the twenty-first century.

On the Past Present and Future- 66 essays

...must not rise further. Indeed, it must fall. In that case, the year 2000 (the one we are imagining, the one in which mankind will be facing a bright future) will have to see a world in which the birth rate is everywhere falling, in which zero population growth is within reach, and in which negative population growth is the...

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/WLD/world/birth-rate

By exploring the Moon's crust, the colonists could learn more about the early history of the Solar System and the early history of Earth itself.

By exploring the Moon's crust, the colonists could learn more about the early history of the Solar System and the early history of Earth itself.

On the Past Present and Future- 66 essays

True but didn't need a colony

by the year 2000, half Earth's present forests may be gone.

https://ourworldindata.org/forest-area

transportation facilities not clogged with people, and with their thorough computerisation and automation, it should not be difficult to get materiel necessities to you wherever you live. Will all this come to pass? I think not to completion, but the trend could well be unmistakable by then. With distance no longer a factor, and with population on the point of long-term decline, city populations will be thinning out. (To be sure, humanity will be beginning to move into space settlements, so total numbers will someday be moving up again- but probably not on Earth itself.)

THE ELEVATOR EFFECT

Commercial company opens shuttle craft to Luna City. Prices reasonable. Tourists invited.

Most tourists who arrive are First-Timers, people who have never before left Earth. Many book a popular two-week package that allows t hem eight da ys on the Moon.

A Tourist's Guide to the moon

...its potential is often realized in ways that seem miraculous, not because of idealism but because of the practical benefits to society. Thus, the computer's ability to foster human creativity may well be utilized to its fullest, not because it would be a wonderful thing but because it will serve important social functions Moreover, we are already moving in the...

The March of the Millennia

The appliances of 2014 will have no electric cords, of course, for they will be powered by long- lived batteries running on radioisotopes."

Wireless devices common, but wrong battery type

Education, which must be revolutionized in the new world, will be revolutionized by the very agency that requires the revolution — the computer. Schools will undoubtedly still exist, but a good schoolteacher can do no better than to inspire curiosity which an interested student can then satisfy at home at the console of his computer outlet. There will be an opportunity finally for every youngster, and indeed, every person, to learn what he or she wants to learn. in his or her own time, at his or her own speed, in his or her own way.

mankind will suffer badly from the disease of boredom, a disease spreading more widely each year and growing in intensity. This will have serious mental, emotional and sociological consequences,

expensive to check

2. A continuing advance of communications satellites, and the use of laser beams for communication in place of electric currents and radio waves. A laser beam of visible light is made up of waves that are millions of times shorter than those of radio waves and have room for millions of times as many channels for voice and picture. Every person could have a different TV channel assigned to him.

THE ELEVATOR EFFECT

Population will be continuing to increase for some years after the present and this will make the pangs of transition even more painful. Governments will be unable to hide from themselves the fact that no problem can possibly be solved as long as those problems continue to be intensified by the addition of greater numbers more rapidly than they can be dealt with. Efforts to prevent this from happening by encouraging a lower birthrate will become steadily more strenuous and it is to be hoped that by 2019, the world as a whole will be striving toward a population plateau.

Robots for gardening work will also have made their appearance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robotic_lawn_mower#History

it seems to me that the important discoveries will be how to fiddle around with genes so as to perhaps correct some of the diseases we that are congenital maybe instead of treating diabetes with insulin we can fix up a gene so that you make your own maybe perhaps we can get rid of some other conditions like that how would that be administered you you get like an inoculation at birth or the parents get in early how would that happen well I suppose that eventually we'll reach the stage where children who as born will have a genetic analysis and that you could then try to do something like that graft the necessary genes into the pancreas for instance and hope that they'll do sufficient work to prevent the eventual development of the diabetes

https://www.cell.com/cell-stem-cell/fulltext/S1934-5909(17)30472-1

My guess is that by the year 2000 the power of communication may still not have reversed the tide, but misery will not have deepened as greatly as it could have otherwise. Men will (we can hope) be more aware by then of the nature of the race, of the terror of the doom, of the possibility of rescue. There will be a greater push towards continuing the development of an intricate television network that will create the "global village".

TV AND THE RACE WITH DOOM

An essential side product, the mobile computerized object, or robot, is already flooding into industry and will, in the course of the next generation, penetrate the home.

https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/electronics/smart-home/g39520256/best-home-robot/

there will be increasing emphasis on transportation that makes the least possible contact with the surface. There will be aircraft, of course, but even ground travel will increasingly take to the air a foot or two off the ground

only unmanned ships will have landed on Mars, though a manned expedition will be in the works

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_crewed_Mars_mission_plans I agree that Musk's speech isn't good evidence. But I think Mars planning is overdetermined, e.g. the CNSA https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202106/1226925.shtml (Their successful Mars rover was announced 10 years ahead of time too. Crewed is many times harder admittedly.)

The "home robot", which may be increasingly humanoid in appearance, is in the process of development, and robots that can see and talk and do jobs about the house may very likely be with us in a decade or two.

On the Past Present and Future- 66 essays

transparent cubes will be making their appearance in which three-dimensional viewing will be possible. In fact, one popular exhibit at the 2014 World's Fair will be such a 3-D TV, built life-size, in which ballet performances will be seen. The cube will slowly revolve for viewing from all angles.

it seems to me that the important discoveries will be how to fiddle around with genes so as to perhaps correct some of the diseases we that are congenital maybe instead of treating diabetes with insulin we can fix up a gene so that you make your own maybe perhaps we can get rid of some other conditions like that how would that be administered you you get like an inoculation at birth or the parents get in early how would that happen well I suppose that eventually we'll reach the stage where children who as born will have a genetic analysis and that you could then try to do something like that graft the necessary genes into the pancreas for instance and hope that they'll do sufficient work to prevent the eventual development of the diabetes

Most important, in a practical sense, would be the construction of factories that could make use of the special properties of space — high and low temperatures, hard radiation. Unlimited vacuum, zero gravity — to manufacture objects that could be difficult or impossible to manufacture on Earth, so that the world’s technology might be totally transformed. In fact, projects might even be on the planning boards in 2019 to shift industries into orbit in a wholesale manner. Space, you see, is far more voluminous than Earth’s surface is and it is therefore a far more useful repository for the waste that is inseparable from industry.

The consequences of human irresponsibility in terms of waste and pollution will become more apparent and unbearable with time and again, attempts to deal with this will become more strenuous. It is to be hoped that by 2019, advances in technology will place tools in our hands that will help accelerate the process whereby the deterioration of the environment will be reversed.

men will continue to withdraw from nature in order to create an environment that will suit them better

In 2020, the population of the Earth will be perhaps seven billion, while energy will be in short supply. Oil will be produced in quantities far behind need, and the substitution of shale oil and coal will not make up the gap. Though nuclear fusion power stations will exist, they will not yet be producing enough energy. And the real deployment of solar panels will have to wait for the building of a number of collecting stations in space. Times will therefore be hard on Earth. However, there will be the prospect of declining population and rising energy, so couples would be motivated to postpone having children. Such a drop in birthrate took place in the United States during the Great Depression, but it was the deprecated and people spoke of "race suicide". The forthcoming drop in birthrate will be applauded and encouraged.

THE ELEVATOR EFFECT

Consequently, as the twenty-first century opens, one of the most important types of jobs available (for those who can fill them) will be that of teaching the use of computers and all the myriads of skills involved in the design, construction, and maintenance of computers and their mobile offspring, the robots. (And of course this will, for a while, further exacerbate the second problem, that of finding all the people necessary to take part in the computer revolution).

WORK CHANGES ITS MEANING

large solar-power stations will also be in operation in a number of desert and semi-desert areas — Arizona, the Negev, Kazakhstan.

2. A continuing advance of communications satellites, and the use of laser beams for communication in place of electric currents and radio waves. A laser beam of visible light is made up of waves that are millions of times shorter than those of radio waves and have room for millions of times as many channels for voice and picture. Every person could have a different TV channel assigned to him.

THE ELEVATOR EFFECT

Compressed air tubes will carry goods and materials over local stretches, and the switching devices that will place specific shipments in specific destinations will be one of the city's marvels.

lifted the life expectancy in some parts of the world to age 85.

Hong Kong, Japan: https://www.worldometers.info/demographics/life-expectancy/

Mankind will therefore have become largely a race of machine tenders

We seem to have become a race of marketers: https://smallbusinessprices.co.uk/most-popular-jobs/

...out robotically, perhaps, and then distributed to the proper individuals by means of a computerized mail cart. And in all this, would the mailman really disappear? No, not entirely. It would probably remain uneconomical to electroni- cally transmit bulky printed material such as pamphlets maga- zines, newspapers, or catalogues. They would still be carried by the mailman, as would packages...

The Dangers of Intelligence and Other Science Essays

...by the twenty-first century. 170 can you draw from such arguments as they have presented? It may be that by the time we enter the twenty-first century our technological civilization will be irretrievably falling apart. If so, we will not go out into space; we may never go out into space. But let's suppose we do survive into the twenty-first...

The Planet That Wasn't

By 2019, we will be back on the moon in force. There will be on it not Americans only, but an international force of some size; and not to collect moon rocks only, but to establish a mining station that will process moon soil and take it to places in space where it can be smelted into metals, ceramics. glass and concrete — construction materials for the large structures that will be put in orbit about the Earth.

The isotopes will not be expensive for they will be by-products of the fission-power plants which, by 2014, will be supplying well over half the power needs of humanity

For short-range travel, moving sidewalks (with benches on either side, standing room in the center) will be making their appearance in downtown sections. They will be raised above the traffic.

All the examples of "moving sidewalks" which exist outside airports and shopping malls are in fact escalators used to navigate hills. There are no horiziontal moving walkways in urban areas yet. https://theculturetrip.com/asia/china/hong-kong/articles/ride-the-worlds-longest-escalator-in-hong-kong/ also https://www.archdaily.com/495356/electric-ramps-at-the-old-centre-roberto-ercilla-miguel-angel-campo/5345e83fc07a80f94d00004b-electric-ramps-at-the-old-centre-roberto-ercilla-miguel-angel-campo-location?next_project=no

...splatters it into a shower of a billion fragments that spray out over one hundred square kilometers of Earth's surface. Can there be still more energetic particles in existence? Very likely, but the chance of detecting them is minuscule. A particle with an energy of 30 million trillion electron-volts, three times the maximum so far detected, would strike at the...

Good, nuanced, but he said "miniscule". See Oh My God Particle

only unmanned ships will have landed on Mars, though a manned expedition will be in the works

technological advance has always, in the past, created more jobs than it has destroyed, and there is no reason to think that won’t be true now, too.

Boston-to-Washington, the most crowded area of its size on the earth, will have become a single city with a population of over 40,000,000.

No single city, but population over 40,000,000

...members of the scientific community grew increasingly skeptical about these claims. The March of the Millennia 165 The situation may change--an unpredictable event may well intervene, and the energy problem will be resolved by cold fusion or something like it However, as we move toward the year 2000, there is no guarantee that fusion is any more a solution to...

The March of the Millennia

Didn't happen, but not being too committed

...expect. My own feeling is that there is just a chance that small Mercury has a central temperature that is cool enough to allow a little ferromagnetism. It doesn't seem likely, but perhaps there's just a chance. In any case, there's a great deal about astronomical magnetic fields that people do not understand.

...quite in the form ONeill proposed) be built in the course of the next half-century. I would say, then that the notion is not science fiction. Of course, my correspondents may have meant that space colonies were science fiction merely because they did not yet exist. That may be their definition of science fiction-a reference to anything that doesn't yet...

The Planet That Wasn't

In 2020, the population of the Earth will be perhaps seven billion, while energy will be in short supply. Oil will be produced in quantities far behind need, and the substitution of shale oil and coal will not make up the gap. Though nuclear fusion power stations will exist, they will not yet be producing enough energy. And the real deployment of solar panels will have to wait for the building of a number of collecting stations in space. Times will therefore be hard on Earth. However, there will be the prospect of declining population and rising energy, so couples would be motivated to postpone having children. Such a drop in birthrate took place in the United States during the Great Depression, but it was the deprecated and people spoke of "race suicide". The forthcoming drop in birthrate will be applauded and encouraged.

THE ELEVATOR EFFECT

The OTV will be reusable and space-based. Once build in space, it would be beyond the atmosphere and would already be moving in orbit with a speed approaching five miles per second. It would have to add only a small amount of addition speed to move into a higher orbit, even one considerably higher. For this reason it would require much less fuel than vessels that must start from Earth's surface, and it would be able to carry proportionately larger payloads. The OTV, therefore, would greatly increase the ease and efficiency with which astronauts might reach the particular height of 22,300 miles above the surface of the Earth. At this height, an object would orbit the Earth in 24 hours, the same time it takes the Earth to turn on its axis.

On the Past Present and Future- 66 essays

Space tugs? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_tug#Existing_space_tugs. Near miss!

...from the atmosphere as fast as it enters, the fossil fuels exist only in limited quantity, and the oil and natural gas will not last long past AD 2000

The March of the Millennia

...considering we've only got a thirty year supply left and don't tel me we're 00:39:42 going to find more gasoline supply petroleum supplies no matter how much we find it may extended another ten years no more heck you can't even fight little 00:39:54 Wars anymore I mean supposing you have a war between two smal nations that don't have...

Isaac Asimov Predicts the Future

...keep the space-based society functioning, it will require that people are in space at all times Settlements will be built, each capable of holding thousands of individuals These space people may spend their entire lives in space, have children, grow old, and die there, without ever returning to Earth Their lives will be different from that of terrestrial humans in...

The March of the Millennia

The screen can be used not only to see the people you call but also for studying documents and photographs and reading passages from books.

This, then, is the third crucial life-and-death decision the world must make in the 1980s. Either it will continue to increase its population so that there will be more and more starvation and an increasingly desperate need for food that will cause humanity to place more and more pressure on the environment (further reducing its food-growing capacity) until the nations of the world go to war with each other or break up into scavenging bands with each scrabbling for food that isn't there—or else humanity must make the deliberate decision to control population by limiting the birth rate everywhere

I dare say that psychiatry will be far and away the most important medical specialty in 2014.

The appliances of 2014 will have no electric cords, of course, for they will be powered by long- lived batteries running on radioisotopes."

Used, but not domestically

everything from education to research will be done by by way of communication communication devices

By 2019, we will be back on the moon in force. There will be on it not Americans only, but an international force of some size; and not to collect moon rocks only,

we may, by 2000, face a future society in which men and women will routinely live to be over one hundred, perhaps far beyond one hundred. Nor will the stretched-out lifetime be one of additional decades of decrepitude and senility, but of vigorous middle age—continuing, perhaps, until the individual voluntarily decides to cease living. Naturally, this will require ample quantities of food and good and thorough medical care; and in the world of 2000, which will be clearly over-populated and only beginning to move into the pathways of sanity, there will be few pockets where the extended-lifetime potential can be massively

in a society of enforced leisure, the most glorious single word in the vocabulary will have become work!

Highways … in the more advanced sections of the world will have passed their peak in 2014;

Robots will neither be common nor very good in 2014, but they will be in existence.

https://www.engadget.com/2014-11-12-boston-dynamics-one-leg.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAFyL00dRaMJRGn6czBUmTj5zq1xESgvdoKAlhqj4XmOZwrz6-m6YhgZVaixDeLVeBkDxnLgGpLHe211oCGkrypGkpby0ezjZJyGmCvXHR7KzYzG93goo9JVvR9Z0PP0SCjwtFbfFqrIx1SBWxnuM1n8eS_iw8bwGKaj1yo99jKJu

...application of computer technology to professional sports be counterproduc- tive? Would the public become less interested in sports or in betting on the outcome if matters became more predictable? Or would there always be enough unpredictability to keep interest high? And would people derive particular excitement from beat ing the computer when low-ranking players on a particular team suddenly started...

The Dangers of Intelligence and Other Science Essays

By 2019, the first space settlement should be on the drawing boards; and may perhaps be under actual construction.

Planned Artemis moon base announced in early 2020- it must have been on the drawing board during the previous year. https://www.space.com/nasa-plans-artemis-moon-base-beyond-2024.html

In 2020, the population of the Earth will be perhaps seven billion, while energy will be in short supply. Oil will be produced in quantities far behind need, and the substitution of shale oil and coal will not make up the gap. Though nuclear fusion power stations will exist, they will not yet be producing enough energy. And the real deployment of solar panels will have to wait for the building of a number of collecting stations in space. Times will therefore be hard on Earth. However, there will be the prospect of declining population and rising energy, so couples would be motivated to postpone having children. Such a drop in birthrate took place in the United States during the Great Depression, but it was the deprecated and people spoke of "race suicide". The forthcoming drop in birthrate will be applauded and encouraged.

THE ELEVATOR EFFECT

We will enter space to stay. With the shuttle rocket as the vehicle, we will build a space station

In addition, observatories will be built in space to increase our knowledge of the universe immeasurably; as will laboratories, where experiments can be conducted that might be unsafe, or impossible, on Earth’s surface.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISS_National_Lab

One such structure which very conceivably, might be completed by 2019 would be the prototype of a solar power station, outfitted to collect solar energy, convert it to microwaves and beam it to Earth. It would be the first of a girdle of such devices fitted about Earth’s equatorial plane. It would the beginning of the time when a major part of Earth’s energy will come from the sun under conditions that will make it not the property of any one nation, but of the globe generally.

Possible, but didn't happen for cost reasons

Star Wars research, on the other hand, is being conducted in the open- at a shout in fact. The Soviet Union may be expected to be in full competition and it is conceivable that it may come up with a working system first. It's not very likely, to be sure, for our technology is far in advance of theirs, and they don't have the "Yankee know-how" which displayed itself so well in the 1940s with Einstein, Bohr, Szilard, Teller, Wigner, and all those other "Yankees". Just the same,

Star Wars research, on the other hand, is being conducted in the open- at a shout in fact. The Soviet Union may be expected to be in full competition and it is conceivable that it may come up with a working system first. It's not very likely, to be sure, for our technology is far in advance of theirs, and they don't have the "Yankee know-how" which displayed itself so well in the 1940s with Einstein, Bohr, Szilard, Teller, Wigner, and all those other "Yankees". Just the same,

On the Past Present and Future- 66 essays

There was competition, but Russians didn't win the race.

Clearly there will be a painful period of transition, one that is starting already, and one that will be in full swing as the twenty-first century begins. The first problem, that of technological unemployment, will be temporary, for it will arise out of the fact that there is now a generation of employees who have not been educated to fit the computer age. However, (in advanced nations at least) they will be the last generation to be so lacking, so that with them this problem will disappear, or at least diminish to the point of noncrisis proportions.

WORK CHANGES ITS MEANING

The pocket computer invades the home in the 1980s as the television did in the 1950s.

Both revolutions are in clear swing. The pocket computer invades the home in the 1980s as the television did in the 1950s. The world's governments will have recognised humanity's destiny in space and will be actively beginning to work toward that end. And Orwell will have been proven wrong! Unless, of course, the wrongheaded of the world win out, so that scientific research and technological advance slows doewn and humanity retreats. In that case, civilisation will die under the weight of unsolved problems and the consequences will be worse than any Orwell tried to picture.

On the Past Present and Future- 66 essays

Suburban houses underground, with easily controlled temperature, free from the vicissitudes of weather, with air cleaned and light controlled, should be fairly common.

Underwater housing exists (on par with watersports popularity, economically significant)

colonization of the continental shelves. Underwater housing will have its attractions to those who like water sports, and will undoubtedly encourage the more efficient exploitation of ocean resources, both food and mineral

This means that a vast change in the nature of education must take place, and entire populations must be made “computer-literate” and must be taught to deal with a “high-tech” world. [...] By the year 2019, however, we should find that the transition is about over. Those who can be retrained and re-educated will have been: those who can’t be will have been put to work at something useful, or where ruling groups are less wise, will have been supported by some sort of grudging welfare arrangement.

Usable fresh water supplies will decrease, since larger and larger portions of them will be polluted to the point where they will be undrinkable

...Usable fresh water supplies will decrease, since larger and larger portions of them will be polluted to the point where they will be undrinkable without expensive treatment that many regions will not be able to afford. Nor will life be able to thrive in polluted water. Acid rain will grow worse and kill more lakes and more fish. Even the...

Strictly true but false in effect https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/water-and-sanitation?tab=chart&facet=none&hideControls=true&Resource=Drinking+water&Level+of+Access=Safely+managed&Residence=Total&Relative+to+population=Share+of+population&country=~OWID_WRL

And for a time, at least, it is reasonable to suppose that computers will continue to make rapid advances. They will, it is likely, make advances in the direction of “friendliness”; that is, they will be improved in such a way as to make it easier for humans to operate them. The ultimate in ease of operation is through the use of speech as a mode of direction.

We can argue that in an age of bloatware, in-OS advertising and widespread harvesting of personal data that the computer no longer aims purely to be of the greatest use to its user. User "friendliness" is frequently compomised where there is the opportunity of further profit.

Communications will become sight-sound and you will see as well as hear the person you telephone / everyone can possibly have their own television channel the way they all now have our own telephone numbers and closed-circuit television will become the great thing

wall screens will have replaced the ordinary set

Home cinemas and wall-sized TVs exist, but they have not becme the norm.

will yield to deserts., The deserts are indeed expanding as a result of forest destruction, overfarming, and general human mishandling, and, by the year 2000, the area of new desert will be perhaps one and a half times the area of the United States.

will yield to deserts., The deserts are indeed expanding as a result of forest destruction, overfarming, and general human mishandling, and, by the year 2000, the area of new desert will be perhaps one and a half times the area of the United States.