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\u201cThe only thing we can be sure of about the future is that it will be absolutely fantastic, so, if what I say now seems to you to be very reasonable, then I\u2019ll fail completely.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the auspicious opening line in a segment<\/a> from BBC\u2019s Horizon<\/em> program, in an episode titled \u201cThe Knowledge Explosion,\u201d originally broadcast in September 1964 and delivered straight to camera by Arthur C. Clarke, one of Britain\u2019s most well-regarded science fiction writers and the author of 2001: A Space Odyssey<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Clarke, known for his love of space travel and undersea exploration, posited that the city of the future\u2014he used the year 2000 as his touchstone, an incomprehensibly long time away\u2014would hardly exist at all. Not because of a nuclear holocaust or wasteland pandemic. Rather, it would be due to incredible breakthroughs in telecommunications.<\/p>\n \u201cThese things will make possible a world in which we can be in instant contact with each other wherever we may be, where we can contact our friends anywhere on earth even if we don\u2019t know their actual physical location,\u201d Clarke said. (Check, check, check\u2013though location knowledge is no longer an obstacle, thanks to apps like Find My<\/a>.)\u00a0<\/p>\n Stanford economist and work-from-home expert Nick Bloom shared the unearthed broadcast<\/a> on LinkedIn<\/a> earlier this week, commending Clarke for his stunningly accurate predictions. Namely, Clarke was spot-on in predicting distributed work.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt will be possible\u2014perhaps only 50 years from now\u2014for a man to conduct his business from Tahiti or Bali just as well as he could from London,\u201d Clarke said. \u201cIn fact, if it proves worthwhile, almost any executive skill, any administrative skill, even any physical skill, could be made independent of distance. I am perfectly serious when I suggest that one day we may have brain surgeons in Edinburgh operating on patients in New Zealand.\u201d<\/p>\n Clarke\u2019s work predictions, in particular, have been exceptionally accurate. \u201cThe traditional role of the city as a meeting place for men would have ceased to make any sense. In fact, men will no longer commute. They will communicate.\u201d (To be sure, cities haven\u2019t quite gone obsolete, but a mass-move towards remote work has led to the hollowing out<\/a> of office buildings, the decimation of retail<\/a> in business districts, and an explosive donut effect<\/a> in outer suburbs.)\u00a0<\/p>\n Clarke even touched on machine learning, what we\u2019d now ubiquitously call AI<\/a>: \u201cThe most intelligent inhabitants of that future world won\u2019t be men or monkeys,\u201d he posited. \u201cThey\u2019ll be machines.\u201d Echoing the wary comments of the so-called godfather of AI<\/a>, Geoffrey Hinton, Clarke said he expects machines to outsmart humans. \u201cThey will start to think, and eventually they will completely outthink their makers. Is this depressing? I don\u2019t see why it should be. We superseded the Cro-Magnons and Neanderthal men and we presume we\u2019re an improvement.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Further, Clarke was an early AI optimist, urging people to regard newfangled tech as \u201ca privilege\u201d and a \u201cstepping stone to higher things.\u201d Human evolution has \u201cabout come to its end,\u201d Clarke said. \u201cAnd we\u2019re now at the beginning of inorganic or mechanical evolution, which will be thousands of times swifter.\u201d Worry not, though: \u201cHuman beings are almost infinitely adaptable.\u201d<\/p>\n Clarke concluded by reminding viewers not to be pessimistic or nervous; the future is \u201cendlessly fascinating\u201d insofar as despite humans\u2019 best efforts, \u201cwe will never outguess it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Never is a strong word; Clarke came pretty close.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n