There seems to be two occasions when people most enjoy making predictions : day of remembrance ( call up theAmerican Bicentennial , New Year ’s , etc ) and escort that let in round number ( any class ending in zero ) . Such was the display case in 1950 when many people halfway through the twentieth century enjoyed predict what life sentence would be like in the twelvemonth 2000 — obviously the roundest numbered yr of our modern age .
The January 1950 publication ofRedbookmagazine asked , “ What will the existence of 2000 A.D. be like ? Will the machine replace military man ? How will our tike and grandchildren pass their leisure ? How , indeed , will they front ? ” The mag postulate four experts — inquisitively all valet , given that Redbook was and is a magazine aimed at women — about what the world may look like fifty years hence .
Aldous Huxley , generator of the 1931 dystopian novelBrave New World , looked at working lifespan in the year 2000 . Specifically , how the great unwashed might work in the home , in the laboratory , in the berth , in the manufactory and on the farm .
Aldous Huxley begin his article by describing the major challenges that would confront the universe at the dawn of the 21st century . He promise that the global population would swell to 3 billion people — a figure less than one-half of the 6.1 billion that would turn up to be a realness by 2000 .
During the next fifty years human race will present three capital problems : the problem of void warfare ; the problem of alimentation and clothing a population of two and a after part one thousand million which , by 2000 A.D. , will have grow to up of three billions , and the problem of supply these billions without ruining the planet ’s unreplaceable resource .
Let us assume — and sadly it is a large August 15 — that the nations can agree to live in peace of mind . In this event man will be free to devote all its energy and skill to the solution of its other major problems .
Huxley ’s predictions for food yield in the yr 2000 are mostly a call for the conservation of imagination . He correctly points out that gist yield can be far less efficient than using farming lands for crops . Moreover , he discusses the grow importance of synthetic material ( a reality we take for granted in so many ways today ) . His verbal description of synthetic substance was incredibly prescient , if not very surprising , coming from a man whose most famous novel imagined a in high spirits - technical school domain build on mass production .
By 2000 , permit us hope , the the great unwashed of the existence will have adopted a program to increase the planet ’s output of food for thought and other requisite , while economise its resources . Because all available land will be needed for solid food production , cooperative efforts will be made to derive all the fibers used for textiles from inorganic materials or vegetable waste . solid food crop will be cultivate on the land now devoted to cotton , flax , hemp and jute , and , since woolen will no longer be used , the huge flocks of sheep which now menace Australian and North American watersheds will be greatly diminished . Because of the need to give overworked ground a rest and to extract the heavy potential number of calories from every acre under cultivation , meat production , which is fantastically wasteful of land , will be cut down , and increase tending will be yield to the products , vegetable no less than creature , of the sea . Landlocked inlets , lakes , pond and swamp will be scientifically farm .
In many parts of the mankind woods are being recklessly destroy . To conserve them we shall have to develop new eccentric of celluloid construction materials and new source for paper . That the production of a mirthful supplement should entail the death of K of magnificent trees is a scandal which can not much longer be tolerated .
How will soul be affect by all this ? For many granger the changes will mean a geological fault from one variety of output to another . For many others they will entail a transferral to the chemical industry . For the chemical substance industry is bound to mature more important as world erosion compels us , for the interest of the land , to rely increasingly on synthetics descend from practically unlimited inorganic cloth .
The earthly concern of 2000 A.D. was see by many to be one of increased leisure . But Huxley sees that potential for good workings conditions and increase standard of living as obtainable only through a free burning peace . These same predictions of a leisure - tailor society , by Huxley and others living mid - one C , would inspire the pushing - button cliche later parodied in the 1962 TV show “ The Jetsons . ”
Huxley rightly predicts that the world would have to face the challenges that go along with deliver an aging universe . Huxley himself would only live on to see the year 1963 , but he acknowledged what life would be like for young people reading his article .
Perhaps Huxley ’s most inaccurate prediction is his assumption that an increment in productiveness will signify an increase in salary for the average worker . As we ’ve encounter over the last half a 100 , increase worker productiveness hasnot go to a striking increase in remuneration .
That enormous technological advances will be recorded during the next fifty years is certain . But to the worker as a worker , such procession will not needs be of great implication . It makes very little difference to the material worker whether the stuff he handles is the product of a worm , a plant , a mammal or a chemical substance laboratory . workplace is employment , and what matter to the worker is neither the product nor the technical process , but the pay , the hours , the posture of the foreman , the physical environment . To most office staff and factory workers in 2000 the software of atomic fission to diligence will mean very little . What they will like about is what their fathers and mothers care about today — improvement in the conditions of labor . Given peace , it should be potential , within the next fifty year , to improve workings conditions very considerably . intimately equipped , workers will produce more and therefore clear more . Meanwhile most of the hideous relic of the industrial Middle Ages will have been supplant by unexampled manufacturing plant , part and home plate . More and more factories and offices will be relocated in minor country communities , where life is cheaper , pleasanter and more genuinely human than in those breeding - grounds of mass neuroticism , the great metropolitan marrow of today . Decentralization may help to check that march toward the institution , which is a threat to our refinement hardly less dangerous than that of erosion and A - bomb .
All in all , I ’d say that Huxley ’s prognostication were fair accurate in spirit . Like so many big multitude of mid - century , he fails to promise or conceive the spectacular societal changes that would occur which had a direct shock on the 21st century work force . But his idea that “ work is work ” and people simply desire to recover the best work they can with the best condition and pay seems to be a timeless reflection .
If the finished production means trivial to the proletarian , it means much to the housewife . New synthetic building materials will be easier to keep unobjectionable . New solar warming systems will be cheaper and less messy . Electronics in the kitchen will greatly simplify the project of the Captain Cook . In a word , by 2000 the business organization of bread and butter should have become emphatically less arduous than it is at present tense . But , though less heavy , it will last on the average a skilful heap longer . In 2000 there will be more senior hoi polloi in the cosmos than at any previous metre . In many countries the citizens of sixty - five and over will outnumber the boys and girl of fifteen and under . Pensions and a pointless leisure propose no resolution to the problems of an aging universe . In 2000 the younger readers of this clause , who will then be in their seventies , will probably be inhabiting a world in which the sometime are provided with opportunity for using their experience and remain strength in ways satisfactory to themselves , and valuable to the community of interests .
What do you say ? I ’m by no means an expert on Huxley and would welcome the view of others who may be capable to read between the line and offer insight into his visual sensation of the yr 2000 .
https://gizmodo.com/50-years-of-the-jetsons-why-the-show-still-matters-512621126
This mail in the first place appeared atSmithsonian.com .
1950sAldous Huxley
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