1984 Plus 16

When it comes to predicting the future, the technology-oriented prognosticators tend to see it coming up pretty much roses (TIME Essay, Feb. 25, 1966). But if scientists in their extrapolations tend toward euphoria, many of the humanities experts, in their cranky way, are not so sure. At least such is the drift of Daedalus, journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, which devotes its special summer issue to the subject "Toward the Year 2000: Work in Progress." For, as the Academy's Commission on the Year 2000, headed by Columbia Sociologist Daniel Bell, points out, along with increased affluence, greater population density and vastly expanded scientific and medical wizardry, there will be a host of new hazards, pressures and tensions bearing in upon the American of 2000. Among the commission's speculations:

> A drastic change in the family. At least so thinks Anthropologist Margaret Mead, who foresees "a new style with an emphasis on very small families and a high toleration of childless marriage or a more encompassing social style in which parenthood would be limited to a smaller number of families whose principal function would be child rearing; the rest of the population would be free to function--for the first time in history--as individuals." This will result from worldwide birth control and the "massive failure" of the present family setup (as evidenced by "adolescent rebellion cults, overt and aggressive male homosexuality, female promiscuity, and a growing incidence of alcoholism, addiction and psychosomatic disorders in both sexes"). In the new family relationship she envisions that "companionship for work, play and stable living would come to be based on many different combinations, within and across sex lines, among different-sized clusters of individuals"--an idea that the new hippie tribes are already putting into practice.

> Big Brother will be everywhere. The technology of eavesdropping will have improved so much, speculates University of Chicago Law Professor Harry Kalven Jr., that "it will be possible to place a man under constant surveillance without his ever becoming aware of it." The infringement of privacy by employers, competitors, social-science researchers and government may be so complete that new institutions, similar to religious retreats, will spring up. "It may be a final ironic commentary on how bad things have become by 2000," writes Kalven, "when someone will make a fortune merely by providing, on a monthly, weekly, daily, or even hourly basis, a room of one's own."

> The supercity will have arrived. Almost half the U.S. population, predict the Hudson Institute's Herman Kahn and Anthony J. Wiener, will live in three huge maritime megalopolises, which they call "Boswash," "Chipitts" and "Sansan." Cosmopolitan Boswash will be the home of "New York liberals, Boston bankers, tired or creative intellectuals in publishing, entertainment and the arts, and political Washington." Chipitts, crowding around the Great Lakes from Chicago to Pittsburgh, "will probably still have traces of both the 'Bible belt' and Carl Sandburg's 'raw and lusty vitality.' " Sansan, a Pacific supercity that may extend from San Francisco to San Diego, will be the seat of "an informal 'Bar-B-Q' culture," including "large and self-conscious alienated, New Left, 'hip,' and bohemian groups."

> A new hierarchy of values will emerge. Harvard Sociologist David Riesman foresees a decline in manners and charm and a correspondingly increased emphasis on such personal qualities as tenacity and willingness to learn new things. "As the society becomes more fair and just, making everyone in it dependent on achieved rather than adventitious accomplishments," says Riesman, "it becomes more precarious, less relaxed, less arbitrary and corrupt, with fewer respites from competition." To compensate for increased tension, hobbies will proliferate, but "there is the problem that these, too, will be judged in a meritocratic way, and that the easy Sunday painting of Ike or Churchill will be condemned by people who cannot justify doing anything badly."

If anything remains more or less unchanged, thinks Riesman, it will be the role of women. "Their standing will still depend at least as much on the men to whom they attach themselves as on their own accomplishments in meritocratic terms." Not even in the year 2000 is that necessarily a bad thing. "It could be argued," says Riesman, "that women buffer men against the abuses of meritocracy, bind up their wounds, and make it possible for them to go on playing a game that, if not a zero-sum game, makes even the winners often feel like losers."

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