Predicting the future — lessons by Arthur C. Clarke

“Trying to predict the future is a discouraging and hazardous occupation.” Arthur C. Clarke

On “A vision of the future” - 1960's, the science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke paints the picture of a future in which communication would eliminate barriers and change the way people live and work. Although it is clear to us today how technology has changed our lives, his ideas seemed unreasonable and unthinkable to those of his time. As a futurist he spotted trends and envisioned what could be achieved with the development of transistors and communications satellites.

Clarke believed that any prediction of the future could fall between two boundaries:

• a prediction considered reasonable in the present would be regarded as ridiculously conservative in the future;
• an absurd, far-fetched, prediction in the present could have a chance of visualising the future as it will happen.

In his words:

“The profit invariably falls into two stools. If his predictions sounded at all reasonable, you can be quite sure that in 20 or most 50 years, the progress of science and technology has made him seem ridiculously conservative.

On the other hand, If by some miracle a prophet could describe the future exactly as it was going to take place, his predictions would sound so absurd, so far-fetched, that everybody would laugh him to scorn”

Although Clarke got almost all of his predictions right — and that, by itself, makes his video amazingly valuable and worthwhile watching — I believe that the timeless contribution of this work was to demonstrate that any prediction about the future could be anywhere between reasonable and absurd — and only the later could have any chance of anticipating the future as it would really happen:

“If what I say now seems to be very reasonable, then I will have failed completely. Only if what I tell appears absolutely unreasonable have we any chance of visualising the future as it really will happen”

His witty remarks encourage us to think about the future without being afraid of sounding preposterous. After all, that’s the only way we can get closer to what really will happen.