On Prediction

In the nineties I wrote something like, 'Twenty years ago nobody predicted the internet'. I know I wrote this because, a few years later, I kept finding it on the internet. It usually appeared in a derisive context, implying that I was an idiot because, in the seventies, the author had confidently predicted Google, Blogger and Amanda Marcotte. This is nonsense. Of course, you could argue that somebody predicted the internet, but everything might have been predicted by somebody somewhere. The reality is that the internet we now have came, in effect, out of nowhere (note, please, my phrasing before you explode with indignation). At the end of The McLaughlin Group, the only TV current affairs show I can bear to watch, Crazy John asks for predictions from his panel. Each prediction is routinely greeted with hoots of derision from an opposing panellist, but, in reality, none is ever particularly startling. This is understandable. Startling predictions are difficult to make and usually irrational, even when they fall within the generally agreed spectrum of the possible. I might say, for example, that, within the next five years, America will attack China with nuclear weapons after a conflict over Taiwan. With good reason, most people would say this was highly unlikely to which my only reply would be, 'I just feel it's going to happen'. In fact, even the most non-startling prediction has an element of this irrationality or, if you prefer, subjectivity. But I'm only really interested in the startling predictions because what struck me about the last set of fairly safe predictions I saw made by Crazy John's panel was that I didn't think any of them could possibly be accurate.  It doesn't matter what they were, it just struck me that they were all adopting a rigidly linear view of the future, that there was an excess of barely concealed determinism in their thinking. Much of the time such a view is more likely to be right than wrong. But I was overcome with the feeling that, now, it must be wrong, just as it would have been wrong in 1913 or on September 10th, 2001. Those moments immediately preceded phase transitions, both of which might previously have been seen as possible but neither of which would have been generally expected. Why did I feel the approach of such a transition? Well, I could say it was the environment, the price of oil, the improbable state of the world financial system, my own disposition or an excess of the lovely 2001 Laroche Pipeau I picked up on my booze cruise. But, in the end, it was just a feeling. And that, I'm afraid, is all this post is really saying, but that's what blogs are for, isn't it?