anthology note

[jwgh]

For those keeping track, I finished Baen's Galaxy: The Best Of My Years this morning and launched into The Best Of Crank! during lunch, so that little project's coming right along. I don't want to influence the results of the poll, but I think it is safe to note that the second piece in the Galaxy book, an essay by Isaac Asimov titled "Is There Hope For The Future", contains a series of predictions for what the world might look like at the beginning of the 21st century, the first of which is: "World population will stand at 7,000,000,000, but all over the world, heroic and successful measures will be holding the line, and every effort will be made to lower the birth rate to the point where the population will decline toward an ultimate goal of perhaps no more than 1,000,000,000." This prediction is actually one of the most accurate in the essay.

Comments

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

More details, please!

[jwgh]

James Baen's introduction says that he asked Asimov if there was any hope for the future, and if so if he would write a 5,000-word essay on it. Asimov's response (according to Baen) was along the lines of "No, but I'll write it anyway."

So. The essay was written in 1974. After carefully emphasizing that he thinks that the chances are better than 50/50 that we'll wipe ourselves out (or, more specifically, that technological civilization will end) before the beginning of the 21st century, he notes that already there have been some positive developments which nobody would have predicted in the 50s -- the rise of contraception, the sexual revolution, Nixon going to China, etc.). He says that this is because humanity has had to make a choice: either change for the better or perish.

Thinking of it that way, he says that if we do survive it will be because we have made the correct choice in many critical areas. So in this scenario, the beginning of the 21st century has these features:

1) The 7,000,000,000 population already mentioned.

2) "There will be dreadful shortages of food and raw materials generally, but heroic and successful measures towards the proper distribution of what exists and toward efficient methods of re-cycling will minimize the more disasterous effects of the shortages."

3) World government, because "no nation can afford to take unilateral action against the will of the others."

These things all also require the end of sexism, racism, war, the extension of life-span, and the rise of space travel and colonization.

[jwgh]

... again, these are all things that were supposed to take place by the end of the 20th century.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

As I pointed out in my essay about Asimov's 1974 commencement speech, in some ways population control has actually worked out better than Asimov was willing to predict. We were only at six and a half billion in 2000. What he got wrong is that for the most part this isn't happening because some Board of Population Control is taking overt measures--Amartya Sen seems to think that even in the country with the most obvious such program (China) the drop in birthrate may be taking place for unrelated reasons.

[jwgh]

That seems to be the same year the essay was written, interestingly.

It's just odd to read predictions about "the beginning of the 21st century" written 30 years ago. I think I first read this essay in the early 80s when it all seemed very reasonable. (Although as he says in his commencement speech about something else, "Oh, give or take a few months; I mean, you know, you can't be too exact on a thing like this.")