In 1983, Isaac Asimov predicted the world of 2019. Here’s what he got right (and wrong).

Author: Stephen Johnson / Source: Big Think

In 1983, the Toronto Star asked science fiction writer Isaac Asimov to predict what the world would be like in 2019.
His predictions about computerization were mostly accurate, though some of his forecasts about education and space utilization were overly optimistic.
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Asimov’s predictions highlight just how difficult it is to predict the future of technology.

Isaac Asimov was one the world’s most celebrated and prolific science fiction writers, having written or edited more than 500 books over his four-decade career. The Russian-born writer was famous for penning hard science fiction in his books, such as that in I, Robot, Foundation and Nightfall. Naturally, his work contained many predictions about the future of society and technology.

Some of those predictions came true, such as our ability to use what he called sight-sound communication to contact anyone on Earth. But others — a machine that can convert yeast, algae and water into foods like “mock-turkey,” for instance — never manifested.

In 1983, the Toronto Star invited Asimov to predict the answer to a specific question: “What will the world look like in 2019?” It was a fitting time to pose the question, the Star’s editors figured, because 1983 was 35 years after George Orwell penned 1984.

Asimov wrote that it was pointless to imagine the future of society if the United States and the Soviet Union were to engage in nuclear war, so he assumed that wouldn’t happen. He then broke down his predictions under two main themes: computerization and space utilization.

Computerization

Asimov was more or less correct in many of his predictions on the future of computerization, even if some of his forecasts were a bit broad and obvious, including:

“Computerization will undoubtedly continue onward inevitably.”

The “mobile computerized object” will “penetrate the home,” and the increasing complexity of society will make it impossible to live without this technology.