…imagine how cool it would be if, by some twist of time, the National Archives were to make available detailed census information from nearly 70 years in the future ”” the 2080 census.
We asked James Dator, director of the Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies, what kind of information census takers will be soliciting seven decades in the future. Dator says that possible questions might include:
””Do you have a home, or “biophysical domicile”? If so, is it on Earth, the moon, Mars or elsewhere?
””What is your current sex?
””What is your permission number for drinking water?…
The most wonderful thing about Disney’s ‘TomorrowLand’ and its assorted variations is that it remains a remarkable museum of the future as conceived by our parents’ generation. Things obviously turned out very differently.
This speculative 2080 census is equally a monument to man’s persistent tendency towards totally-unjustified linear extrapolation.