Futurologists and Writers

Futurologists and Writers

There have been numerous science fiction writers, social commentators, and scientists who have predicted their own version of the future over the last 100 years. The best-known of these visionaries are those who portray the social implications of technology in their visions of the future. One of the most famous social scientific writers is H. G. Wells, who predicted time travel, genetic and surgical experimentation, alien lifeforms, and chemical experimentation. Threaded throughout Wells' novels is a clear vision of the effect on society wrought by these technologies, often a bleak and hostile picture of class struggle, dehumanization of the individual, and bitter warfare. Some of Wells' most famous titles are The Time Machine, The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Invisble Man, and The War of the Worlds, all published in the last decade of the 19th century.

A contemporary of Wells, Jules Verne had a very different view of the effect of technology on society. He portrayed a future of intense pioneering exploration and discovery in his books, such as Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and A Journey to the Center of the Earth.

In the twentieth century, many authors, scriptwriters, and other creative professionals have portrayed views of the technological future which comment on the societal changes that will be wrought by technology. Aldous Huxley's seminal work Brave New World portrayed a culture which had lost its joy because of the application of technology by a power-hungry government. This novel anticipates the widespread use of birth-control and predicts cloning technologies. Isaac Asimov's tremendously popular science fiction novels imagine universes populated by robots with strict moral codes, and cultures that are preserved and perpetuated by colonizing the far reaches of the galaxy.

It's worth mentioning that a familiar television series, Star Trek, envisioned by Gene Roddenberry, was one of the leading social commentaries of it's day when it first premiered. In the context of a future society, Roddenberry encouraged his own vision of a worthwhile future, in which predjudice based on race, religion, or sex was largely eradicated, greed and monetary compensation was a thing of the past, and knowledge, particularly scientific knowledge, was the highest goal of mankind.


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