A younger member of my family has been known to leave the room, wailing: “They’re talking about sweets again!” when those of a certain age rhapsodise about the confectionery of yore; Spangles, Sherbet Fountains and Kola Kubes do not float his boat. Thus we are made to realise how tiresome group nostalgia is to youth, which immediately sparks a slew of memories of how irksome it was every time one’s parents insisted that David Sylvian was all well and good, but they preferred songs where you could hear the lyrics.
So the first rule of writing about the BBC’s (sort of) revival of Tomorrow’s World, the future technology programme that ran for nearly 40 years, is to avoid banging on about how back then we were all told we’d be swallowing pills instead of roast dinners and be strapped into personal transporters. (The latter became so ingrained in the collective culture that there is a band called We Were Promised Jetpacks, formed in 2003, the year Tomorrow’s World last aired).
Tomorrow’s World 2.0 does not mark the return of Maggie Philbin, Judith Hann or Kieran Prendeville to our screens, alas. Indeed, it is nothing so unsophisticated as a single TV programme, but an entire science strand (we didn’t have strands in the olden days, children; we had about three telly programmes a day, tinned peas, fresh air and skittles). The BBC’s intention, in the words of one of the season’s curators, Professor Brian Cox, is to represent “the institutions of Britain coming together to inspire current and future generations, to convince them to embrace the opportunities that science brings, to foster a spirit of curiosity and tolerance and to embrace the unknown not in fear but in wonder”.
Nobody could argue with that and we must all hope that PBC follows through on his hint, earlier last week, that he might consider a career in politics; things, after all, can only get better.
But capturing the spirit that fuelled the original and the enthusiasm that greeted it might prove more complicated. It’s not that the public isn’t interested in scientific and technological innovation or blind to the benefits that it can bring; far from it. We pride ourselves, now, on being early adopters, captains of multiple screens, health and fitness self-quantifiers, remote heating controllers, online shoppers, streamers, downloaders. We eagerly monitor developments heralding the active involvement of robots in our everyday lives, of driverless cars whizzing us along motorways, of day trips to space and — though many are wary of saying it, so primal a fear does it evoke — increased dominion over death itself.
The landscape is radically altered from the 1960s and from Harold Wilson’s celebrated speech at the Labour party conference in 1963, in which he exhorted his audience to embrace the “white heat” of technological revolution and use it to adapt — and to further — their Socialist principles. Labour’s new leader — it had been only nine months since he had taken over from Hugh Gaitskell, his mission to restore the party to government after over a decade in opposition — sought to align scientific progress with Labour values and to contrast it with the more resistant attitudes of the entrenched elites.
As Matthew Francis pointed out in a piece marking the 50th anniversary of the speech, Wilson’s declaration of intent took place against the backdrop of a public argument between scientist CP Snow, who had accused the ruling classes of being “natural Luddites” and literary critic FR Leavis; in essence, it was science versus culture, a destructive polarisation whose effects can still be felt.
That was 1963; Tomorrow’s World launched two years later. Among the innovations that it showcased, often many years before their widespread introduction, were mobile phones, touchscreens, breathalysers, chip and pin. In the more modestly populated TV schedules of its heyday, it became something close to destination viewing.
Fast forward to the present day, and to the jewel in the new Tomorrow’s World crown — Expedition New Earth, in which Professor Stephen Hawking will argue, as has been widely reported, that the human race needs to make alternative living arrangements in the next 100 years, as climate change, overpopulation and the threat of asteroid strikes make our home increasingly precarious.
This is decidedly postlapsarian talk; factor in more frequent mentions of nuclear war and it becomes terrifying, just as we were terrified by the apocalyptic TV drama Threads in 1984. But Tomorrow’s World was not Threads; it was more hopeful, more committed to believing that our ingenuity and endeavour would deliver progress to the benefit of all.
Vast advances have occurred; ask the parents of a premature baby, anyone waiting for breakthroughs in stem cell therapy or enhanced crop production, or those who communicate with faraway loved ones via Skype. But they have been accompanied by other, more ambiguous changes, chief among them the revolution in communications that has brought us, alongside an ability to break down barriers of space and time, a hyper-accelerated and atomised culture.
It is, surely, more rather than less likely that the internet will discover a cure for cancer. But although future discoveries and innovations are just as probable, they are also far less predictable. The fact that every step towards them is often more likely to be open to mass scrutiny has consequences. Take recent reports of the relatively imminent arrival of artificial wombs, of crucial importance in the care of aforementioned premature babies: Wondering at this marvel is swiftly displaced by the battle for territory between feminists (and other sane people) and men’s rights activists, who declare the obsolescence of women.
It’s possible — and certainly desirable — that Brian Cox et al will prove a counterblast to such nonsense; that he chose to include the word “tolerance” alongside “curiosity” is itself telling. Science isn’t something to be tolerated — it is simply something that is. But we will need to take ourselves in hand, too, to acknowledge that much technology is no sooner birthed than put into the service of rampant consumerism.
A current TV advert shows a chap going home on the bus. He holds a large potato, his sustenance for the evening, presumably to be cooked and gussied up with a tin of tuna or beans or some grated cheese. Simple, nutritious, actually quite delicious. The ad, though, urges him to toss his spud for his heart’s desire: pad thai, on his doorstep with just a click and a credit card. I’m not sure technology as lubrication of instant gratification chimes with the spirit of Tomorrow’s World. Love, and use, the new technology, but don’t improve your tea, improve yourself.
— Guardian News & Media Ltd
Alex Clark writes for the Guardian and the Observer.
