LOOKING FORWARD

Taranaki Daily News, 26 March 1932, Page 11 (Supplement)

LOOKING FORWARD

THE NEXT HALF-CENTURY

Views of men in the vanguard of present progress on the subject of what the next 50 years will bring forth are here continued.

Professor J. A. Thomson, Scientist. It is practically certain that two more generations will scatter much of the obscurity which still surrounds the problem of “variations” and “new departures,” which form the raw materials of future evolution, including the long drawn-out controversy as to the transmissibility of individually acquired characters.- Biologists of 1982 will have a clearer understanding of the commonest yet most puzzling phenomenon in the world of life, namely, cell-division. But we do not expect it will be describable in ordinary terms of matter and motion. Before 50 years have passed there will be known solutions of many biological problems, such as the nature of nerve impulses, the harmonious co-operation of the hormones, what happens when an egg cell is fertilised* by a sperm cell, the physiological factors in embryonic development, the nature of fermentations in living cells and.—that most important process in the world of life — the photo-synthesis effected in every green leaf when carbon dioxide and water are built up, with the help of orange-red rays of sunlight, into nutritive carbon compounds.

Biology will increasingly metamorphose into psychobiology. Our grandchildren will understand much better ■than we do the relation between the body-mind aspect of behaviour and the mind-body aspect. The greater change to be looked for is an increasing application of biology to the service of men. From pests and parasites, diseases and their carriers, to food supply and the improvement of the races, from the relief of man’s estate to the improvement of his ways of living there will be a growing and, we may be assured, a well rewarded appeal to biology. Owen Johnson, Novelist. Civilisation moves at such an accelerating pace that 50 years from now may mean in progress the span of five centuries in the middle ages. Women will decisively affect the social and political structure of the future. Men are traditionalists; women -are realists. Men are guided by precedents, women by necessity. In 50 years we shall know how much the supposed difference in the sexes is biological and how much simply acquired characteristics. We are intellectually and politically in an age of compromise, awaiting new authorities. I look for a stronger nationalism, not less, under an intelligent capitalistic system that will regulate in the interests of the State production, distribution, the limitation of inheritable wealth, produce the security of labour and restore the proper balance between the agricultural and urban population. We have never yet had a capitalistic system. We have had competing .capitalists but no system. Machinery has freed woman from physical and domestic subservience. Her acquisition of property (’4O per cent, of the total to-day) is 1 more significant than her right of suffrage. The drudgery of housekeeping will be eliminated, her children increasingly educated out of the home. Since she is ceasing to be indispensable to her home the home is ceasing to be her sole vacation. She will lay down the terms on which she will reproduce the race.. Independent and responsible, the family will be organised around the mother.

Douglas Fairbanks, Actor. This is the age of machinery. One day we painted on canvas when that was the best means of transferring our feelings to the public. Now in this age of machinery will come the co-ordina-tion of movement, sound, colour, stereoscopic values and an enlarged screen that will completely fill the field of vision. When you go to the theatre of ithe future it will be just as though .you are sitting in this room as I am now. The screen will be big enough ,for your eye to rove about on it and .come back to the main action without being distracted by something that has nothing to. do with the picture. Fundamentally, of course, the theatre as an emotional institution. It supplies the emotional balance of life. When Bacon and Shakespeare wrote literature all they had was a house and .a bed. There was no electricity or scientific development to complicate their lives. Their age was so simple that heavy emotional food was necessary to act as a balance to their daily life. As our daily life problems get heavier our emotional entertainment will necessarily become less strenuous. .The working man’s day may become so intricate as to tax his imagination to the limit. His emotional food will then have to be fed him in the simplest doses. Drama can possibly be written as beautiful as that of Shakespeare without being so heavy. I should not like to say that excellence in literature will diminish but it will become, perhaps, less complex. ' William B. Stout, Aeroplane Designer.

Flying will have more influence on the development of the world in the next 50 years, I believe, than any.other single outcome except radio. Within the next few years we shall see private owners flying small planes to and from their daily work. But 50 years from now, it is safe to say, planes will be more common than, the motor-cars of to-day. One has only to recall what was said of the “horseless carriage” 25 years ago to get some idea of what may be expected of aeroplanes within the next half-century.

To-day we are learning how to land aeroplanes in very small spaces and to take them out of equally small areas. To-morrow, figuratively speaking, _ most of our worries will-be about space in the air. The planes of yesterday cruised at about 90 miles an hour with a top speed of 110. To-day they operate at cruising speeds of 130 with top speeds of better than 160 miles an hour. Top speeds of three miles a minute are just around the corner. Fifty years from now, however, it will be an entirely different story. We will have a new air psychology and new machines. New materials and new manufacturing processes will enable us to build planes of half the weight they are now. Engines will be of half the weight also and perhaps twice the power, which, incidentally, may be furnished from the ground to preclude the necessity of carrying fuel. Speeds may reach eight miles a minute, closely approximating the velocity of sound as the mechanical limitation of flight. London will be within six or eight hours of New York, and all this at a cost less , than the present means, of travel and with greater safety. '■