Annalee Newitz posted an article on io9 a few days ago titled, “The Slow Future: The Future Is Not Accelerating”. Basically it’s a critique of the optimism regarding technological development that is expressed by some futurists. However, I find the criticism largely misguided and likely to propogate the myth and mysticism that tends to be associated with futurism among those who don’t fully understand what it is that futurists do and why they do it. Among the critical mistakes that Newitz makes are:
- She assumes that futurists foresee a future (i.e. some inevitability) as if they’ve discovered some hidden secret in their magical crystal balls.
- She generalizes from a very small group of futurists (she actually only refers to two) to futurism in general.
- She is stuck in a context of the present as regards both her criticism of futurism and her perception of what we have achieved with technology.
- She fails to recognize how the concept of “time” works in futurists’ discourse.
Newitz starts by suggesting that there is “a future“, i.e. some sort of inevitability, that encroaches on us at some given rate, and then criticizes futurists in general by demonstrating why the predicted rate of change is, in her mind, unrealistic. In this endeavor, she fails to recognize that when futurists visualize future developments it is intended to be demonstrative of possible pathways given currently observable patterns of change. The key point to recognize is that, for the futurist, there is not one specific future but rather a range of possible futures that are dependent on how we act in the now, medium-term and long-term.
Newitz’s criticism focuses primarily on Kurzweil’s projections concerning longevity and human integration with technology. Kurzweil is probably not the best representative of futurists in general (note: I am far from being a fan of Kurzweil’s approach to futurism because I think he too promotes some of the myth and mysticism I’ve mentioned). He has a tendency toward sensationalism and to express his projections (i.e. what might be) in a form that can easily be taken as a prediction (i.e. what will be). So, not surprisingly, Newitz directs her attention toward Kurzweil’s “predictions” claiming that they are unrealistic because certain types of significant change, especially geological and biological change, have tended to occur over long periods of time rather than the mere decades suggested by Kurzweil. A futurist would read Kurzweil very differently – not as claiming that his predictions will occur over a specific period of time, but rather whether they could occur over that period of time. Viewed that way, Kurzweil becomes much more reasonable. Then we read him basically as saying that technological development is accelerating and if we were to focus sufficient attention and resources on addressing the issues that he raises, we could potentially reach the stage in human development that he describes. However, to be realistic, I don’t think these issues are deemed critical enough by those who matter that sufficient attention and resources will be devoted to them. Hence, we are unlikely to see Kurzweil’s vision of the future materialize in the timeframe that he suggests.
In her zeal to bring futurists down from their pedestal, Newitz describes, as representative of “one of the big mistakes that futurists make”, futurists’ seemingly fantastic expectation that, “We’re churning out so many magical devices that in twenty years we’ll have transcended death, disease, and poverty.” What Newitz does here is to assess futurism from the point of view of the present context without considering the way that meanings and contexts have changed and will change. The fact is that technological development has already made it possible for us to transcend death, disease, and poverty in many ways. Many ailments and physical limitations that at one time would have meant certain death, or at least significantly diminished quality of life, are today trivial, or even non-consequential. Take for instance what we saw at last summers’ Olympic games where Oscar Pistorius, who had his legs amputated before he was 1 year old, took part in a top world-class foot racing event; consider the hundreds of thousands of people who are able to hear because of cochlear implants; consider what pacemakers, vaccines, water purifiers, and other technologies do for people today. In addition to all of these technologies, there are many more equally and even more impressive being developed all the time.
Finally, is Newitz’s claim -and this is her main point- that accelerating technological development will not give rise to the rapid change in the human condition that Kurzweil and other futurists have projected because “geological” and “species” time (G&S time) are beyond the scope of our personal perception (I know; that sounds kind of strange – but that’s her point as far as I can tell). The evidence directly contradicts what this view seems to be intended to express. Humans have sidestepped G&S time repeatedly ever since they stopped being hunter-gatherers. We haven’t had to wait for G&S time to produce the modern banana, we haven’t had to wait for G&S time to produce a domesticated pig, the Dutch haven’t had to wait for G&S time to increase their arable land by almost 7,000 km2. What makes us humans a remarkable species is the extent to which we are able to adapt our environment to our needs by intervening in natural evolutionary processes and directing them towards developments that are intended to benefit us. We don’t do this by changing G&S time. In fact, G&S time carries on just as before. However, we are able to construct a coexisting timeline in which we exert control over the nature and rate of change. We do this by developing and harnessing technology and creating new contexts and meanings. So, invoking G&S time to criticize futurists doesn’t make for a very powerful critique. It’s sort of like saying that we can’t create more paintings because all of the primary colors have already been used.
To top everything off, Newitz reveals her limited understanding of what it is that futurists do in her proposed resolution to the issue as she has framed it. She suggests that, “We need to think about the future as a set of overlapping timelines.” As I hope I’ve made clear, this is exactly what futurists do!
