Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, August 7, 1995 TAG: 9508070091
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL HENDRICK COX NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: ATLANTA LENGTH: Medium
Take Chinese inventor Wan Hu, who built the first rocket-propelled flying machine 500 years ago. He tied 47 gunpowder rockets to the back of a chair, but instead of blasting skyward, blew himself to smithereens. At least his vision was right: Rockets could propel flying machines.
In contrast, Sen. John J. Ingalls, R-Kan., predicted in the 1890s that the newly invented telephone would be in every home and office by the middle of the 20th century.
Researchers from each of these two camps were in Atlanta recently when 800 members of the World Future Society, a Bethesda, Md.-based think tank, held its annual conference.
One of the meeting's biggest topics: What will the world be like when 2000 begins?
It's often impossible, of course, to tell visionaries from kooks until decades after their forecasts. Albert Einstein was seen by some as being as wild as his eyebrows.
Or the guy whose name has been lost to history because of his seemingly insane prediction in the 1890s that Florida would boom as a leisure state. The idea that such a desolate, remote peninsula plagued by searing heat and humidity might someday attract millions of tourists was as farfetched as the most far-out ride in Tomorrowland.
But World Future Society researchers predict that:
Cures for cancer, Alzheimer's and AIDS will be found within a few decades.
Murder rates will keep skyrocketing at least 30 more years.
There will be a dramatic rise in Mexican nationalism in the next three decades. As farfetched as it sounds, Texas, California, New Mexico and Arizona have such large concentrations of Mexican descendants that they might try to secede and join Mexico.
Scientists will learn enough about the aging process to slow it dramatically, thus increasing the average life span dramatically.
Airplanes will be able to carry 1,400 or more people within 25 years; today's biggest jumbos can carry 600 people.
Trains will experience a rebirth in passenger traffic. The trains will roll not on conventional tracks, but by magnetic levitation.
Inner cities will continue to deteriorate for several decades, then they'll make a major comeback. The ``gentrification'' process already has started in some cities.
The divorce rate will continue to rise.
The development of neural networks already is enabling computers to learn from experience, in a manner similar to human beings. Computers will become true thinking machines within a decade or two.
By 2010, 2 billion people will be linked by computers.
White collar crime will soar as computer-savvy thieves learn more about gathering secret information. Organized crime will get into computer extortion, threatening, for example, to introduce computer viruses into government or business computers.
Another baby boom will begin around the turn of the century.
Electricity and other methods of propulsion will drive the combustion engine out of cars of the early 21st century.
People will switch from three square meals a day to five small snacks.
By 2030, the United States will have twice as many elderly citizens as it does today, 70 percent of them women.
By 2025, computerized voting and online surveys will be universal in advanced nations.
The level of homelessness will decrease through the treatment of addictions and mental illness. Eighty-five percent of people now homeless suffer from such problems.
To reduce car deaths among teen-agers, who account for 13 percent of all motor-vehicle-related deaths in the United States, graduated licenses will become universal; younger drivers will be allowed to drive in low-risk settings until they gain experience.
by CNB