Every American Will Be Independently Wealthy: Overly Optimistic Predictions From Experts of 1966 About the Year 2000
Marshall McLuhan appearing on the CBC program "This Hour Has Seven Days," in 1966. (YouTube)
The February 25, 1966 issue of Time magazine included predictions for the year 2000. And with the benefit of of some distance, the article is an incredible artifact of prognostication. The predictions came at a time when the U.S. was experiencing a prolonged period of unprecedented technological and economic progress. And they had no idea that the postwar growth they’d been seeing since 1950 would start to find harsh limits in the 1970s and beyond.
The piece relied on what the author called were the “new futurists,” perhaps to distinguish from the big-F Futurist art movement of the 1920s that embraced all things tech, while dabbling in some fascism on the side. But these futurists weren’t fascists. They were mostly American experts employed at the most respected universities, employed by the largest and most forward-thinking U.S. companies, and with a few good old-fashioned eccentrics for good measure.
The predictions are overly optimistic for the most part. But given the context of the time it’s easy to see why these experts looked around at America’s dominance in the world and thought everything would continue on the same trajectory.
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