This year, we celebrated 50 years of Quirks & Quarks on CBC Radio. But back in the year 2000, we celebrated our 25th anniversary by imagining what science would be like in the year 2025.
It was a mostly optimistic look at the future, believing we would be much farther ahead scientifically, but a few of our expert predictions actually ended up working out — including a deadly plague that overwhelmed health care systems.
We also correctly predicted the CBC would still exist, which is a relief, considering there have been many calls to shut us down over the years. But we also predicted that by this time, the host of the show would be an artificial intelligent hologram. While AI is working its way into more aspects of our lives, thankfully, a corporal body is still able to host Quirks & Quarks.
An overly optimistic space enthusiast predicted that by 2025 we would have privately run mega-yachts carrying 10,000 tourists per week into orbit. We’d use fusion engines to get up to the moon, where people would stay in lunar hotels and go snowboarding into the deep craters.
While private companies such as Space X, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic have introduced space tourism, the small capsules only hold a few people at a time and usually for a few minutes of weightlessness just outside the atmosphere. Tourist trips lasting days or weeks have been infrequent, with ticket prices costing tens of millions of dollars, which, like the early days of commercial aviation, are only for the super-rich.
Incredibly, even after passing the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing in 2019, we have yet to return humans to the lunar surface, although no one predicted a Canadian would be among the first crew to fly around the moon and back since the last Apollo mission in 1972.
What we missed in our predictions was the evolution of the smartphone. Twenty five years ago, flip phones were popular, with the ability to talk, text and take photos. That was it. And our expert told us they’d be obsolete by now, replaced with wireless communication systems where we’d just talk to the air to reach our loved ones.
No one outside the industry saw the explosion of touch screens and an entire universe of apps that have given our phones far more power and abilities than desktops had back then. We did not see the societal change where face to face communication is replaced with people staring at devices in their hands and seemingly talking to themselves while walking down the street.
We also made several predictions about cloning which were mostly on the mark. At the time, cloning was top of mind for many. Dolly the sheep, the first cloned mammal, was revealed in 1997, which led to fears that humans would be next, leading to a “Brave New World” scenario where identical clones would be performing mundane jobs, or even becoming living organ donors, raising serious human rights issues.
But despite our episode being hosted by a supposed “Bob McDonald clone,” our on stage expert predicted that by this time we would have many, many cloned animals, but cloned humans would still be illegal. Sure enough, many mammals have been cloned, including the rise of cloned pets, but laws were put in place around the world to ban the cloning of human embryos.
Antibiotic resistance was a big issue in the year 2000 and continues to be a problem today. Bacteria are becoming resistant to drugs, which lead to a revised approach to prescribing antibiotics.
During our anniversary show, medical historian Dr. Jackie Duffin predicted that antibiotic resistance would lead to the “Great Plague of 2013,” where millions die around the world. Thankfully, that didn’t happen, but we did have the pandemic of 2020 that was caused by a virus not bacteria. Millions did die, completely changing human behaviour to include a global shutdown, wearing masks and social distancing. It was the most profound incident to hit humanity since the World Wars.
Dr. Duffin also predicted that the pharmaceutical industry would be quick to respond with vaccines, which thankfully it did, and along with a government supported vaccination program, helped keep the worst of the disease at bay — although Long COVID and silent damage caused by the virus is still an issue that many people are grappling with.
What our panel from 25 years ago did not predict is the attack on science by those who oppose vaccinations, climate deniers, conspiracy theorists and opponents to clean energy production. This spread of misinformation has resulted in an increase in measles infections, continued rise of global temperatures, more powerful storms and more widespread intense wildfires.
Over the decades, science has been a valuable tool that has been used to identify problems such as climate change, but has also pointed to solutions, such as alternative ways to produce energy without compromising the atmosphere. But fear of change, a desire to hold onto the old way of doing things, and lobbying of governments has, in the U.S. especially, resulted in cutting back science research when it comes to studying the environment.
Institutions such as the granting agencies, National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation, have suffered severe budget cuts, while the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA have had to lay off thousands of staff scientists. These cuts are also affecting Canadian science, and science around the world.
It is as though we are closing our scientific eyes on the health of the planet. And no one saw this coming.
The year 2050 has often been used as a goal for when we will tackle the serious issues we face today such as climate change, energy generation, population growth, water supply, food production, etc. Whether we achieve those goals is more than a scientific issue. These are social, economic and political issues that need to be dealt with in a sustainable way.
We have come a long way in the last century, from learning to fly to landing on the moon, from stuffing letters in mailboxes to communicating instantly around the world from the palm of our hands. These are truly extraordinary times.
Where do we go from here? In the words of the great philosopher and baseball player Yogi Berra, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”