The Pattern of Prediction 325

The Pattern of Prediction 1763-1973

THE FIRST FORECAST OF
THE FUTURE
I. F. Clarke
The heritage of technological forecasting is brief and haphazard.
But examination of the rich variety of past assessments of trends
and potential may prove useful in directing attention towards
more probable futures. This is the first of a series of articles that
will assess the pattern of prediction from the primitive forecasts
of 1763 to the more modern scientific approach.
THE everyday facts of social and industrial change have become so much a
part of our general thinking that we forget the extraordinary novelty of seeking
to foresee the shape of things to come. About two hundred years ago the image
of the future was a blank. The centuries ahead returned a verdict of no change:
the windmill, the waterwheel and the horse would continue to provide their
entirely predictable minimum of energy; and travellers could not hope for
any improvement in the two weeks of rattling by springless stage coach on the
journey from London to Edinburgh or in the six weeks of danger and dis-
comfort during the voyage to the colonies in America.
Today we accept without question the methods of technological forecasting.
They are the practical and necessary means of preparing industry for the
consequences and the opportunities of the developments that will come in
world population, planetary communications, food production, automation,
new materials, new technologies, new markets. Western technology changed
the pattern and direction of civilisation as decisively as the development of
agriculture in the river valleys of Eurasia once changed the condition of human
life on the planet Earth. The sustained process of technological innovation and
of scientific discovery gave Europe-and later the world-a habit of regarding
future time that in many ways separates our present epoch of industrial
civilisation from the whole historical past of the human race. We know what
was hidden from the Roman emperors, the medieval popes and Renaissance
princes : that todays discoveries beget tomorrows industries, and that as the
rate of technological development continues to accelerate, the need to make
rational provision for future change becomes increasingly urgent.
I. F. Clarke is Head of the English Studies Department, University of Strathclyde, UK
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326 The Pattern of Prediction
The technological forecaster is heir to a brief tradition and to a haphazard
practice of guesswork and amateur prediction. Only since the Second World
War, have industrialists, engineers, state planners, statisticians and others
sought to turn the old-style game of extrapolation into as accurate a business
as possible. Before 1939 the forecasting of social and industrial change was left
mostly to imaginative writers like H. G. Wells, Anton Liibke and Ritchie Calder
who were outside industry and government. Before rgoo the shape of things to
come was the private vision of fiction writers; and in the seemingly archaic
period before 1800, when Europe was beginning to realise that tomorrows
world might be very different from the pattern of life in an agrarian society, men
could only regard the future as an area of opportunity, as a time when they
could hope that the steam engine and the Montgolfier balloons would help to
improve the condition of mankind.
An examination of past predictions shows how the increasing accuracy of
forecasts during the past two centuries has depended on steady improvement
in basic methods and-even more important-on more comprehensive
information about scientific and industrial potentials as well as about social
and political possibilities. The technological forecaster has much to learn from
his predecessors in the craft. Indeed, the first large-scale forecast ever made
in the English language is a salutary example of what can go wrong when
the would-be prophet does not know all the facts. For it is worth remembering
that the practice of describing the future originated in I 763, when an anonymous
writer brought out The Reign of George VI, Igoo-925, in which he took what
was for those days a long look into very distant times. Unfortunately the author
had decided to describe life in the twentieth century at that moment in European
history when unprecedented changes were about to transform the world he
knew. Already, in that year, James Watt had begun work on the Newcomen
engine with the certain knowledge that to improve its thermal efficiency would
tap an immense source of power. What lay before the world in 1763 was a
series of great changes-revolutions in politics, medicine, and technology-that
would end monarchy in France, establish a new nation in America, multiply
population beyond all expectation, and introduce new means of transport
and new sources of energy.
The course of history since 1763 has turned the Reign of George VI into a
series of unintentional ironies; and the major irony is in the contrast between
the exceptional originality of describing the imagined circumstances of life in
the twentieth century and the total failure to anticipate any real changes.
Perhaps this contains a warning for forecasters, since the author is so well
satisfied with the state of society in his time that he cannot imagine anything
different. He looks forward to the first quarter of the twentieth century as a
time when architecture, literature, politics and government have been frozen
into a splendid classical perfection. George III would have felt completely at
home in this vision; for population has not increased, cities are still small, and
the good news from America is that the colonists are in possession of perhaps
the finest country in the world, and yet had never made the least attempt to
shake off the authority of Great Britain.
The only changes that the author can foresee in his static world of the
future are political and military moves within the European monarchical
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The Pattern of Prediction 327
Figure 1. A print from one of the propositions that were put to the public from time to time. The
idea of training eagles was actually put forward, and there are accounts of attempts to harness
them to balloons.
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328 The Pattern of Prediction
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The Pattern of Prediction 329
system, and here there is one perceptive anticipation. Although the Spanish
empire in South America is still intact and the Turks continue to control the
Balkans, Russia has advanced into Poland, Finland and the Scandinavian
countries. The great menace of the twentieth century is Russia, expecially
Russia in alliance with France; and the task for any sensible British monarch
is to restore the balance of power in Europe by crushing the French. At this
point the history of the future develops into the wish-fulfilment fantasy of a
Tory patriot. The young George VI proves to be an ideal monarch, a brilliant
general, an original administrator, and the hope of all Europe. Acting as his
own commander, he leads the small British army of some 80,000 men against
the troops of the Russian Czar and the King of France. Year by year he brings
more and more of Europe under British rule. By 1920 he has crushed the
Russian armies and conquered France and Spain. A new Pax Britannica begins
throughout Europe, and the French find that life under British rule is as happy
as an English forecaster can make it for them. George VI gives his French
subjects every advantage; for by an edict which will be immortal, he intro-
duced the laws of England into France, with no changes but such as respected
religion and his own authority. He even gave up every prerogative which
he did not possess in England, except the raising of money. . . . As the French
nation had always preserved a notion of liberty, and had never fallen absolutely
into slavery, the effect of these changes was surprising. They seemed to enjoy
them with particular exultation, as they came from the hand of their conqueror.
Happy for France that it was conquered by such a patriot King!
The Reign of George VI was the first major forecast of its kind-the beginning
of a form of fiction that in the last century became a dominant device for
commenting on the state of society and for tracing the pattern of future
developments. It is however, no accident that the Reign of George VI should
have settled into such fixed and rigid lines. Like so many forecasts it is a
pseudo-prophecy. Although the author pretends to anticipate the system of
life in the centuries ahead, he only describes what he would like to see. In
consequence he presents a projection of acceptable, commonplace notions
about eighteenth century society. And yet the author had one moment of
insight when he came close to seeing how the future might be very different.
He had drawn the correct conclusion from the completion of the Worsley
Canal in 1761. He predicts real changes in the system of internal transporta-
tion: Rivers that formerly were almost useless were now navigated by large
barges, which increased the trade of innumerable towns, and raised in many
places new ones. Canals were cut, which joined rivers and formed a communica-
tion from one part of the kingdom to the other. But there he stopped. The
economic consequences of such a large-scale development were beyond him.
However, within twenty years of the publication of the Reign of George VI
the fateful process of modern technological development had begun. From the
1780s onward every major invention-Watts separate condenser, the Mont-
golfier balloon, the railway, the steamship, the electric telegraph-became a
public and visual demonstration to all Europe that science was a social device
for changing the condition of human life: it was a process that would lead to
even greater changes in the future. So, the news of the first manned balloon
flight on 2 1st November I 783 spread throughout Europe, and in the young
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330 77~Pattern of Prediction
PilPtre de Roziers ascent was seen the presage of future changes. In the Letters
Patent that ennobled the father of the Montgolfier brothers, the French king,
Louis XVI, expressed the new expectation of change: We have no doubt
but that this invention will cause a memorable epoch in physical history; we
also hope that it will furnish new means to increase the power of man. That
was what everyone expected. Already the business of extrapolation had
begun. In I 784 Benjamin Franklin was sending regular .reports about the
balloons to the President of the Royal Society, and in one letter he foresaw a
military use for the new invention: Where is the prince who can afford so to
cover his country with troops for its defence, as that ten thousand men des-
cending from the clouds might not in many places do an infinite deal of mischief
before a force could be brought together to repel them?
By the last quarter of the eighteenth century it had become evident that
mankind was on the march. An entirely new literature of forecast and prophecy
appeared in order to satisfy the growing interest in the shape of things to come.
In 1810, for instance, Julius von Voss, once a lieutenant in the Prussian army,
published an account of life in the twenty-first century, hi, in which he looked
forward to dirigible balloons, aerial reconnaissance squadrons, and such
improvements in artillery that the inhabitants of cities are obliged to live in
great subterranean excavations. In 1827 a woman writer, Jane Webb, gave her
version of life in the future. The world has been transformed. Man has conquered
nature : steam and electricity provide power for marvellous appliances, balloons
transport their passengers across the Atlantic, and the waste places of the
Earth have become the workshop of mankind. Here is the Egypt of the future:
No longer did the sands of the desert rise in might waves, threatening to
overwhelm the wayworn traveller; macadamised turnpike roads supplied their
place, over which post-chaises with anti-attritioned wheels bowled at the rate
of fifteen miles an hour. Steam boats glided down the canals and furnaces
raised their smoky heads amidst the groves of palm trees. The age of extra-
polation had commenced. From the first decades of the last century the
number of these forecasts and imaginative predictions increased until by the
end of the century they became the favourite means of studying the tendencies
and potentialities of their day. The technological forecasters of our time follow
in a rich and varied tradition. They should look to their inheritance.
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