THE WORLD IN HALF A CENTURY FROM NOW

 

ANDREY SAKHAROV

 

Anyone who starts pondering over what our world – or rather the world of our grandchildren and great grandchildren­ – will be like in fifty years from now cannot but be gripped by strong and mixed feelings. These feelings are despondency and horror in the face of tragic dangers and problems mankind is certain to be beset with in its immeasurably complicated future – and, at the same time, a hope for the force or reason and humaneness in the souls of billions which alone can oppose the imminent chaos. Add to this admiration of, and a lively interest in, the all-round and steady modern scientific and technological progress.

 

What determines the future?

 

Almost all agree that the indisputable and indubitable factors in changing the face of the world in the next few decades are: – population growth (by the year 2024, there are going to be over seven billion of us); the depletion of natural resources – oil, natural soil fertility, pure water, and the like; a serious upsetting of natural balance and violations of the man’s environ­ment.

 

These three indubitable factors make the outlook for the future seem gloomy. However, there is another factor, as in­disputable and as weighty – namely, scientific and technological progress, which has been gaining momentum over the millenia of human civilization’s growth, and which is just beginning to reveal its fantastic potentialities.

 

It is my profound conviction, however, that for all the extra­ordinary importance and necessity, the enormous material possi­bilities offered by scientific and technological progress do not decide in themselves the fate of mankind. Scientific and tech­nological progress will bring no happiness unless accompanied by deep-going changes in the social, moral and cultural spheres. The inner spiritual life of men, the inner impulses to their activity are the hardest to forecast, although it is precisely they that may prove, in the last analysis, the salvation or the end of civilization.

 

The chief unknown in our forecasts is the possibility of our civilization, and mankind itself, perishing in the flames of a big thermonuclear war. For as long as there exist thermonu­clear missile weapons and antagonistic states and groups of states mistrustful of each other this horrible danger remains the most ruthless reality of the present day.

 

Even if it succeeds in avoiding a big war, mankind may perish nevertheless, sapped by “minor” wars, inter-ethnic and inter-state conflicts, rivalry and lack of coordination in the eco­nomic sphere, in environmental protection, in adjusting population growth, and by political adventurism.

 

Mankind is threatened with a decline in personal and national morals, which already manifests itself in many countries in a profound disintegration of the fundamentals of law and order, crass consumerism, a universal rise in crime, in the international scourge of nationalistic and political terrorism, in the destructive spread of alcoholism and drugs. The causes of these phenomena differ somewhat from country to country. Still it seems to me that the root cause lies in deeply ingrained materia­lism, with man’s personal morality and sense of responsibility ousted and suppressed by the abstract and essentially inhuman authority alienated from the individual (whether this is the authority of the state, a class, a party or a leader hardly makes any difference, because all these are nothing but varieties of the same bad trouble).

 

In the current world situation, where the gap between various countries’ economic development levels is enormous and keeps widening, where the world is divided into groups of states con­fronting one another, all the dangers threatening mankind are growing to a colossal degree.

 

The socialist countries are largely responsible for that. I must say it here because I as a citizen of the most influential socialist state also bear part of this responsibility. Party and state monopoly in all the spheres of economic, political, ideolo­gical and cultural life; the persisting legacy of the hushed up bloody crimes of the recent past; the permanent suppression of dissidence; a hypocritically self-praising, dogmatic and often nationalistic ideology; the closeness of these societies preventing their citizens’ free contacts with citizens of any other countries; the formation in them of an egoistic, immoral, conceited and hypocritical ruling bureaucratic class – all this goes to create a situation not only unfavourable for the population of the countries in question, but dangerous to the rest of mankind. People in these countries are largely cast in the same propaganda mould, though, of course, have certain successes to their credit; they are partly corrupted by the lures of conformism but at the same time suffer from and are irritated by a permanent lag from the West and an inadequate use of the opportunities offered by material and social progress. Bureaucratic leadership is not only inefficient by its very nature in dealing with the current problems of progress; it is always concerned with short-term clanish interests and concentrates on immediate reporting to, the higher­-ups. Such leadership actually does little by way of looking after the interests of the generations to come (protecting the environ­ment, for instance); it prefers to talk about that in formal speeches.

 

What are the factors that oppose (or can and should op­pose) the destructive trends of modern life? I attach special importance to preventing the disintegration of the world into antagonistic groups of states, to the process of the capitalist and socialist systems drawing closer together (convergence), accompanied by demilitarization, international confidence building, the protection of human rights, law and freedom, profound social progress and democratization, and the assertion of basic human values.

 

The way as I see it, the economic system to emerge as a result of this convergence process should be a mixed economy, combining maximum flexibility, freedom, social achievements and possibilities for worldwide regulation.

 

A vital role should be played by international organizations, such as the U.N., UNESCO and others, which I should like to see as a prototype of the world government pursuing no objectives apart from all-human ones.

 

However, it is necessary to take as soon as possible sub­stantial intermediate steps, which are within our reach already now. I mean, specifically, the broadening of the economic and cultural aid to the developing countries, especially in solving their food problems and in building up an economically active and intellectually healthy society; the setting up of international consultative bodies authorized to see to, the observance of human rights and to the protection of the environment in each country. The most elementary and urgent thing to do now is to stop everywhere such impermissible practices as the pro­secution of dissidents; granting the existing organizations – the Red Cross, the World Health Organization. Amnesty International and others – access to where human rights violations are suspected, chiefly to places of confinement and psychiatric pri­sons; a democratic solution to the problem of the freedom of movement (emigration, re-emigration, private trips).

 

The solution of the problem of freedom of movement over the planet would go a long way towards ending the closeness of socialist societies, building up the atmosphere of international confidence, leveling up the legal and economic standards of various countries.

 

I don’t know whether those in the West realize what free­dom of tourism, now proclaimed in socialist countries, is really all about, and how much window dressing, red tape and regi­mentation is involved in it. For the few trusted ones such trips are, more often than not, just a welcome chance to conform, to dress “Western style” and, in general, to join the elite. I have already written much about the absence of the freedom of movement; this is the Carthage to be destroyed.

 

I wish to stress once again that the fight for human rights is actually the real fight being waged today for peace and for the future of mankind. Therefore I believe that all the interna­tional organizations should base their activity on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; this applies, in particular, to the United Nations which proclaimed this Declaration 25 years ago.

 

Hypotheses on the technology of the future

 

In the second part of the article I shall set forth certain futurological hypotheses, chiefly of the scientific and technical character. Most of them have already been published in this or that form, so I am not coming out here as their author or an expert. My purpose is to try and sketch a picture of the technological aspects of the future. Naturally enough, this pic­ture is most hypothetical and subjective, sometimes fantastic even. It is not necessarily tied up to the date 2024 – what matters to me is not the time, but the trends I believe likely. The forecasters of the recent past often pushed their deadlines too far off; modern futurologists may expect their visions to materialize all too soon.

 

I conjecture that territories of two types, a “Work Territory” (WR) and a “Protected Territory” (PT), will emerge gradually from the overpopulated industrial world ill-suited for human habitation and pernicious to the environment. This process is not at all likely to come to a completion by the year 2024. The “Protected Territory” will be larger of the two and intended for maintaining natural balance on earth, for recreation, and re­storing man’s equanimity. In the smaller and much more densely populated “Work Territory” people will spend most of their time, engage in high agriculture; the environment has been fully geared to practical needs; concentrated in this territory is the entire industry with its huge automatic and semiautomatic plants; almost all its inhabitants live in “megalopolises” dominated by skyscrapers, in air-conditioned apartments complete with auto­mated kitchens, holographic landscape-walls, etc. The skyscrapers will be concentrated in the centre, the rest of the megalopolises constituting suburbs sprawling for tens of kilometres. These suburbs, as I see them in my mind’s eye, will be much like what one finds in the more prosperous countries today: family cottages with front lawns and vegetable and fruit gardens, child care centres, sports grounds, swimming pools, everyday service shops, modern city comforts, quiet and convenient public transport, pure air, arts and crafts stalls, free and varied cultural life.

 

Despite a rather high average population density, life in WTs can be as healthy, natural and happy – given a clever approach to social and interstate problems – as that enjoyed by the middle class in modern industrialized countries, i.e., much healthier than the overwhelming majority of our contemporaries can make it. I hope, nevertheless, that the man of the future will be able to spend part of his time, even though a smaller part, in the still more “natural” conditions of the PTs. Those living in PTs will also have a social mission to fulfil – they do not only relax, but also do manual and brain work, read books and meditate. They live in tents or in homes they have patterned after their ancestors’ abodes. They listen to the murmur of a mountain creek, or simply delight in peace and quiet, feast their eyes on wild scenic beauty, the woods, the sky and clouds. Their chief preoccupation will be conserving nature – and their own selves.

 

Just a few statistics. The WT will be 30 million square kilometres large, with an average population density of 300 persons per square kilometre. The PT will be 80 million square kilometres large, with an average population density of 25 per­sons per square kilometre. The earth’s total population will be 11 billion, and people can spend about 20 per cent of their time in the PT.

 

“Flying towns” – artificial earth satellites discharging im­portant production functions – will be a natural extension of the WT. Concentrated on them will be solar power plants and, possibly, a substantial proportion of radiation-cooled nuclear and thermonuclear plants, which will help prevent the over­heating of the earth; besides, the satellites will carry vacuum metallurgy plants, greenhouse farms, space research laboratories and intermediate stations for long-distance flights. Under the WT and PT alike, there will be a ramified network of underground towns comprising dormitories, places of entertainment, underground transport service facilities and mines.

 

I visualize the industrialization, mechanization and intensifi­cation of agriculture (especially in the WT) which is to employ not only classical types of fertilizers, but also artificial super-­productive soil and profuse irrigation. In the northern areas greenhouse farming will be practised on a large scale, with arti­ficial lighting, soil heating and electrophoresis and, possibly, other physical methods used. Genetics and selection will certainly keep their crucial role, and even gain in importance. Consequently, the “green revolution” of the past few decades is to continue and to make further progress. New forms of land farming ­marine, bacterial, micro-seaweed, mushroom, etc – will appear. The surfaces of the oceans, the Antarctic, and later, possibly, of the Moon and other planets will be gradually drawn into the orbit of agriculture.

 

Protein deficiency which hundreds of millions of people suf­fer from is now an acute problem in the field of nutrition. It is impossible to solve this problem through increasing the volume of livestock breeding for fodder production already now absorbs about fifty per cent of farm produce output. Besides, livestock breeding will probably be curtailed for a number of reasons, such as the need for environmental protection. I think that the next few decades will see a swift rise in the production of animal protein substitutes, such as artificial aminoacids serving chiefly to enrich vegetable products with, which will lead to a sharp cutdown on livestock product output.

 

The industry, power engineering and everyday life are also to undergo dramatic changes. To begin with, the need to protect the environment calls for a universal changeover to closed production cycles causing no environmental pollution at all. The enormous technical and economic problems involved in such a changeover can be solved only on an international scale (just like the problems of restructuring agriculture, demographic problems, and the like).

 

Another distinguishing feature of the industry – and of the entire society of the future as well – will by a much more extensive use of cybernetic equipment than is the case now.

 

I conjecture that the parallel development of semi-conductor, magnetic, vacuum-tube, photoelectronic, laser, cryotronic, gas dynamic and other types of cybernetic equipment will lead to an enormous rise in its economic and technological potentialities.

 

The industry is probably to acquire a higher degree of flex­ibility and “readjustability,” i.e., will be able to respond more readily to shifts in market demands and society’s requirements in general. Such readjustability of the industry is bound to have far-reaching consequences. In the long run, it may even help put an end to the artificial stimulation of “super-demand.” This socially pernicious, wasteful and environment-polluting prac­tice, now current in industrialized countries, is partially con­nected with the conservatism of mass production.

 

As far as domestic appliances are concerned, the simplest automatic devices will be playing an ever greater role.

 

However, further progress in the field of telecommunications and information service will play a special role.

 

The establishment of an integral worldwide telephone and video-telephone communication system is to mark one of the next stages of this progress. In the long run – in fifty years from now, at least – the world information service (WIS) will come into service.

 

The WIS will put anyone wise, within minutes, to the con­tents of any book or article ever published, and issue any in­formation requested. The WIS is to comprise miniature request transceivers, master stations controlling information flows, communication channels including thousands of artificial earth satellites, cable and laser lines, Even a partial implementation of the WIS project will have a strong impact on everyone’s life, leisure, stimulate intellectual growth and broaden artistic hori­zons. As distinct from the TV set which is now the chief source of information for many of our contemporaries, the WIS will afford everyone maximum freedom in selecting information, and call for individual activity.

 

The WIS is to play a truly historic role in that it will remove all the remaining barriers in the way of information exchange between countries and individuals. Uninhibited, access to infor­mation about works of art, for instance, is fraught with the danger of their depreciation. I believe, however, that this con­tradiction will be resolved somehow. Art and its perception are always so individual that the personal message of works of art will not be lost. Books and private libraries will also retain their meaning precisely for the reason that they are of everyone’s individual, personal choice, as well as by force, of their aesthetic and traditional appeal, in the best sense of this word. Great art and good books will always give man a thrill.

 

On power supply. I am convinced that huge coal-burning nonpolluting electric power stations will lose none of their im­portance as sources of power supply within the next fifty years. At the same time, atomic power plants and, towards the end of the period in question, thermonuclear power plants will become common. The problem of atomic power plant waste disposal is a purely economic one already now; in the end, this will be no more difficult or expensive to do than to extract sulphur dioxide and nitric oxides from thermal power stations flue gases (an operation which is to become as vital in the future as nuclear waste disposal is now).

 

On transport. In the PT, the family car will be ousted, I think, by a battery-powered “walking cart” on articulated limbs which does not trample down the grass and requires no as­phalted roads. The bulk of goods and passenger traffic will be taken care of by helium atomic-powered airships and, chiefly, by high-speed atomic-powered overhead and subway trains. In a number of cases, particularly in municipal transport, loading and unloading will be done “in motion” using special mobile “auxiliaries” such as moving sidewalks (like the one described by Herbert Wells in his “When the Sleeper Wakes”), discharge waggons on parallel tracks, and the like.

 

On science and high technology, space research. The theoretical computer “modelling” of many complicated processes will assume a still greater importance. Large-storage and rapid-action computers (duplicated, possibly photo-electronic or purely optical, with logically operated image fields) will make it pos­sible to solve multidimensional problems, those with a large degree of freedom, quantum-mechanical and static problems of many bodies, and so on. Let me give you a few examples what these computers will be able to do: accurate weather forecasting tracing the magnetic gas dynamics of the Sun, the solar corona and other astrophysical objects, analyses of or­ganic molecules, of elementary biophysical processes, of the properties of liquids and solids, liquid crystals; calculations of “multidimensional” production processes, such as those in metallurgy and the chemical industry, complex economic and sociological calculations, and so on. Although computer mod­elling can, and should, by no means replace experiment and observation, it provides, nevertheless, enormous extra pos­sibilities for scientific progress. For instance, it offers a golden opportunity for checking out the theoretical explanation of this or that phenomenon.

 

Progress is likely to be made towards synthesizing sub­stances possessing superconductivity at room temperature. Such a discovery would be a breakthrough in electrical en­gineering and in many other spheres of technology, such as transport (super-conducting rail tracks over which a cart would glide friction-free, on the levitation principle; conversely, the cart’s runners can be made super-conductive, and the rails ­magnetic).

 

To my mind, the current achievements of physics and chemistry will make it possible (using mathematical modelling, perhaps) not only to create man-made materials superior to natural ones in all their substantial properties (the first steps in this direction have already been made) but to reproduce arti­ficially many unique properties of whole ecosystems. I can im­agine automatic devices of the future using economical and easy-to-control artificial “muscles” made of contractable polymers, highly sensitive analyzers of organic and non-organic air and water impurities operating on the “artificial nose” principle, and so forth. I visualize the production of artificial diamonds from graphite by means of special underground nuclear blasts. Diamonds are known to play a very important role in modern technology, and their cheaper production may further add to it.

 

Space research is to play a still greater role in the science of the future than it does now. I envisage a more vigorous effort to make contacts with extraterrestrial civilizations. We’ve got to try picking up signals coming in from them in all the known radio wavebands and, at the same time, to design and build transmitters of our own. We have to look out in outer space for information vehicles coming from extraterrestrial civilizations. Information received from “without” may have a revalutionizing effect on all the aspects of human life – on science, technology – and may prove useful in trading social experience. Lack of action in this direction would be unreasonable without any guarantees of success in the foreseeable future.

 

I am of the opinion that high-power telescopes installed on space-based research laboratories or an the Moon will afford a close look at the planets rotating around the near-by stars (Alpha Centauri and others). Atmospheric statics make it impracticable to increase ground telescopes’ mirror magnification factors over the established magnitudes.

 

The domestication of the surface of the Moon and of certain asteroids is likely to begin towards the end of the 50-year period under consideration. By setting off special atomic charges on the surface of asteroids, we shall probably be able to control their movement to draw them “nearer” to earth.

 

I have just set forth some of my ideas as regards the future of science and technology. However, I have made no mention of what constitutes the very heart of science and often brings the most substantial practical and abstract theoretical research born of insatiable curiosity, flexibility and power of human intelligence. The first half of the twentieth century witnessed such peaks of scientific thought as the special and general theory of relativity, quantum mechanics, an insight into the atom and its nucleus. The discoveries of such a magnitude have always been and will remain unpredictable. I can venture, but also most tentatively so, just a few avenues of research which might culminate in major discoveries. Research in the fields of the theory of elementary particles and cosmology may lead not only to tangible progress towards the goals scientists have already set themselves but also to the emergence of en­tirely new notions of the structure of time and space. Research in the fields of physiology and biophysics, vital function reg­ulation, medicine, social cybernetics and general theory of self­-organization promises great surprises. Every major discovery may have a vital direct or indirect effect on the life of humankind.

 

Inevitability of progress

 

The persistence and development of the basic current scien­tific and technological progress trends seems inevitable to me. I do not consider its consequences tragic, although I’m not alto­gether in disagreement with the philosophers who think other­wise.

 

Population explosion and the depletion of natural resources are the factors which make it absolutely impossible for man­kind to go back to the so-called “healthy” life of the past (which was actually hard, often ruthless and gloomy) – even if mankind felt like it and could do so against the background of competition and all sorts of economic and political difficul­ties. Various aspects of scientific and technological progress­ – urbanization, industrialization, mechanization and automation, the use of fertlizers and poison chemicals, the enhancement of cultural standards, more leisure facilities, the progress of medicine, better nutrition, lower death rate – are closely inter­connected, and it is impossible to call off any progress trends without destroying civilization as a whole. It is only the death of civilization in a worldwide thermonuclear holocaust, of hunger, epidemics, total destruction that can retard progress; only a mad man can wish events to take such a turn.

 

The world situation today can be described as disastrous in the literal meaning of the word. Many people are threatened with famine and premature death. Therefore, the prime task of any truly human progress now is to oppose these dangers, and any other approach would amount to unpardonable snob­bism. For all that, I am not inclined to absolutize the technical and material aspect of progress alone. I am convinced that the big idea of all human institutions and of human progress is not only to protect all the humans from suffering and premature death but also to preserve such basic human joy as as the re­wards of clever brain and manual work, mutual assistance, harmony with nature, acquiring new knowledge and enjoying art. I do not consider the contradiction between these takes as insurmountable. Already now the citizens of advanced indus­trialized countries have more opportunities for normal and healthy life than their contemporaries in backward and starving countries. At any rate, progress which saves mankind from famine and diseased cannot possibly block active good which is the quintessence of humaneness.

 

I believe that mankind will find a reasonable solution to the complicated problem of effecting enormous, vital and inevitable progress with the human being and nature remaining intact.

 

May 17, 1974.

 

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