There’s a famous story from the early days of public opinion polling and it goes like this: a telephone poll taken during the 1936 presidential election indicated Republican challenger Alf Landon would defeat Democratic incumbent Franklin Roosevelt by a wide margin. The poll was, of course, wrong and the story has been taught to journalism students ever since as an example of how bias can distort perceptions. The flaw in the poll was that it was telephone poll; at the height of the Great Depression, surveying only those people who had telephones was not an accurate way to get a fix on the mood of the country.
I was reminded of the 1936 Landon poll by the cover story in the current issue of Wired magazine. I’m sure you are all familiar with Wired magazine. The cover story is called “The Long Boom.” In it, the authors predict we are now riding the crest of a wave that will sweep us forward to a future of peace and prosperity, of environmental and economic health the world over. The article even comes with its own timeline, forecasting dates for such future blessed events such as “human life expectancy reaches 120 years,” “auto industries transition to alternative energies,” “reliable simultaneous language translation” and “first contact with scientists from planet Vulcan.” OK, I made that last one up.
The timeline, and the article it accompanies, have a certain gee-whiz naiveté about them that frightens me. It reminds me, in a real way, of all those “World of Tomorrow” magazine features written to accompany the 1939 New York World’s Fair. Those magazines proclaimed a bright, happy, healthy future was within our grasp, all the while strenuously ignoring that fact that the world was actually at the brink of the greatest catastrophe of the century. The article in Wired bows as slavishly before the altars of economic growth and free trade as the 1939 World’s Fair bowed before nylon and plexiglass. And like the 1936 Landon poll, the writers at Wired seem to assume everyone has, or soon will have, a computer and their own home page.
Hey, just because everyone you know owns a computer, doesn’t mean you know everyone. For a reality check, I’d like to quote from a recent article in Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post. It’s not about the future; it’s about the present.
“If we could shrink the world’s population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look like this – there would be 57 Asians, 21 Europeans, 14 from the western hemisphere (north and south) and eight Africans. There would be 51 females, 49 males; 70 would be non-white, 30 white. Seventy would be non-Christian, 30 Christian. Fifty percent of the entire world’s wealth would be in the hands of six people and all six would be citizens of the United States. Eight would live in sub-standard housing; 70 would be unable to read; 50 would suffer from malnutrition. One would be on the brink of death, one would be about to give birth. Only one would have a college education. No one would own a computer.”
Time Present, Time Future
There’s a famous story from the early days of public opinion polling and it goes like this: a telephone poll taken during the 1936 presidential election indicated Republican challenger Alf Landon would defeat Democratic incumbent Franklin Roosevelt by a wide margin. The poll was, of course, wrong and the story has been taught to journalism students ever since as an example of how bias can distort perceptions. The flaw in the poll was that it was telephone poll; at the height of the Great Depression, surveying only those people who had telephones was not an accurate way to get a fix on the mood of the country.
I was reminded of the 1936 Landon poll by the cover story in the current issue of Wired magazine. I’m sure you are all familiar with Wired magazine. The cover story is called “The Long Boom.” In it, the authors predict we are now riding the crest of a wave that will sweep us forward to a future of peace and prosperity, of environmental and economic health the world over. The article even comes with its own timeline, forecasting dates for such future blessed events such as “human life expectancy reaches 120 years,” “auto industries transition to alternative energies,” “reliable simultaneous language translation” and “first contact with scientists from planet Vulcan.” OK, I made that last one up.
The timeline, and the article it accompanies, have a certain gee-whiz naiveté about them that frightens me. It reminds me, in a real way, of all those “World of Tomorrow” magazine features written to accompany the 1939 New York World’s Fair. Those magazines proclaimed a bright, happy, healthy future was within our grasp, all the while strenuously ignoring that fact that the world was actually at the brink of the greatest catastrophe of the century. The article in Wired bows as slavishly before the altars of economic growth and free trade as the 1939 World’s Fair bowed before nylon and plexiglass. And like the 1936 Landon poll, the writers at Wired seem to assume everyone has, or soon will have, a computer and their own home page.
Hey, just because everyone you know owns a computer, doesn’t mean you know everyone. For a reality check, I’d like to quote from a recent article in Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post. It’s not about the future; it’s about the present.
“If we could shrink the world’s population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look like this – there would be 57 Asians, 21 Europeans, 14 from the western hemisphere (north and south) and eight Africans. There would be 51 females, 49 males; 70 would be non-white, 30 white. Seventy would be non-Christian, 30 Christian. Fifty percent of the entire world’s wealth would be in the hands of six people and all six would be citizens of the United States. Eight would live in sub-standard housing; 70 would be unable to read; 50 would suffer from malnutrition. One would be on the brink of death, one would be about to give birth. Only one would have a college education. No one would own a computer.”