Future Shock, II

Yesterday, I was discussing the chances of anyone being able to predict the future.
My musings were sparked by a book I've recently finished: A Brief History of the Future, written by French economist, and futurist, Jacques Attali. ($25, Arcade Publishing).

Monsieur Attali has quite a biography. He's the cofounder and first president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and was an adviser to former French president Francois Mitterand. He's written four previous books including Millennium: Winners and Losers in the Coming World Order (more on this later*).

M. Attali's publisher hails his new book as "brave and controversial." I'd certainly agree with the former. I'm not brave enough to put my name on such rubbish. As for the latter, it's not substantial enough to be controversial.

But, you don't have to take my word for it. M. Attali's will do.

Like Marx before him, M. Attali believes he can apply the rigors of science to history: "history obeys laws that allow us to make predictions and channel its course," he writes. Sounds like another big thinker: Let's see: M. Attali lives in Paris. Marx once lived in Paris. Maybe it's something in the water.

M. Attali has identified what he says is the "single, stubborn, and very particular direction" of history. That direction is toward ever greater personal freedom. Except in Zimbabwe. Okay, he doesn't allow for exceptions. That's me poking fun.

Right now, we're near the end of what M. Attali calls the mercantile order. The mercantile order will exhaust itself defending its markets and be replaced by a unified, stateless global market—a super-empire—run by an innovative class of hypernomads. (M. Attali's fertile mind dreams up lots of new concepts with fancy names: infranomads (the poor), hyperconflict (planetary warfare), hyperdemocracy, hyperventilating. Okay, more kidding on that last one.)

This super-empire will lead to such extreme imbalances—in wealth particularly—that it too will collapse, perhaps in a round of hyperconflict. This, however, will lead to Utopia: a hyperdemocracy of complete equality led by transhuman hypernomads acting through new institutions modeled on the U.N. This time, we get to skip the dictatorship of the proletariat.

In this hyperdemocracy, everyone will have "access to good times" [M. Attali's italics]; there will be no violence; and the fundamental rights of "life, nature, and diversity" will be guarded. For left-liberals everywhere, the end-of-history will have arrived. For the rest of us . . . well, we'll see. But, I wouldn't plan on partying like it's 2065 just yet.

*In his earlier peek into the future [Millennium], M. Attali predicts the end of the U.S.'s global supremacy. He predicts something similar in A Brief History of Time, but much has changed. In the earlier work, he saw U.S. dominance retreating sooner rather than later with either the European Union or Japan replacing the Americans. Such a prediction wasn't particularly bold back in the late 1980s/early 1990's when he was writing Millennium. Back then, Japan, Inc., especially, looked unstoppable. Of course, nothing of the sort happened. Japan was just entering into a lost decade of economic stagnation, and the U.S. a decade of explosive growth. Who knew? Well, a futurist should have. History in one single channel and all that stuff.

Anyway, M. Attali has now given up on the Japanese and Europeans. The U.S., he says, will continue to dominate for a while longer—but only because "there's no credible rival on the horizon." Nevertheless, there's still that stubborn smashup ahead.

What do you think? Can M. Attali suspend human nature? Are most forecasters essentially charlatans? Is Al Gore the model for the transhuman hypernomad? He's already been the model for one-half of one of the most tragic couples in popular literature: Oliver Barrett, IV, in Erich Segal's Love Story. At least that's what Al claims. And, why wouldn't I believe the man who invented the internet?

Bottom line: A little humility in the face of the unknown goes a long way.