The Way the Future Was • Kevlin Henney & James Lewis • GOTO 2025
Kevlin Henney and James Lewis explore the evolution of our vision of the future, contrasting the boundless optimism of the 20th century with today's more cynical outlook. They analyze the economic and technological forces, such as Jevons' Paradox and the power of connectivity, that have shaped our present reality and offer a hopeful perspective on how a better future could still emerge through gradual, cumulative change.
The Future That Was Promised
In the 20th century, the future was envisioned as a bright, utopian era of technological marvels and societal progress. This optimistic view, prevalent across Western and Eastern blocs alike, promised a post-scarcity, post-colonial world filled with flying cars, jetpacks, moon bases, and benevolent AI. Science fiction, from Star Trek’s United Federation of Planets to Iain M. Banks’ The Culture, reinforced this narrative.
The Culture novels depicted a civilization managed by super-intelligent AIs (“Minds”) where humanoids pursued hobbies and fun, as all labor was automated. This gave rise to the concept of “fully automated luxury space communism,” a society without money, where equality was paramount and basic needs were universally met.
This optimism was captured in popular media, such as the Osborne Book of the Future from 1979, which confidently predicted fusion power, sea cities, and machine intelligence running the world by the mid-21st century. Even dystopian visions of this era were often stylistic warnings—explorations of a specific theme turned up to eleven—rather than a genuine expectation of societal collapse. The primary existential threat was the Cold War, with the prevailing belief that if humanity could avoid self-annihilation, a brighter future was inevitable.
The Present We Inhabit
The current perception of the future has shifted dramatically from optimism to a more neutral or gloomy outlook. The dystopian warnings of the past are now often used to describe the present, a phenomenon captured by the “Torment Nexus” meme, where cautionary tales from sci-fi are ironically built by tech companies.
A key shift is the realization that the promised future isn’t for everyone. The inclusive vision of a Stanford Torus has been replaced by the gated community of Elysium, where technological benefits are reserved for a select few. This reflects a world where, for many, dystopia is an everyday experience.
Several economic and social paradoxes define our current state:
- Jevons’ Paradox: The principle that increased efficiency in resource use leads to increased consumption. This is evident in our work lives; despite automation and AI tools promising more free time, studies show that those most exposed to GenAI are working longer hours. We’ve become more efficient, so we just do more work.
- The Post-Scarcity Distribution Problem: We have technically reached a post-scarcity stage. There is enough food, housing, and medical capacity for everyone on the planet. The issue is not one of production but of distribution.
- Tendency Towards Oligarchy: Agent-based economic models simulating capitalist exchange consistently show that, without market controls, wealth concentrates until one agent possesses everything. This modeling suggests that many Western economies are on a trajectory toward an oligarchic state.
While we didn’t get moon bases for all, we did get a global satellite network (GPS), powerful handheld computers, and ubiquitous video phones. However, we also lost supersonic commercial flight and consistent social progress, and ideas like the Metaverse arrived as retro-futuristic concepts, already obsolete.
How the Future Unfolds: The Power of Connectivity
The future doesn’t arrive as a fully-formed vision but emerges from underlying, often invisible, technological and social shifts. The primary driver of the last few decades has been connectivity.
The failed promise of the Metaverse serves as a key case study. It was envisioned as a 3D, immersive world for work and socializing, but reality took a different path. The World Wide Web, with its efficient “catalog model” for commerce, and the explosion of video-enabled chat applications provided more practical and accessible ways to achieve the same goals. The global pandemic massively accelerated the adoption of these existing tools, cementing a future that was already unfolding.
This future was built on foundational layers of connectivity:
- Physical Infrastructure: The massive expansion of undersea fiber-optic cables, cellular towers, and satellite networks created the bandwidth for a globally connected society.
- Social Infrastructure: Digital platforms enabled the formation of global communities, connecting individuals with shared interests on an unprecedented scale.
This hyper-connectivity has had complex effects. While enabling global collaboration, it also allows niche, extremist views to find validation and spread, distorting the perception of consensus, as people can now connect with thousands who share their fringe beliefs. The modern world is a function of this underlying, high-bandwidth infrastructure, much like a modern car is a function of the smooth roads it drives on.
The Future That Could Be
Despite the dystopian trends, the future is not predetermined. There is still potential for a hopeful and exciting future, grounded in several key developments:
- Additive Technological Change: New technologies often don’t replace old ones but add to them, creating new markets and possibilities. Streaming didn’t kill the cinema; it created a new, parallel market. Similarly, GenAI is more likely to be a complementary tool for developers rather than a replacement.
- Energy Transition: We are in the midst of a shift from a closed energy system (finite fossil fuels) to an open one (harnessing the near-infinite energy of the sun). Progress in nuclear fusion is also accelerating, with reactors now achieving sustained output for over 1,000 seconds.
- Bandwidth-Changing Innovations: Technologies like the space elevator are now materially possible. While socially and politically difficult, such an innovation would fundamentally change our relationship with space by drastically lowering the cost of getting into orbit, akin to building a railroad to the sky.
- Growth in Compute: The amount of artificial compute in the world is rapidly approaching the total processing power of all human brains combined. This exponential growth could unlock currently unimaginable possibilities and represents a “waking up” of our technological environment.
Change is more gradual and cumulative than we often expect. The video phone didn’t come from telephone companies; it emerged organically from the ecosystem of chat applications, webcams, and mobile computing. The future arrives not through grand, top-down projects but through the slow, cumulative layering of these interconnected advancements. The future is still ours to shape.