Time Essay: Why Forecasters Flubbed the '70s

The decade just ended left behind a great many fresh reminders of why prophets have always had difficulty winning honor on their own turf. The forecasting about the 1970s turned out to be a pathetic flop. Virulent inflation and an epochal energy crisis are only two of the most ominous realities that eluded the visions of virtually every forecaster. Moreover, the failure was marked by far more than the understandable inability to foresee all the astonishments to come; many, perhaps most, of the positive projections also turned out to be dismally wrong. To mention only one, the twinkle-toed, bell-bottomed, bead-draped, mind-blown, laid-back Consciousness III that Charles Reich saw aborning in The Greening of America (1970) proved to be a huge bag of promises, or threats, or wind, that never quite got delivered.

The 1970s diverged socially, politically and psychologically from the paths and contours that the futurists imagined. Actuality put the lie to most prophecies long before anybody in the U.S. had even heard of the Ayatullah Khomeini or imagined the trouble he would bring. Well before Iran, it was evident that forecasters, including the most respected, had flubbed by failing to foresee the fateful sagging in U.S. productivity, the influx of women into the work force (hence increased dual income), the decline in the birth rate, and the wrenching financial crisis in such cities as New York, Cleveland and Chicago. The 1970s, in other words, flatly disregarded most of the advance billings.

Gross differences between history and human anticipation of it are as old as the practice of prophecy. Most respectable forecasters are already painfully aware of the shortcomings of their art, and little is to be gained by rubbing their noses in the disparities. (For one thing, it might distract them from the job of forecasting the 1980s.) Still, a certain amount of carefully aimed derision is justified in a world increasingly buffeted by overblown future schlock. Most of all, it is useful to try to understand why the predictions about the 1970s so often came to nought.

How would life in the U.S. be if a mere sampling of the 1969 prognostications had been accurate? The economy would be stable, steadily growing, with perhaps a bit of inflation. A superboom in housing would have occurred: a second home would be as ordinary as a second car. Vertical takeoff planes would be much in use. A safe fast-breeder reactor would be perfected. Space-shuttle flights would be regularly scheduled. Anticancer vaccine would be available at the neighborhood clinic. Ugly transmission lines would all be underground. People would be shopping by two-way cable television. Teaching machines would be widely used. Office work would be mostly automated. An electronic control lane for trucks and buses would make passenger cars safer on the highways.