Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought
Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought
In 1901, a 34-year-old H.G. Wells attempted something audacious: to predict the next century of human history. Writing before cars became common, before flight was practical, before anyone spoke of smartphones or drones, Wells looked at the steam engine and the bicycle and extrapolated a world that hadn't yet existed. The result is a fascinating time capsule of Edwardian optimism and imagination, where motor vehicles swarm through reorganized cities, aircraft drop weapons from the sky, and traditional marriage quietly dissolves under the pressure of new freedoms. Wells argued that readers were living through a reorganization of human society more profound than any revolution, and that transportation the steam train, the coming automobile, the impossible airplane was the key to understanding everything from politics to romance. Some predictions stun with their accuracy; others founder as spectacularly as his conviction that submarines would suffocate their crews. What endures is not the specific forecasts but the radical premise: that ordinary people could think systematically about the future, and that the future was worth arguing about.
