The Year 2000: A Framework for Speculation on the Next Thirty-Three Years Hardcover – 1969

The future has a way of surprising even the most knowledgable of would - be prophets. Today when Science is no longer worshipped as a one way vehicle in the direction of Progress, there is at least on part of some a greater wariness as to Man's capacity to arrange , plan, and create all in accordance with his wishes. Herman Kahn was a person of tremendous intelligence and knowledge, and was not afraid to try and think ahead even if this meant risking being made a fool .The prediction here about fusion reactors solving our energy problems is a good example of the kinds of mistake Kahn sometimes made. On the other hand he and his colleagues did have great foresight in a number of areas.

What is interesting is that a book like this which once ' the latest thing' and ' the best idea we have of what the future will be ' now seems so dated and irrelevant. There is apparently nothing more useless than yesterday's newspaper except perhaps yesterday's predictions about today.

I read this book soon after it was published; reread major parts in preparing a talk the impact of technological advances on modern economic assumptions that I gave as a college freshman in 1972; and skimmed it fifteen years ago while working on a book on the economics of learning well. Overall, it has stood up better than most criticisms of it.

There is a tendency among many people to judge this book based on Kahn's predictions about technology, which Kahn himself freely admitted were speculative. In judging these predictions today, we ought to keep in mind that he wrote the book when LBJ was still in office. Based on the technology available in the marketplace in 2000 relative to the technology available in the marketplace in 1967, many of the predictions that today's readers dismiss as being off the mark have actually come to pass. A good example is "high quality" medical care to the third world (#46 in his likely 100 list). Consider the antibiotics, vaccines, medical implants, and surgical techniques used in 2000 in the third world from the perspective of someone living in 1967.

We also ought to keep in mind that Kahn distinguished between available technologies and technologies actually in use. The technologies to build SSTs, seed clouds, and cut grand canals through mountain ranges using nuclear weapons were available in 2000. They simply were not used. Further, we now know that some of his speculations were about technologies that were at least partly available in 2000 but were not yet in wide use. Additively manufactured body parts, bionic limbs, and robotic vacuum cleaners and lawnmowers come to mind.

What critics who focus on technological advancement miss is that the heart of this book is not his speculations about technological inventions and innovations, but rather his framework for thinking about the 33 years from 1967 to 2000. (Read the subtitle.) Overall, he was remarkably successful. He was clearly using Moore's Law before it was known as Moore's Law to predict the emergence of personal computers in the early 1980s. His means of cultural analysis was also on the mark about the rise of Japan as an economic superpower. This was long before it became obvious.

Kahn’s greatest failure was in not grasping the full implications of his basic long-term multifold trend, which included the trend toward greater universality of the multifold trend and the trend toward an ever faster tempo of change. He might have used these two facets of his multifold trend to predict what we now call the information revolution. In particular, he might have predicted how the transition from the industrial age to what Daniel Bell latter called the postindustrial age would shake apart economic, social, cultural, and political institutions beginning with the most rigid. Kahn did not provide us with a universal framework for thinking about the future.

Arguably, such a universal framework is what Jacob Bronowski believed that John von Neumann was working on at the time of his death. For more about Bronowski’s speculations on what von Neumann was really up to in his mathematics of reasoning well, see the last episode of his 1973 BBC2 series on science’s contribution to civilization, THE ASCENT OF MAN (“The Long Childhood”), which is available on various documentary web sites. Consistent with Bronowski's belief is the unfinished work of Nicholas von Neumann, John's brother and biographer. Near the end of his life he was working on a grand theory of human history.

The were somewhat off the mark in their "forecasts" but gave so insight into correct political situation.

I read many parts of this ridiculous book.I found them available for free reading on an internet site.
This book wasn't writen by a ridiculous pastor or an aiatollah;it was writen by two american "scientists".Writing on late 1960 decade, they went to be prophets.Even being "scientists" they weren't better than an aiatollah could be.
To example, they thought that in 2000 fusion reactors will be the biggest source of energy in the world.Well, we are in 2007, not in 2000, but even so, no fusion reactor ever produced liquid energy even to support a small lamp.
The end of iron curtain and Soviet Union, the growing of islam, the atomic aiatollahs of Iran, internet, personal computers, cell phone; nothing were saw by the authors of this book.
Well, here in Brazil, we have a proverb:"O futuro a Deus pertence".Tranlating to English we have:"The future belongs to God."
The only real use on reading this book is to see, that "science" can be so failured as religion.