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A Brief History of Tomorrow,Malthus, Vocabulary

Ellen Spertus

MCS 123/223

September 12, 2002

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A Brief History of Tomorrow

• Published in 2000

• Great Britain

• Jonathan Margolis

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Influence of present on SF

• “[V]isions of the distant future tend to be shaped and coloured by the experiences and prejudices of the present.”

• Science fiction examples– Jetsons (1962-1963)

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Current institutions

• Margolis: Starbucks– Businesswomen– Globalization

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The arrogance of the present

• Claim: “the arrogance of the present” (p. 22) influences “95 per cent of what is routinely spouted in the mass media and politics about the future”.

• Examples

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Predictions about equality

• “The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line.” – W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963), The Souls of Black Folks,1903.

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Comparing human beings to machines

Why in the 1930s?

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Our predictions for equality

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Thomas Malthus (1766-1834)

• An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798/1803)– Population growth is exponential– Food growth is linear– Human demand for food will

outstrip supply.

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Population growth

Malthus– 1798: 950 million– Double every 25 years– 2000: 242 billion (actual: 6.1 billion)

                                                                                                    

                                                                                                       

Source: United Nations, World Population Prospects, The 1998 Revision; and estimates by the Population Reference Bureau.

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Food production

http://www.sprl.umich.edu/GCL/Notes-1999-Winter/food.html

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Vocabulary: knight’s move

http://www.princeton.edu/~jedwards/cif/chess.html

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Vocabulary: extrapolation

• To infer or estimate by extending or projecting known information.

• Examples– Moore’s Law– Population growth– Sports records– River length

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Mississippi River

“In the space of one hundred and seventy six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average of a trifle over a mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oölitic Silurian Period, just a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi was upwards of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-pole. And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long, and Cairo [Illinois] and New Orleans will have joined their streets together and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen. There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact. – Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi (1884)

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Vocabulary: intractable

• General definition: Not easily remedied or dealt with

• Computer science definition:A problem that can only be solved in exponential time

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Vocabulary: lateral thinking

• “A way of thinking that seeks a solution to an intractable problem through unorthodox methods or elements that would normally be ignored by logical thinking.” – Edward de Bono

• Thinking outside the box

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Puzzle: swimmer in forest

Deep in the forest was found the body of a man who was wearing only swimming trunks, snorkel and facemask. The nearest lake was 8 miles away and the sea was 100 miles away. How had he died?

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Vocabulary: anachronism

• Definitions– An item that belongs to another period of

time– A word that has transcended its original

referent

• Examples– carbon copy– dial

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Vocabulary: Victorian

1. Of, relating to, or belonging to the period of the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901).

2. Relating to or displaying the standards or ideals of morality regarded as characteristic of the time of Queen Victoria.

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Predictions of future?