It has been more than a century and a half since one of the most brilliant minds ever to walk the Earth was born in what was then the Austrian Empire. More than 160 years have passed, and yet Nikola Tesla remains one of the world’s most prominent figures in science. He is well known for his graceful mind, which allowed him to create an impressive number of inventions and also gave him the vision to see into the future. In several interviews, he made a series of predictions about what humanity would be like in the 21st century, and in many of them, he got it impeccably right.
On February 9, 1935, an article appeared in Liberty Magazine that differed from the other interviews conducted with the Serbian inventor because this particular one was signed by him. It appears to have been a conversation between Tesla and his friend George Sylvester Viereck, although it is unclear where the article was written. Many believe it may have taken place in the home of Viereck himself whom Nikola used to visit frequently.
The interesting thing about the writing is that throughout the long lines, Nikola Tesla reviews a series of predictions about the 21st century, about how he believed the context would be at that time. In many of them, the Serbian inventor is not even tangentially close to what is happening today, but there are others where he seems to have had the voice of a prophet.
Here are some of the predictions Tesla outlined about the future that appeared in the 1935 article.
Concern for environmental hygiene
He foresaw the growing importance of concern for hygiene and physical culture. And he even predicted the creation of a U.S. department devoted entirely to such purposes. It was only 35 years after Tesla spoke on the subject that the Environmental Protection Agency was created.
“Hygiene and physical culture will be recognized branches of education and government. The Secretary of Hygiene or Physical Culture will be far more important in the cabinet of the President of the United States, who holds office in the year 2035 than the Secretary of War. Pollution of our beaches, as it exists today around New York City, will seem as unthinkable to our children and grandchildren as life without plumbing seems to us. Our water supply will be much more carefully supervised, and only a lunatic will drink unsterilized water.”
Education and war
Tesla imagined that the path of humanity would lean more toward education than war, and while in a sense he was right in saying that scientific findings would be available to a more generalized public, unfortunately, he was not right in the disinterest in war.
“Today, the most civilized countries in the world spend the maximum of their income on war and the minimum on education. The 21st century will reverse this order. It will be more glorious to fight ignorance than to die on the battlefield. The discovery of new scientific truth will be more important than the squabbling of diplomats. Even the newspapers of our day are beginning to treat scientific discoveries and the creation of new philosophical concepts as news. The newspapers of the 21st century will give a mere “stick” on the back pages to crime stories or political controversies, but will lead on the front pages with the proclamation of a new scientific hypothesis.”
Robot dominance
It seems that the ethical and social dilemma in the presence of robots has been a concern for centuries. Tesla predicted that humanity would only be able to adapt to the intelligence of machines to the extent that we were able to master them, but not stop producing them. Almost as a prophet, he said that, sooner rather than later, most of the heavy work would be done by machines rather than humans.
“At present, we are suffering from the disruption of our civilization because we have not yet fully adapted to the machine age. The solution to our problems lies not in destroying but in mastering the machine. Countless activities still performed today by human hands will be performed by automatons. At this very moment, scientists working in the laboratories of American universities are attempting to create what has been described as a ‘thinking machine.’ I anticipated this development. I built ‘robots.’ Today, the robot is an accepted fact, but the principle has not been carried far enough. In the 21st century, robots will take the place of slave labor in ancient civilizations. There is no reason why most of this should not happen in less than a century, freeing humanity to pursue its highest aspirations.”
Droughts and forest fires
It seems that Tesla’s vision of humanity’s future was quite optimistic. He believed that human intelligence would be used for the benefit of the planet and that droughts and forest fires would be under control. Unfortunately, in this prediction, he did not get it right at all and, on the contrary, human selfishness won out over intelligence.
“Long before the next century dawns, systematic reforestation and scientific management of natural resources will have put an end to all devastating droughts, forest fires, and floods. The universal use of hydropower and its long-distance transmission will supply cheap energy to every household and dispense with the need to burn fuel. As the struggle for existence diminishes, there must be development along ideal rather than material lines.”
[Cover Photo: Jolene Casko]
Story originally published in Spanish in Ecoosfera
