Will man dominate space one day?

Did unknown beings from the infinite reaches of the cosmos visit the earth in the remote past?

Are unknown intelligences somewhere in the universe trying to make contact with us?

Is our age, with its discoveries that are taking the future by storm, really so terrible?

Should the most shattering results of research be kept secret?

Will medicine and biology discover a way of restoring deep-frozen men to life?

Will men from earth colonize new planets?

Will they mate with the inhabitants they find there?

Will men create a second, third, and fourth earth?

Will special robots replace surgeons one day?

Will hospitals in the year 2100 be spare-part stores for defective men?

Will it become possible in the distant future to prolong man’s life indefinitely with artificial hearts, lungs, kidneys, etc.?

Will Huxley’s Brave New World come true one day in all its improbability and chilling inhumanity?

A compendium of such questions could easily get as big as the New York telephone directory. Not a day passes without something brand new being invented somewhere in the world—every day another question can be struck from the list of impossibilities as answered. Edinburgh University received a preliminary grant of $6,480,000 from the Nuffield Trust for the development of an intelligent computer. The prototype of this computer was put into conversation with a patient, and afterward the patient would not believe that he had been talking to a machine. Dr. Donald Michie, who designed this computer, claimed that his machine was beginning to develop a personal life.

The new science is called futurology! Its goal is the planning and detailed investigation and understanding of the future by all the technical and mental means available. Think tanks are springing up all over the world; what they amount to are monasteries of scientists of today, who are thinking for tomorrow. There are 164 of these think tanks at work in America alone. They accept commissions from the government and heavy industry. The most celebrated think tank is the Rand Corporation at Santa Monica in California. The U.S. Air Force was responsible for its foundation in 1945. The reason? High-ranking officers wanted a research program of their own on intercontinental warfare. Some 850 selected scientific authorities now work in the two-story magnificently laid-out research center. The first ideas and plans for the foundations of mankind’s most improbable adventures are born here. As early as 1946 Rand scientists evaluated the military usefulness of a spaceship. When Rand developed the program for various satellites in 1951, it was called Utopian. Since Rand has been functioning, the world can thank this research center for 3,000 accurate accounts of hitherto unobserved phenomena. Rand scientists have published more than 110 books, which have advanced our culture and civilization immeasurably.

There is no end in sight to this research work, and there is unlikely to be one.

Similar work for the future is being done in the following institutes: The Hudson Institute at Harmon-on-Hudson, New York; the Tempo Center for Advanced Studies belonging to General Electric at Santa Barbara, California ; the Arthur Little Institute at Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the Battelle Institute at Columbus, Ohio.

Governments and big business simply cannot manage without these thinkers for the future. Governments have to decide on their military plans far in advance; big businesses have to calculate their investments for decades ahead. Futurology will have to plan the development of capital cities for a hundred or more years ahead.

Equipped with present-day knowledge, it would not be difficult to estimate, say, the development of Mexico for the next fifty years. In making such a forecast, every conceivable fact would be taken into account, such as the existing technology, means of communication and transport, political currents, and Mexico’s potential opponents. If this forecast is possible today, unknown intelligences could certainly have made such a forecast for the planet Earth 10,000 years ago.

Mankind has a compulsive urge to think out in advance and investigate the future with all the potentialities at its command. Without this study of the future, we would probably have no chance of unraveling our past. For who knows whether important clues for the unraveling of our past do not lie around the archaeological sites, whether we do not trample them heedlessly under foot because we do not know what to make of them.

That is the very reason why I advocated a “Utopian archaeological year.” In the same way that I am unable to “believe” in the wisdom of the old patterns of thought, I do not ask others to “believe” my hypothesis. Nevertheless, I expect and hope that the time will soon be ripe to attack the riddle of the past without prejudice—making full use of all the refinements of technology.

It is not our fault that there are millions of other planets in the universe.

It is not our fault that the Japanese statue of Tokomai, which is many thousands of years old, has modern fastenings and eye apertures on its helmet.

It is not our fault that the stone relief from Palenque exists.

It is not our fault that Admiral Piri Reis did not burn his ancient maps.

It is not our fault that the old books and traditions of human history exhibit so many absurdities.

But it is our fault if we know all this but disregard it and refuse to take it seriously.

Man has a magnificent future ahead of him, a future which will far surpass his magnificent past. We need space research and research into the future and the courage to tackle projects that now seem impossible. For example, the project of concerted research into the past which can bring us valuable memories of the future. Memories which will then be proved and which will illuminate the history of mankind—for the blessing of future generations.