Aspen, Colorado
September 5, 1980

2020 - Visions of the Future - Roaring Fork Valley (Page 1 of 7)

Nick's 1980 predictions for the year 2020

Document courtesy of:
Aspen Historical Society, IDCA Time Capsule Collection

Text:

1

2020 - VISIONS OF THE FUTURE - ROARING FORK VALLEY
By Nick DeWolf, Friday, September 5 1980

I hope we’ll take seriously the concept of burying the results of this conference in a time capsule because forty years from now most of [us] will still be alive so we will enjoy seeing what fools we were. I originally intended to give you a jazzy slide show of pictures from OMNI Magazine of wonderful machines and inventions from the future, but such fun excursions into fantasy will prevent all of us from truly thinking about tomorrow. We picked 2020 because that’s perfect vision, knowing full well that we don’t even have a chance to be close. The only forecast we can make safely is that we will be wrong, but more importantly, looking at other seasoned forecasts, we will almost certainly completely miss the most important issues forty years from now. I’ve been in the fast changing semiconductor business and thirty years ago we made all kinds of forecasts, the most optimistic of us making our most bizarre and kookiest guesses were fifteen times too low. The explosive growth just plain blew up in our faces.

In 2020 most of us will be a mere 85. By then, however, many of us will still be in our prime, with 20 years to go. But 2020 is relatively a twink away.
The earth is 4,600 million years old.
Cellular life has been here most of that time.
Photosynthesis for 2,000 million years.
Quasi-man 2 million years.
Erectus a tenth of a million years.
The last glacier coincided roughly with the birth of
consciousness (some believe), agriculture, the Church, cities, factories
- all five to ten thousand years old.
Books, schools, divorces, Hell and democracy were invented between two and five thousand years ago.
We’ve been capable of self destruction for only about thirty years.
Half of our published literature is only six years old.

Futurists of the past have held to cyclical views, a convolution
thing, such as sunspot cycles (my Father’s favorite way of predicting the stock market), but the kind of rollercoaster we’re on now makes the cyclical view seem kind of silly.
Others are evolutionists, who think about trends, and extrapolate Pitkin County growth forty years from now via percentage growth rates.
But I believe in catastrophe theory - that the future will come by lurches and leaps and creaks up and down, and changes will be more revolutionary.
Above all, more than at any other time in the history of man, we control our own destiny. The incredible number of options we have are really within our control instead of nature’s.
Many of those who want to plot charts are stuck in measuring the quality of life with measurements like:
Air pollution; Gross National Product; Nuclear Radiation levels;
Bacteria counts.
I find that those measures of the quality of life don’t interest me much - what counts to me are things like:
Rewards; Happiness; Freedom; Spark; Elan; Spirit; Privacy; Self
Expression; Fulfillment - those kinds of things.
Therefore most are incapable of attacking the subject scientifically - three cheers!

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Aspen, Colorado
September 5, 1980

2020 - Visions of the Future - Roaring Fork Valley (Page 2 of 7)

Nick's 1980 predictions for the year 2020

Document courtesy of:
Aspen Historical Society, IDCA Time Capsule Collection

Text:

2

In 1945 we climbed out of World War II and looked upward wih Utopian optimism. In 1980 we look around at a frontierless landscape and we feel from here on up it’s downhill all the way-or worse, the reverse!

So futurists tend to try to cheer us up with space talk and colonies on the moon are a favorite. Colonies in space are more practical. In looking for an issue forty years from now, I asked lots of counter-culture types, not a single one had a suggestion! Perhaps we won’t have problems in 2020 - I hope not, but I might suggest human cloning. Oil shale - Ouch! That one’s so scary I left it out, but I’m certain we’ll discuss the daylights out of that later. If the oil shale growth boom occurs, which I frankly doubt, we sure will have a lot of smoke coming down wind this way.

Now, let’s tackle the future, sticking to possible or feasible scenarios or happenings.
First, there are “wish” and “fear” futures. These are not probable, but are the ones we mostly talk about - we’re scared of them or dream of them.
Then there are “get” futures. These are what we’ll get if we coast. Some good, some bad. “They” will do this for “me.”
There are “want” futures that “I” prefer and would like to get, and in some cases “we” will do this for “them.”

Now to scratch the crystal ball, let’s start with a few “fear” items.
Laser beam weapons reach Poor Paul’s war surplus market.
Computers outwit us, snoop on us, and do our planning.
Major nuclear war = if so, we are upwind of Colorado Springs, but downwind of the MX missiles in Nevada and Utah, so it’ll be a lot safer in Los Angeles than here.

In the “wish” department, these are largely the province of technology. Whether we like it or not, it is only technology that can make a drastic change in our options. There is hi-tech, lo-tech, appropriate-tech (soon to be a fighting word), and “silly-tech” or “fantasy-tech.” Things like:
Cryogenic power lines
Matter scanner transporters
Anti-gravity units
Anti-matter disposals
Microwave power from the pie-in-the-sky
Earthbound laser missile stoppers
Space colonies. Prof.O’Neill (Princeton) sez “By 2150 there could be more people living in space than on earth; earth might serve mainly as a tourist attraction, a carefully planned preserved monument to man’s origin.” If so, Aspen will have a ball, but we’ll have to fix the airport.
Plastic bubble over the city (controlled micro-climate)
Air cars and personal hovercraft (the whoosh dream is a clatter-roar reality)
Extra-terrestial aliens teach us a thing or two
Holographic movies save Hollywood
Procreative solar devices manufacture themselves (currently called wheat)
Biological engineering creates mental superperson
Local tracked private electric mini-cars with computer pilots
Separate airport busway (I put in the “wish” category)
Alcohol fuel dominates transport (the fumes in Brazil are already a problem)
Computers eliminate paper money (the underground economy won’t permit it)
A car link-up system to deliver our cars to Denver as we get off the train
Video phones - long rejected because you have to put on your clothes to answer the phone.

part of an archival project, featuring the work of nick dewolf

© the Nick DeWolf Foundation
Requests for use are welcome via flickrmail or nickdewolfphotoarchive [at] gmail [dot] com

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Aspen, Colorado
September 5, 1980

2020 - Visions of the Future - Roaring Fork Valley (Page 3 of 7)

Nick's 1980 predictions for the year 2020

Document courtesy of:
Aspen Historical Society, IDCA Time Capsule Collection

Text:

3

Let's look at some of the "get" futures we'll probably have, like it or not.

NATIONALLY:
We will have managed to stay out of the world's second limited nuclear war - we've already had one.
It the State Department does not have a complete philosophic and personnel overhaul, we will have a costly conventional war, not with Russia, China, or the Arabs, but with Mexico.
The world's religions will try to get together without success.
Technology, which has had bursts in the 1880's, 1910's, the '40's and 50's, will blossom in the '80's, quit in the '90's, will return again in 2010. The chief technologies then will be biological engineering and agricultural. My field of electronics will slow down or come to a stop, but it will fuel revolutions in other technologies.
Computers will overload us with useless information and communiques. In 1960 I was very proud to put the company paper shredder in back of the company computer so we didn't have to read the damned stuff. Shortly, we'll hook computers together so that they will go into a giant boggling mind-screw we can ignore.
Junk phone calls are going to be a major problem but our phone answering machines will take care of that.
Computer controlled machines will greatly alter our manufacturing, middle class work and assembly labor. We should hail this as an emancipation from repetitious work, but we won't.
We will have lived through six recessions, two booms and four-year genuine bust.
The strategic petroleum reserve will be empty.
ESP will still be a mystery.

GROWTH:
The GMP [Growth Management Plan] has budgeted a 3% growth, but because of employee concessions and others we seem to have a 7% growth. That calculates in 40 short years that while we talk of a three-times increase in population, we will have a fifteen-times increase! Unfortunately, we probably have enough water, if we get nasty, to supply fifty times our present population. We could solve our employee housing problem by lowering our standards and codes, using mass-produced pre-fabs - but we won't.
If we really wish to limit growth, we will (or do??) provide disincentives and harrassments - perhaps more effective than GMP.
Limit electric power.
Shut down the airport - Santa Fe did.
Kill private transport.
Encourage surly waiters.
Not punish criminals.
Disrepair [Highway] 82.
Create sewage-cholera rumors.
Give away our water.
Increase $1,000-a-plate dinners.
Welcome the Shriners.
But - everything that we will do to discourage the perceived "bad guys" will also wound plenty of "good guys."

part of an archival project, featuring the work of nick dewolf

© the Nick DeWolf Foundation
Requests for use are welcome via flickrmail or nickdewolfphotoarchive [at] gmail [dot] com

Tags:   dewolf nick dewolf document scan scanned predictions aspen colorado 1980 the future idca idca time capsule collection aspen historical society essay future lecture page 3

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Aspen, Colorado
September 5, 1980

2020 - Visions of the Future - Roaring Fork Valley (Page 4 of 7)

Nick's 1980 predictions for the year 2020

Document courtesy of:
Aspen Historical Society, IDCA Time Capsule Collection

Text:

4

SOCIAL:

I feel that the most important factor affecting the quality of our lives here will be what we have now and what we change to in our class structure. I see the major war issue in Aspen not war with Mexico but class war.
Elitist No-Growthers vs. Do-Gooders.
Fast-Buckers vs. Pious Paternalists.
No-sayers vs. Movers.
Backpack vs. Six-pack.
Me-firsters vs. Community types.
Risk-takers vs. Institutionalizers.
Amex card-holders vs. Government # Aspen Club card-holders.
Meat-eaters vs. The Others.
Insiders vs. Outsiders.
Quality Experience vs. Go-for-it.
Voters vs. Old Boys.
Doers vs. Regulators.
Born-agains vs. Sinners.
Rat-race drop-outs vs. Rat-racers.
Managers vs. Managees.
Coal vs. Oil vs. Sun And Air.
Texas vs. The Help.
We are starting to converse by thrusting bumper sticker cliches at each other. As we get older it will get worse. Aspen has a history of stormy disagreement but our small town intimacy is being citified and "Have a Nice Day" could be replaced by "Up Yours". I've removed my bumper stickers.
Modern weapons in 2020 will give terrorists incredible destructive power and defensive armor. Aspen will have many upper-crust kidnappings and horror stories in this vein, but nuclear extortion will belong to the East.
The 2020 dance craze will be without music and people will whisper sweet nothings again!

ECONOMICS:
We will, by 2020, have completely redefined the meaning, rewards, and nature of:
WORK and EMPLOYMENT
because we had to.
Diversification - we need it desperately. We are terribly dependent on one industry. The best proof we have is what happened to Aspen in 1894 when silver broke. But we will not diversify and we will be creamed.
Aspen's silver was a vehicle for Philadelphia stock brokers and swindlers who won or lost five dollars on every dollar of silver mined. Aspen will be owned by stockholders who win or lose five dollars elsewhere for every dollar locally generated.
In 2020 we will still try to uphold the standards of San Francisco with 1/300 its population to support them.
The City and County will pool resources to buy the Aspen Ski Corps. as part of the Rec. Department, but will lose the bid on Highlands in 2015.
Mining still not socially acceptable, but heavy metals run low and oil shale is mining.
Automat returns as fast food operates by credit card.
Home purchasing via TV cable handles 30% of Aspen goods.
Water problems will find expensive "solutions."
Best investment in 2020 will be a cat house (by another name).
For sport, we'll have solar ballooning; to the objection of many, we'll have silent moto-cross; and the City Council will be fighting off a violent amusement park.

part of an archival project, featuring the work of nick dewolf

© the Nick DeWolf Foundation
Requests for use are welcome via flickrmail or nickdewolfphotoarchive [at] gmail [dot] com

Tags:   dewolf nick dewolf document scan scanned predictions aspen colorado 1980 the future idca idca time capsule collection aspen historical society essay future lecture page 4

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Aspen, Colorado
September 5, 1980

2020 - Visions of the Future - Roaring Fork Valley (Page 5 of 7)

Nick's 1980 predictions for the year 2020

Document courtesy of:
Aspen Historical Society, IDCA Time Capsule Collection

Text:

5

We'll have radically improved public transport to Grand Junction and an accurately scheduled train to Denver to get around the airport zoo.

POLITICS:
The business of politics used to be to decide who got how much of what there was. By 2020, it will be to provide what is left. In 2020 by extrapolation, 41% of the valley employees will be employed directly by local government; 30% indirectly; 8% federal; 12% closely regulated by government; and 6% civilians.
I feel we will have a gutless grey bureaucracy with widespread cheating and cynicism about the rules and regulations and by 2020 downright corruption as the stakes get big. We'll have an unimpeachable power structure as the government employs the bulk of voters. The evil landlord will be local government. However, things will be so bad by 2010 there will be a surge of revulsion and by 2020 we'll save ourselves from this with great difficulty.

HEALTH:
FOOD:
Soybeans synthetic food will have long been considered socially acceptable, but special new foods created by nuclear-altered genetic engineering and by cloning will cause a breakthrough in habits and customs - but aging enviros will protest.
By 2020 modern medicine will have extended our life expectancy to 90, and many of us will make it 120. Tremendous strides in retarding aging will permit the rich to be as lively at 100 as they were at 40. As Reverend Harvey said, "People in Aspen don't die, they get killed." Retirement age will not increase as rapidly. It will only be 75. So the country will be overrun with loaded retirees and Aspen will attract them, driving our real estate back up.
This leads to my wife's forecast: A town of horny old men, surrounded by hordes of white-slaved nubiles in Thrift Shop Institute togas. Our dogs will be poodles, not huskies. Maybe I'll stick around.
The biomanipulators don't know it yet, but they could save the world from energy, food, water, environmental and privacy problems via my favorite scheme -

- T I N Y P E O P L E - ! ! !

ENVIRONMENT:
The Aspen trees will be gone, replaced by a more ecologically sound breed - to our sorrow.
Biotechture will bring us self-creating architecture for our houses and furniture which grow around us.

EDUCATION:
The education gap between the classes will widen. By 2020 illiteracy in Pitkin County will reach 25%. Aspen High School will graduate its first all-girl class of 22 students, as most drop out by 14. Eight of those will be Asians.

part of an archival project, featuring the work of nick dewolf

© the Nick DeWolf Foundation
Requests for use are welcome via flickrmail or nickdewolfphotoarchive [at] gmail [dot] com

Tags:   dewolf nick dewolf document scan scanned predictions aspen colorado 1980 the future idca idca time capsule collection aspen historical society essay future lecture page 5

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