The Pattern of Prediction 269

In all, we plan to have a model with

approximately 32 sectors on the pro-
duction side. Thus we shall have 32 wage
rate equations, 32 production functions,
32 hours worked equations, 32 price
equations and 32 final demand regres-
sions. These changes alone will add
approximately 150 equations to an al-
ready large model. Corresponding to
these changes on the side of production,
we shall make similar decompositions on
the side of final demand. We would want
32 investment functions in order to
build up 32 series on capital stock for the
32 production functions. We would also
need 32 depreciation equations. The
final demand regressions will be im-
proved if we make these and similar
decompositions of other types of final
demand. Foreign trade, consumption
and inventories will probably be further
decomposed . . . We shall probably end
up with a system of approximately 300 to
400 equations . . . Pp. 31-32
3. I have written of the post-industrial
society in a number of essays. The most
comprehensive statement can be found
in my monograph, The Measurement
of Knowledge and Technology, in
Indicators of Social Change, edited by
Eleanor Sheldon and Wilbert Moore
(Russel Sage Foundation, 1968)
The Pattern of Prediction 1763-1973
H. G. WELLS: PREACHER
AND PROPHET
I. F. Clarke
Of the many writers talking about the future state of society at the turn of the
century, most are now forgotten. However, H. G. Wells stands out more than
any of his contemporaries in making men aware of the urgent and complex
problems thrown up by continued technological development.
THE decade between 1895 and 1905
marks the first main phase of crystal-
lisation in the history of social and
technological forecasting. In those years
the earliest exercises in predicting the
future state of society began to appear
in print. And in this development there
were certain discernible factors at work.
First, the general sense of living at the
end of the first great epoch of tech-
nological civilisation precipitated wide-
spread curiosity about the pattern of
Professor I. F. Clarke is Head of the English
vtuies Department, University of Strathclyde,
life in the coming century. Second, this
interest coincided with the marked
increase in the numbers of science-based
stories and utopian visions of the
future that were published during the
1890s. Third-and most important of
all-the genius of H. G. Wells gave the
age an entirely new literature of
fantasies and factual predictions that
looked into the most varied possibilities
in science and in society.
Wells, however, was not alone. He
was the best of an increasing number of
authors who had taken to writing
about the future state of society. For
FUTURES September 1970
270 The Pattern of Predictions
instance, in Laings Problems of the
Future (1893) there were studies of the
expectation of peace in Europe, the
reorganisation of the tax system, the
problems of population and food sup
ply. Again, in Edward Carpenters
Forecasts of the Coming Century (1897)
ten writers (William Morris, Shaw,
Grant Alien and others) provided a
socialist analysis of the means and
methods of establishing a happier state
of society. Similarly, in Arthur
Brehmers Die We& in hmdert Jahren
(1904) a number of scholars, scientists,
and inventors gave their views on
matters as different as the future of
war and the role of women in the
twenty-first century.
They are all forgotten now; but
Wells is remembered for the startling
accuracy of so many of his forecasts.
In the matter of armoured warfare,
for example, Wells was right and the
General Staffs of the European armies
were all hopelessly wrong. In 1915,
when Colonel Swinton and Winston
Churchill pressed for the construction
of armoured trench-crossing machines,
the Engineer-in-Chief of the British
Army brushed off the proposition.
Before considering this proposal, he
said disdainfully, we should descend
from the realms of imagination to solid
facts. One year later the first tanks
had gone into action in France, and
they had fought in the way Wells
described in a short story, The Land
Ironclads, first published in 1903.
In this there seems to be a lesson for
technological forecasters, since the
characteristic Wellsian prediction de-
pended in equal measure on fact and
imagination. The earliest suggestion of
armoured fighting vehicles appeared in
the War of the Worlds (1898) ; and from
this simple exercise of the imagination
Wells went on to make a close study of
future developments in modern warfare.
He argued that, given the great
increase in fire-power, it would be
essential to protect the fighting man:
Experiments will probably be made
in the direction of armoured guns,
armoured search-light carriages and
armoured shelters for men that will
admit of being pushed forward over
rifle-swept ground. With admirable
logic Wells continued-to possibilities
even of a sort of land ironclad my
inductive reason inclines. These were
the solid facts on which he based his
imaginative account of armoured war-
fare in The Land Ironclad?.
The Wellsian forecast was the pro-
duct of reason and imagination-the
scientists capacity for logical analysis
and the artists gift for seeing con-
nections, possibilities, applications.
Wells developed these gifts throughout
his writing, led by a dominant interest
in society, spurred on by his angry
resentment at the dismal negligence of
the social and religious organisations
which had flung him into the world
misinformed, undernourished and
physically under-developed. He ques-
tioned the basic principles, the structure
and the organisation of his society.
His nagging doubts and his shrewd
insights were so native to his thinking
that they provided the framework for
utopian blue-prints and comic stories
alike. In describing the adventures of
his Cockney hero in K;pPs it was natural
for him to observe that man is a social
animal with a mind nowadays that
goes round the globe, and a community
cannot be happy in one part and
unhappy in another. That theme
reappears in The War in the Air, where
Wells points out that scientific develop-
ments had brought men nearer to-
gether, so much nearer socially and
physically and economically that the
old separation into nations and king-
doms are no longer possible.
Wells scattered these observations
throughout his books; and in this way
he did more than any of his contem-
poraries to make men aware of the
urgent, complex problems thrown up by
continued technological development.
He was the preacher and prophet of his
age, for in questioning the ways of
FUTURES September 1970
The P&em of Prediction 271
Figure 1. The first tank in history: the illustration for Wellss forecast of land ironclads in the
short story of that name in the Strand Magazine in 1903.
Figure 2. Infantry surrender to tanks:
consider the comment of Kitchener
on seeing the first real tank-la pretty
mechanical toy.
Sfieculations in Hard and Soft Science 273
society he was always ready with his
own answers. His best answers were
also his first-the collection of essays
published under the title of Anticipations
in 1901. In its way the book is one of
the historical landmarks of the twen-
tieth century: it was the first major
attempt to examine new trends in
society; it provided the model for its
kind; and Wellss world reputation did
much to encourage the practice of
preparing for anticipated changes.
Wells was the preacher and prophet
of his age. In Anticipations he had
studied the factors making for change
in locomotion, the size of cities, warfare,
communications, and social affairs.
He predicted the end of horse-drawn
transport and the coming of the
motor truck for heavy traffic. He
went on to argue that, because means
of transportation would increase and
population would grow, the whole of
Great Britain would become an urban
region held together by a new road
system, a dense network of telephones
and tubes for parcel delivery. He was
even more accurate when he came to
his chapter on warfare. He predicted
that the twentieth century state would
take over the direction of the civil
population in time of war, because
mass conscription required the total
mobilisation of industry. He foresaw
the importance of the air arm: Once
the command of the air is obtained by
one of the contending armies, the
war must become a conflict between a
seeing host and one that is blind.
And so he continued through the
twentieth century-deducing, proph-
esying, arguing. He was the first of the
modern-style forecasters. There has
never been anyone like him.
Speculations in Hard and Soft Science
Irving John Good
In this third instalment of the series, the author pursues his theme that ideas
that can not as yet be made practicable should be recognised as such and made
public. He lists some of his own partly baked ideas and invites similar contri-
butions from readers.
THE previous articles have shown that
an idea can have various degrees of
bakedness and it is not necessarily dis-
paraging to describe an idea as partly
baked: it is merely ambiguous. All
ideas are partly baked but some are less
baked than others. It is not the baked-
ness of an idea that makes it indigestible
but rather the pretence that it is more
baked than it really is. The estimate of
the digestibility depends on who has the
idea; the ideas that you incompletely
I. J. Good is University Professor of Statistics,
Virginia Polytechnic Institute, USA.
cook for yourself seem more digestible
than those of another chef.
Among professional scientists specu-
lations are often put forward apologeti-
cally if at all, and in 1952, F. A. Hayek
said : It seems almost as if specula-
tion (which, be it remembered, is
merely another name for thinking) has
become so discredited among psycho-
logists that it has to be done by out-
siders who have no professional reputa-
tion to lose. (The Sensory Order, p. vi.)
I speculate, therefore I am.
During the last year I have collected
FUTURES Sept ember 1970