"Heinlein, Robert A - The Worlds Of Robert A Heinlein" - читать интересную книгу автора (Heinlein Robert A)

But the items and gadgets suggested above are examples of timid prophecy.

What are the rules of prophecy, if any?



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Look at the graph shown here. The solid curve is what has been going on
this past century. It represents many things Ч use of power, speed of
transport, numbers of scientific and technical workers, advances in
communication, average miles traveled per person per year, advances in
mathematics, the rising curve of knowledge. Call it the curve of human
achievement

What is the correct way to project this curve into the future? Despite
everything, there is a stubborn "common sense" tendency to project it along
dotted line number one Ч like the patent office official of a hundred years
back who quit his job "because everything had already been invented." Even
those who don't expect a slowing up at once, tend to expect us to reach a
point of diminishing returns ( dotted line number two ).

Very daring minds are willing to predict that we will continue our present
rate of progress (dotted line number three-a tangent).

But the proper way to project the curve is dotted line number four Ч for
there is no reason, mathematical, scientific, or historical, to expect that
curve to flatten out, or to reach a point of diminishing returns, or simply
to go on as a tangent. The correct projection, by all facts known today, is
for the curve to go on up indefinitely with increasing steepness.

The timid little predictions earlier in this article actually belong to
curve one, or, at most, to curve two. You can count on the changes in the
next fifty years at least eight times as great as the changes of the past
fifty years.

The Age of Science has not yet opened.



AXIOM: A "nine-days' wonder" is taken as a matter of course on the tenth
day.

AXIOM: A "common sense" prediction is sure to err on the side of timidity.

AXIOM: The more extravagant a prediction sounds the more likely it is to
come true.