Predicting the Future

更新：2023-11-22

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[00:01.47]Lesson 51
[00:03.53]Predicting the future
[00:12.38]What was the 'future' electronic development that Leon Bagrit wasn't able to foresee?
[00:20.75]Predicting the future is notoriously difficult.
[00:24.55]Who could have imagined, in the mid 1970s, for example,
[00:28.31]that by the end of the 20th century, computers would be as common in people's homes as TV sets?
[00:35.48]In the 1970s, computers were common enough,
[00:39.39]but only in big business, government departments and large organizations.
[00:45.54]These were the so-called mainframe machines.
[00:49.37]Mainframe computers were very large indeed often occupying whole air-conditioned rooms,
[00:56.40]employing full-time technicians and run on specially-written software.
[01:01.79]Though these large machines still exist,
[01:04.61]many of their functions have been taken over by small powerful personal computers, commonly known as PCs.
[01:13.65]In 1975, a primitive machine called the Altair, was launched in the USA.
[01:20.48]It can properly be described as the first 'home computer' and it pointed the way to the future.
[01:27.81]This was followed, at the end of the 1970s, by a machine called an Apple.
[01:33.86]In the early 1980s, the computer giant,
[01:37.17]IBM produced the world's first Personal Computer.
[01:42.19]This ran on an 'operating system' called DOS,
[01:46.20]produced by a then small company named Microsoft.
[01:50.60]The IBM Personal Computer was widely copied.
[01:54.62]From those humble beginnings,
[01:56.99]we have seen the development of the user-friendly home computers and multimedia machines which are in common use today.
[02:05.99]Considering how recent these developments are,
[02:09.07]it is even more remarkable that as long ago as the 1960s, an Englishman, Leon Bagrit
[02:16.59]was able to predict some of the uses of computers which we know today.
[02:21.91]Bagrit dismissed the idea that computers would learn to 'think' for themselves and would 'rule the world',
[02:29.38]which people liked to believe in those days.
[02:32.62]Bagrit foresaw a time when computers would be small enough to hold in the hand,
[02:38.28]when they would be capable of providing information about traffic jams
[02:42.50]and suggesting alterative routes,
[02:45.30]when they would be used in hospitals to help doctors to diagnose illnesses,
[02:50.50]when they would relieve office workers and accountants of dull, repetitive clerical work.
[02:56.72]All these computer uses have become commonplace.
[03:00.76]Of course, Leon Bagrit couldn't possibly have foreseen the development of the Internet,
[03:06.73]the worldwide system that enables us to communicate instantly with anyone in any part of the world
[03:13.13]by using computers linked to telephone networks.
[03:17.06]Nor could he have foreseen how we could use the Internet to obtain information on every known subject,
[03:23.84]so we can read it on a screen in our homes and even print it as well if we want to.
[03:30.10]Computers have become smaller and smaller,
[03:33.73]more and more powerful and cheaper and cheaper.
[03:37.38]This is what makes Leon Bagrit's predictions particularly remarkable.
[03:42.41]If he, or someone like him, were alive today,
[03:46.11]he might be able to tell us what to expect in the next fifty years.