EXPIRES: 2014

WRITTEN: 1964-08-16

Indeed, the most somber speculation I can make about A.D. 2014 is that in a society of enforced leisure, the most glorious single word in the vocabulary will have become work!

Isaac Asimov

"Visit to the World's Fair of 2014," The New York Times, August 16, 1964

Written: 1964-08-16

Addressed to: 2014

Source: "Visit to the World's Fair of 2014

Author: Isaac Asimov

Category: Culture

Annotation

Like Keynes before him, Asimov assumed automation would produce mass leisure. The actual 2014 saw the gig economy, the hustle-culture ethos, and stagnant wages forcing many into multiple jobs. Work had not become scarce; it had become precarious. The prediction reveals how mid-century thinkers universally misjudged capitalism's appetite for labor.

What Actually Happened

By 2014, the gig economy was expanding, work hours remained high, and 'hustle culture' was ascendant. Automation displaced specific jobs but did not reduce overall labor demand.

#leisure#automation#labor#gig-economy#new-york-times

2000

In the three short decades between now and the twenty-first century, millions of ordinary, psychologically normal people will face an abrupt collision with the future. Citizens of the world's richest and most technically advanced nations will find it increasingly painful to keep up with the incessant demand for change.

Alvin Toffler

1975

There is a quality even meaner than outright ugliness or disorder, and this meaner quality is the dishonest mask of pretended order, achieved by ignoring or suppressing the real order that is struggling to exist and to be served... Low-income projects that become worse centers of delinquency, vandalism and general social hopelessness than the slums they were supposed to replace.

Jane Jacobs

1980

Why did I pick on the next nine years instead of the next 900 for finding a solution to the population crisis? One answer is that the world is rapidly running out of food. And famine, of course, could be one way to reach a death rate solution to the population problem. In fact, the battle to feed humanity is already lost, in the sense that we will not be able to prevent large famines in the next decade or so.

Dr Paul R. Ehrlich