Back in July 1997, Wired magazine ran a long article called "The Long Boom: A History of the Future, 1980–2020," written by Peter Schwartz (archived here).
We have entered a period of sustained growth that could eventually double the world's economy every dozen years and bring increasing prosperity for—quite literally—billions of people on the planet. We are riding the early waves of a 25-year run of a greatly expanding economy that will do much to solve seemingly intractable problems like poverty and to ease tensions throughout the world. And we'll do it without blowing the lid off the environment.
Schwartz wrote The Long Boom just a few years after the launch of the
World Wide Web, but before any of its implications had been realized.
Almost all of us were still on dial-up. He was, essentially, high on the supply of the late 1990s, still in the sustained glow of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
It's painful to read sentences like this:
In the 1990s, the United States is experiencing a booming economy much like it did in the 1950s. But look ahead to the next decade, our parallel to the 1960s. We may be entering a relentless economic expansion, a truly global economic boom, the long boom.
We were just a few years before the dot-bomb would evaporate a lot of that economic growth Schwartz was touting, not to mention 9/11, and every bit of anti-openness that followed it.
There were five areas of technology he saw as key to rapid economic growth without causing environmental devastation:
- personal computers
- telecommunications
- biotechnology
- nanotechnology
- alternative energy
I think we can all agree that personal computers and telecommunications clearly have transformed major aspects of society since 1997, but it seems to me that only alternative energy advances have begun to meet the high goals Schwartz set for the five technologies. No one cured cancer in 2012, or has defeated a third of gene-based diseases. What we've seen is mostly a lot of patent extensions on existing drugs, price extortion on old drugs, and R&D on new drugs that people will have to take for the rest of their lives.
There are a lot of funny but painful moments in the text. "Infotech, which moves information electronically rather than physically, also makes much less impact on the natural world." I think of all the server farms (whether for cryptocurrency or not) drawing more electricity than single countries and laugh. He declared hydrogen fuel cell cars into dominance by 2010, replacing the existing vehicle fleet by 2020... and that the giant fossil fuel companies would painlessly switched over to help out with it! "That development alone defuses much of the pressure on the global environment." Ta-da!
The section about Europe is priceless. It has to be read to be believed. In general, his world geopolitics are eye-blinkingly retrograde. (See what he has to say about the Middle East and Africa, for instance.)
Let's see... the U.S. deficit is solved in the early 2000s and excess tax revenue means we get to solve some real social problems and are able to bring broadband to every home in America. Bill Clinton's welfare reforms of 1996 were a great success: most former AFDC recipients became skilled professionals! There was no New Jim Crow, no school to prison pipeline, the War on Drugs fades away — no, even hardened criminals got legit jobs! Oh, and everyone thinks immigration is the cat's pajamas, too. And we're e-voting from home, of course. Racism and white supremacy never existed as the reason for anything, it seems. Just a bit more economic development and everyone succeeds.
The Peace Dividend is put into education because "small, innovative private schools proliferate in urban areas"... I guess those are charter schools. Oh, and there are vouchers everywhere! (Gag.)
The utopianism continues until humans are landing on Mars in 2020, which is watched by Earth's population of 11 billion... I note that Schwartz's scenario blew that number by a mile, too. World peace ensues as everyone sees we are one global human family. As Millennials take over the reigns, they have "inherited a planet that's not getting much worse" ecologically.
It's hard for someone living in today's political climate to read this part near the end:
...the United States serves as steward of the idea of an open society.... Historically, this has taken the form of protecting speech, promoting trade, and welcoming immigrants. With the coming of a wired, global society, the concept of openness has never been more important. It's the linchpin that will make the new world work.
In a nutshell, the key formula for the coming age is this: Open, good. Closed, bad.
Yes, and now we have to wonder, Who has been working against that? How did we get to where we are?
Well, the article had a sidebar that provided a glimpse:
10 Scenario SpoilersThe long boom is a scenario, one possible future. It's built upon the convergence of many big forces and even more little pieces falling into place — all of them with a positive twist. The future of course, could turn out to be very different — particularly if a few of those big pieces go haywire. Here are 10 things that could cut short the long boom.
1. Tensions between China and the US escalate into a new Cold War — bordering on a hot one.
2. New technologies turn out to be a bust. They simply don't bring the expected productivity increases or the big economic boosts.
3. Russia devolves into a kleptocracy run by a mafia or retreats into quasicommunist nationalism that threatens Europe.
4. Europe's integration process grinds to a halt. Eastern and western Europe can't finesse a reunification, and even the European Union process breaks down.
5. Major ecological crisis causes a global climate change that, among other things, disrupts the food supply — causing big price increases everywhere and sporadic famines.
6. Major rise in crime and terrorism forces the world to pull back in fear. People who constantly feel they could be blown up or ripped off are not in the mood to reach out and open up.
7. The cumulative escalation in pollution causes a dramatic increase in cancer, which overwhelms the ill-prepared health system.
8. Energy prices go through the roof. Convulsions in the Middle East disrupt the oil supply, and the alternative energy sources fail to materialize.
9. An uncontrollable plague — a modern-day influenza epidemic or its equivalent — takes off like wildfire, killing upward of 200 million people.
10. A social and cultural backlash stops progress dead in its tracks. Human beings need to choose to move forward. They just may not ...
Almost all of those have come to pass, some more strongly than others. Even #2 hasn't taken a shape that led to the kinds of pro-social advances Schwartz described, and the economics of our recent technological changes have led to a new Gilded Age.
You can say you're writing scenarios instead of predicting the future, but either way, you end up looking foolish when you have so many gaping holes in your concept of economic relations and awareness of power and oppression.
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H/T to Jason Kottke for reminding me of this old chestnut.
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Aaaaaaaagh. I held off on looking up who Peter Schwartz is until after I finished writing this. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that he's a big-name futurist. Starting in 1982, he was head of scenario planning for Royal Dutch Shell. Gee, wasn't that around the time the big oil companies were accumulating research that told them oil was death for the biosphere as we know it…which they then turned around to suppress and lie about to this day? (See Drilled, season 1.)
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