How much longer can we stand the rat race, asked the Observer Magazine of 6 September 1970 (‘Build-up to Doomsday’)?
By the end of the 20th century more than half the world’s population will be crowded into claustrophobic urban concentrations. London could fuse with south coast towns (well, Brighton is known as London-by-the-Sea) and with Reading and Oxford. And Calcutta may have a population of 36-66 million. All predictions of Gordon Rattray Taylor, author of The Doomsday Book: Can the World Survive?
In 1970, each person in the UK was on average about 150 yards from his nearest neighbour. ‘By the year 2000,’ wrote Rattray Taylor, ‘the distance will be 120 yards and by 2070 it’ll be 60 yards.’ But for poor Mrs Gladys Hyman, who lived next to Heathrow, it wasn’t the neighbours that concerned her but the jumbo jets. ‘It is difficult to carry on a conversation with someone in the same room,’ she said, no doubt with phenomenal understatement.
Rattray Taylor went on to note that the attraction of psychedelic drugs could be because ‘they restore a sense of personal space to people who feel hemmed in’. Or: if you can’t take a trip, take a trip.
The future would bring ‘analogue foods’ spun from soya bean and ‘an automated kitchen will cook everything under punchcard instructions in microwave ovens’. Pretty accurate that, though less so that by 2000 ‘we’ll have eliminated the pot and pan’.
Rattray Taylor quoted the Foreign Policy Association’s forecast for 2018: ‘From the depths of the jungle we shall be able to telephone home, thanks to satellites, while the 1,000-seater supersonic transports crash past overhead. Behavioural technology will make sure we enjoy this nightmare and the distant doctor will diagnose your depression from afar.’ But how long will it take for the pills to arrive?
