nostradamus.com

Humans love to try and predict the future. There seems to be something carnal about knowing what will happen before it actually occurs, probably linked in to some sort of human God-complex that innately infects our super-intelligent/narcissistic species. It’s often embarrassing, and sometimes amusing, when someone gets it wrong. 

But what about the few times we get it right? It’s fascinating how accurate some predictions have become, particularly in regards to the World Wide Web. For a technology that really only came into being around 1990, the fact that over a century ago somebody predicted something similar to our current setup of a worldwide network of billions of computers is astounding, a little scary, and very, very cool.

In 1909 E.M Forster wrote a short story entitled ‘The Machine Stops’, a dystopian (or perhaps utopian, if you’re Zuckerberg or Jobs) tale about humans who have become isolated and dependant on their personal machines which provide for them all they need to survive. Forster’s depiction of this ‘machine’ is eerily familiar:

"There were buttons and switches everywhere--buttons to call for food, for music, for clothing... There was the button that produced literature, and there were of course the buttons by which she communicated with her friends..."

Forster wasn’t alone in predicting the way in which the world would become inextricably connected through machines. In 1946 Murray Leinster addressed a similar concept in his tale ‘A Logic Named Joe’ which, instead of ‘machines’, calls his personal computer-type invention a ‘logic’, a machine which utilises a ‘trick circuit’ that’s so similar to the WWW that Berners-Lee might be up for copyright infringement:

"I was servicing televisions before that guy Carson invented his trick circuit that will select any of 'steenteen [sic] million other circuits—in theory there ain't no limit—and before the Logics Company hooked it into the tank-and-integrator set-up they were usin' 'em as business-machine service. They added a vision screen for speed—an' they found out they'd made logics. They were surprised an' pleased. They're still findin' out what logics will do, but everybody's got 'em."

I realise that it’s not very creative on my part to quote large chunks of other people’s text, but in this case Leinster’s description of the then imminent digital age is so wonderful I can’t help myself:

"You know the logics setup. You got a logic in your house. It looks like a vision receiver used to, only it's got keys instead of dials and you punch the keys for what you wanna get...you punch "Sally Hancock's Phone" an' the screen blinks an' sputters an' you're hooked up with the logic in her house an' if somebody answers you got a vision-phone connection. But besides that, if you punch for the weather forecast or who won today's race at Hialeah or who was mistress of the White House durin' Garfield's administration... that comes on the screen too. The relays in the tank do it. The tank is a big buildin' full of all the facts in creation an' all the recorded telecasts that ever was made—an' it's hooked in with all the other tanks all over the country—an' everything you wanna know or see or hear, you punch for it an' you get it. Very convenient. Also it does math for you, an' keeps books, an' acts as consultin' chemist, physicist, astronomer...with a "Advice to the Lovelorn" thrown in."

Are we so predictable?

I think there is a tendency to weed out the correct predictions from the millions of incorrect ones and champion them as if the author really did have a window to the future. Statistics would suggest that over the course of a century, at least a couple of people would get pretty close. Keep in mind those like Harold Camping and thousands before him, who have incorrectly predicted the end of the world (of course, one of them will be right, one day). Or how about those that assured us that ‘guitar groups’ were ‘on the way out’ in the sixties? We get it wrong a hell of a lot more often than we get it right. And so I guess that’s part of the fun when the Forsters and Leinsters of the world make such bold predictions and those predictions are proved correct.

Here are some more thoughts from our esteemed Nostradami, who both ponder about the merits of their respective technology. E.M Forster could be billed as the first anti-Facebook campaigner:

“The Machine is much, but it is not everything. I see something like you in this plate, but I do not see you. I hear something like you through this telephone, but I do not hear you. That is why I want you to come. Pay me a visit, so that we can meet face to face, and talk about the hopes that are in my mind.”

“The room, though it contained nothing, was in touch with all that she cared for in the world.”

The second statement is a particularly scary quote. Take away our Facebook, take away our Google, our eBay and our Twitter, and it becomes that much harder to engage in the activities that we enjoy. We’d have to go outside or something. And ultimately, Forster is right. These things that we care for, these Facebook profiles and Google searches and Tweets and blogs and Wikipedia articles are, in physical essence, nothing. Our rooms are empty, filled only with the electrical synapses of our digital life-supports. Switch off the power and what are you left with?

Leinster takes a slightly different tack:

“Logics are all right, though. They changed civilization, the highbrows tell us.”

Food for thought indeed. How often is it jammed down our throats that the internet and super-connectivity are good things? I’m usually very pro-internet and pro-technology. But Forster and Leinster got me thinking. Do we ever stop and think just who is telling us that today’s super-connectivity is beneficial? Upon closer examination it’s often the people who stand to make a profit from our ultra digital dependency: Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Apple. Most of us would reject an ad from a cigarette company as we now know that they are making a profit out of people’s misfortunes. Will we come to a similar realisation in the future about the internet and its paradoxical ability to connect us with the world at the same time that it isolates us from it? Will humanity descend into a Forster-like existence in which everyone is physically shut off from one another, connected only by our glowing screens and optical fibre? The alarmists will tell you that we’re already there. The profiteers will claim that we need to go further. Where will it end?

I often wonder about future generations, who will never know a time before the existence of the internet. We’re living in quite a special period of history now: there are still those alive who remember (and in some cases prefer) a time before the World Wide Web. Does their pre-net perspective keep our technology grounded? Do they stop us from making catastrophically stupid technological mistakes all in the name of profit by reminding us that the world used to work before Facebook and Google, and that not everything can be reduced to a 140 character message? When their perspective dies, and their opinions are relegated to the history books, will we - the vanguard of the digital age - somehow concede a part of our humanity to the machines which already consume so much of our lives?