Failed Predictions for 2020 We Wish Came True
By: Michael J. Vowles
Tags: History, Future, Technology, Science, 2020

It’s always interesting to wonder how much our ancestors, predecessors, and younger selves knew where they were going. But equally fascinating, in my opinion, are those bold predictions from the past that hit completely wide of the mark. Not only is it a neat insight into the way the minds of the past considered their place in human history, but it serves as a reminder that no matter our achievements, we can never gauge our societal momentum with any real exactness.

2020 has been an eventful and chaotic year, so I figured I would turn my ear back to the voices of the past and delve into a little alternate history. It seems that those voices had a lot of ideas about what 2020 in particular might look like. Prophecies aren’t interesting, so I made sure to stick to considered, thoughtful predictions made by futurologists, writers, engineers, scientists, and other trend forecasters.

These are the unmet expectations, forgotten dreams, and unrequited wishes for the 2020 that never was.

A 26-Hour Work Week

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This one is probably the most disappointing. In 1968, physicist Herman Kahn and futurist Anthony J. Weiner predicted that by 2020 the average American would be working 26 hours per week- about 1370 per year. It was a pretty bold prediction considering the average American worked approximately 37 hours per week in 1968. And it speaks to the optimism of the Post-War period that envisioned a future of linear progress and continuous economic growth. As it stands, the average American now works roughly 35 hours per week according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics- and that figure varies according to factors such as gender, age and marital status (the average for men is 41 hours for instance). It also doesn’t include “side hustles” which many modern Americans increasingly feel the need to support themselves with. The U.S also has a relatively high figure of 11% of its employees that work over 50 hours per week (according to the OECD).

Sadly, the idea of a 26-hour work week seems less realistic now than it did in the 1960s- and not just for Americans. But if any country is going to get close to making it less of a fantasy, it will be a progressive nation like Denmark, Norway, or The Netherlands.

Humans Will Land On Mars

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Although this prediction is, ultimately, wrong- it’s not far off. The idea that we would send human beings to Mars by 2020 is something I remember growing up with, in fact. Humans setting foot on Mars by the early 21st century was a recurring promise in the books and documentaries I consumed as a kid. In a 1997 issue of WIRED, Peter Leyden and Peter Schwartz gave 2020 as the year we would finally succeed in sending a manned spacecraft to the Red Planet. We’re on our way, having successfully landed several robotic craft (such as probes, rovers, and landers), but current estimates for a manned mission put it a good decade hence.

What’s most interesting about Leyden and Schwartz’s prediction however, is not that we would reach Mars by 2020, but that we would do so as part of a “joint effort supported by virtually all nations on the planet”. They describe four astronauts from a multinational team beaming images of the Martian landscape back to 11 billion people- which is also interesting, as the most recent United Nations estimates for the world population (as of September 2020) sit at 7.8 billion, with 10 billion not expected until 2057.

The beaming of those images are an important part of the prediction though, and tell us that this was as much a prediction about sociology as it was scientific discovery. The images that never were beamed to us this year have an emotional weight to them. Leyden and Schwartz envisioned the 2020 Mars landing as being a turning point in history, a triumph of global cooperation that would put an end to an Earth divided by nations and give rise to a more collective mindset.

“The images from Mars drive home another point: We’re one global society, one human race. The divisions we impose on ourselves look ludicrous from afar. The concept of a planet of warring nations, a state of affairs that defined the previous century, makes no sense.”

It’s poignant to think that this, rather than our technical capabilities, has proven to be the most unrealistic aspect of their prediction. It makes me think of classic science fiction from the Cold War era (think Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek or Poul Anderson’s Tau Zero) in which a future spacefaring Earth always had a single identity. Nation-states were gone, but cultural identities were never lost. Ethnic and religious conflicts were seen as archaic. Although it may seem far away right now, there is hope in the idea that through technology we can achieve social progress.

The Death of Nationalism

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This one ties in quite nicely to the previous prediction. If you think about it, they’re essentially the same: through advances in technology, we can overcome national and ethnic divides, and come together as one. In 1968, political science professor Ithiel de Sola Pool confidently proclaimed that “By the year 2018 nationalism should be a waning force in the world,” due to our enhanced capabilities for translation and communication. While it’s true that the internet has facilitated a more interconnected world, our technical innovations haven’t brought about the greater empathy de Sola Pool hoped for. Quite the opposite, in fact. Trump, Brexit, Bolsonaro, Erdoğan, Orbán, the Front National, and the Alternative für Deutschland were and are driven by a viciously-xenophobic, fervently anti-intellectual brand of populist nationalism.

The question that remains is whether de Sola Pool’s prediction was wrong entirely or whether it was simply premature. If we are to think of human history in terms of Hegelian Dialectics, then the process of nationalism’s erasure could very well be underway. It’s just not a smooth and linear process. Rather, it’s a messy, generational progression of “two steps forward, one step back”. The French Revolution deposed a tyrannical monarchy but led to a little something known as The Terror, and from that chaos emerged a new tyrant in the form of Napoleon- a political opportunist who derailed the very liberty he professed to love. It was a good half-century before the fruits of the Revolution came to bear insofar as individual liberty was concerned. By that same token, the rise of Trump, Brexiteers, and those like them could be the last fightback of populist nationalism as the world moves inexorably to a more interconnected and interdependent future. The more they swing in one direction, the likelier it is that the next generation of policymakers will move to compensate. My point being, we won’t know for definite that de Sola Pool was off the mark until many years hence.

Hyper-Intelligent Apes Will Be Our Personal Slaves

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No, I’m not kidding. During my research for this article, this was the prediction for 2020 that seemed to crop up the most in my internet searches. Probably because people can’t quite believe that this was a serious prediction for the world in which we now live. In 1967 The Futurist published an article that stated “By the year 2020, it may be possible to breed intelligent species of animals, such as apes, that will be capable of performing manual labor.”

According to the writer this included everything from vacuuming the house to pruning the rosebushes, and even driving our cars. These apes, which would be specially-bred and trained as chauffeurs, would supposedly reduce the amount of car crashes. Now I’ve never seen a chimp drive a car outside of a circus, so I can’t attest as to whether or not they would be more adept at spotting potential hazards on the road than we are. But these aren’t just any old apes- the article implies they’re a kind of super-ape, bred for specific purposes in the same manner as dogs. Alas these apes don’t exist, but the basic idea that by 2020 we will use our enhanced technology to find new uses for animals is not incorrect. Scientists and mechanical engineers at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University have recently experimented with the creation of “cyborg insects”, successfully implanting electrodes into the leg-muscles of beetles in order to control how they move. These remote-control bugs- far cheaper than robots of the same size- can theoretically be put to a number of uses- from espionage to search-and-rescue. It’s not as impressive as a baboon trying to scrub dried oatmeal from a breakfast bowl, but it’s in the spirit of things.

Telepathy & Teleportation

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Perhaps the most surprising aspect of this prediction is not so much that it exists, but that it was made as recently as 2014. Michael J. O’Farrell, founder of The Mobile Institute and veteran of the tech industry, proclaimed in the 2014 book Shift 2020 that both telepathy and teleportation will have been made possible by the current year. This breakthrough was supposed to have been achieved through a process known as “nanomobility”.

O’Farrell writes that “By 2020, I predict people will become incubators for personally controlled and protected Embodied Application Platforms and Body Area Networks, with a primary source-code Physical State and hyper-interactive genetically reproduced Virtual States. All states would host a mass of molecular-sized web-servers; IP domains and AP transport protocols capable of self-sustaining replication, atomically powered quantum computing and persona-patented commerce. I have coined the phrase nanomobility to capture and describe this new uncharted state.”

So what’s the modern reality of telepathy and teleportation?

Well the truth is that they simply don’t exist- at least, not in the way we typically imagine these concepts. The closest we’ve gotten to telepathy is electro-encephalography (EEG), in which a device not dissimilar in shape to a swimming cap is outfitted with large electrodes and placed upon the scalp of the subject. These electrodes record electrical activity which is then interpreted by a computer. Scientists have used this interface to both send signals from the brain and receive electrical pulses in turn. Volunteers have been able to transmit brain activity to each other, to computer software, and even to animals- with one volunteer able to stimulate the motor area of a sedated rat’s brain in order to get it to move its tail.

The closest scientists have come to something resembling teleportation is a process known as quantum teleportation, which is less an act of transportation so much as it is communication. Quantum information has been proven capable of transmitting from one place to another. In 2014, researchers at the Technical University Delft reported having teleported the information of two entangled quantumbits three meters apart. These breakthroughs may not have impacted our everyday lives in the way that the futurists’ hoped, but they are nonetheless extraordinary accomplishments that we can only hope will serve as part of a greater journey of discovery.