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Trying to predict the future
is a discouraging and hazardous
occupation because the prophet
invariably falls between two stalls.
If his predictions sounds at all
reasonable you can be
quite sure that in twenty
or most fifty years the
progress of science and technology has
made him seem ridiculously conservative.
On the other hand, if by
some miracle, a prophet could
describe the future exactly as it was going to take place,
his predictions would sound so absurd, so
far fetched that everybody would laugh into scorn.
This has proved to be true in
the past and it
will undoubtedly be true even more so of the century to come.
The only thing that can be
sure of about the future is that it will absolutely fantastic.
So if what I
say now seems to you to be
very reasonable, then I have failed completely.
Only if what I tell you
appears absolutely unbelievable have we
any chance of visualizing the
future as it really will happen.
Let's by looking at the city of the future.
Some people think that it will
be like this and they're quite right.
In fact, everything you see now
already exists, all the materials, all the ideas.
These things could be put into practice
immediately. But what
about the city of the day
after tomorrow say the
year 2000. I think it will be completely different.
In fact, it may not even exist at all.
Oh, I'm not thinking of the
atom bomb and the next stone age.
I'm thinking of the incredible
break through which has
been made possible by developments in
communications, particularly the
transistor and above all the communication satellite.
This things will make possible a
world in which we can be
in instant contact with each other where ever we may be.
Where we can contact our friends anywhere
on Earth even if we
don't know their actual physical location.
It will be possible in that
age, perhaps only 50
years from now, for a
man to conduct his business from
Tahiti or Bali just as well as he could from London.
In fact, it will proved worthwhile almost
any executive skill, any
administrative skill even any physical
skill could be made independent of distance.
I'm perfectly serious when I
suggest that one day we
may brain surgeons in
Edinburgh operating on patients in New Zealand.
When that time comes the whole
world will have shrunk to
a point, and the
traditional role of a city
as a meeting place for man, would
have cease to make any sense.
In fact, men will no
longer commute, they will communicate.
They won't have to travel for business any more.
They only travel for pleasure.