快猫短视频

JOURNALISM has famously been described as 鈥渢he first rough draft of history.鈥� 快猫短视频鈥榮 own brand of journalism 鈥� which is 鈥� is a bit different. We aim to provide a first rough draft of the future.

Over the past 60 years we have not just reported new discoveries and inventions in science and technology. We have also tried to explain why they matter and where they鈥檙e likely to lead. That鈥檚 not easy. There can be very fine lines between testable predictions, educated guesswork and flights of fancy.

Many early issues of The 快猫短视频 contain eerily prophetic stories about ideas and issues that would go on to shape the world 鈥� that rough draft of the future. We hope the same will be true of what we鈥檙e publishing today. But it is very much a rough draft: then, as now, attempting to predict the future in detail is a largely futile enterprise.

The internet, global warming, artificial intelligence and genetic engineering were all on our radar in 1956. But our ideas about how they might pan out bore little resemblance to how they have actually evolved, particularly when it comes to their social ramifications. Ubiquitous information has not created rationalist utopias, ecological catastrophes have not culled our population and we have neither super-human machines nor people, though we鈥檙e getting there.

Can we hope to do any better at predicting the future today? One way to proceed is to simply extrapolate: in other words, look at what鈥檚 happening now and assume that the trends you see will continue. This works well when you can expect a system to remain governed by the same principles. Celestial dynamics don鈥檛 vary much, so we can predict with confidence that Halley鈥檚 comet will return to our skies in 2061.

As systems get more complex, however, accurate prediction becomes more difficult. Long-term weather forecasting, for example, is fearsomely hard. When we think about social change, it becomes harder still. There are far more factors to take into account and they unfold in complex and interacting ways. Linear extrapolation invariably fails: it鈥檚 the kind of thinking that leads people to jokily ask 鈥渨here鈥檚 my jetpack?鈥�, a question borne of post-war trends in transport and the space race 鈥� none of them relevant today.

In some circles, extrapolation has given way to exponentialism 鈥� the belief not only that what is happening will keep happening, but that it will happen ever faster. Adherents of this view have elevated Moore鈥檚 law, which states that computer processors double in complexity every two years, to the status of a natural law governing all sorts of things.

Accept this and it makes for dizzying outcomes in surprisingly short order. You end up with a technological singularity, a point at which superintelligent machines usher in an age of runaway technological advance, with unfathomable consequences. This is perhaps the most transformative change conceivable in the next 60 years.

For what it鈥檚 worth, I don鈥檛 think that will happen any time soon, and nor do many AI researchers (see 鈥�The world in 2076: Machines outsmart us but we鈥檙e still on top鈥�). Moore鈥檚 law is not a law of nature but a self-fulfilling prophecy that has held because people strived to make it hold. They are now beginning to struggle because the actual laws of nature have intervened. And while the current pace of AI research is stunning, I expect there will be some bumps in the road there, too.

So prediction and extrapolation are of limited use: fine up to a point if you need to place semiconductor orders, perhaps, but not so much if you want to work out how semiconductors are changing society.

Is it futile to think about the future, then? Not entirely. We鈥檙e bound to get most things wrong 鈥� although some futurologists have bucked the trend (see 鈥�Stanis艂aw Lem: The man with the future inside him鈥�). But perhaps we can get enough right to make a difference.

快猫短视频 is an optimistic publication. We think the future can be better than today. But we are not Panglossian. We do not simply insist that we reside in the best of all possible worlds; we think we have to make it so. That鈥檚 what humanity has always striven to do. And we only succeed if we think about the future.

In that spirit, in this issue we鈥檙e indulging in some educated guesswork about what might happen over the next 60 years. We have chosen scenarios that look plausible today 鈥� which might mean they look as naive as those jetpacks tomorrow. Perhaps you should think of this as a guide to what the future will almost certainly not be like.

This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淲elcome鈥� to the future鈥�