Most of us are stuck in the present tense, but not Marvin Cetron. He hangs around the 21st century, where the bulk of our most bedeviling problems have already been solved. World hunger has been gone since 2006, nuclear weapons banished in 2027. Cancer, heart attacks and strokes are things of the future’s past—gone by 2031. Cetron is—you guessed it!—a futurist. They used to be called soothsayers, but that’s history.

The 56-year-old Cetron, who was a high-level civilian planner and forecaster for the Navy for 20 years, runs a consulting firm—Forecasting International—in Arlington, Va. His think tank’s mainframe computers spit out probabilities from the statistics, variables and assumptions fed into them. Cetron, who has a Ph.D. from American University in research and development management, has written a dozen books on the future of jobs, schools and business. He has been a consultant to the Common Market and 17 governments, as well as General Motors, IBM and 70 other firms.

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Cetron’s record, as seen through hindsight, is uncanny. Several years before they happened, he predicted the oil crisis, the worker uprising in Poland and the Islamic revolution in Iran. But he’s not perfect. He said Great Britain would not go to war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands. “We’re batting 95 percent,” he claims.

Cetron, a father of two as well as a grandfather, gazed into the next 50 years with correspondent Barbara Cornell.

Looking ahead just a bit, what will President Reagan be up to?

I think the President will step down within a year. And that has nothing to do with Irangate. In fact, Irangate makes it harder [for him to resign] because it would look like he had made a mistake. When I first predicted [in 1977] that the next President would be Republican and would step down in favor of the Vice-President, I said he would do so for his party. A lame-duck President has no coattails. But a sitting President has a 55 percent chance of getting re-elected. Furthermore Reagan would like the same distinction as Lincoln, who brought in the Republicans almost continually for 60 years. He’s a very sharp political animal. Also you’ve got to remember the man was shot. He did have a bout with cancer. He’s going to be 76 years old. This is not an easy job. Lots of stress.

Who’s going to lead us in the coming years?

We’re not going to have a Democrat in the White House until 1996 because we, as Democrats, raised our kids to be Republicans. We’ll have the first black President in 2016. By the year 2000, 58 of our 100 largest cities will have minority groups in the majority. The polls show that people today are becoming more color blind. The first woman President will be elected even sooner—in 2004. More and more, both spouses work and people are finally beginning to think, yeah, we need somebody not because she’s a woman but because she’s qualified and good.

Will more spouses be working?

By the year 2000, both spouses will be working full-time in three-quarters of the marriages. Many women will work in factories, controlling robots and doing computer-aided design and manufacturing. We’re going to produce five times more than what we were producing in 1980 with two-thirds fewer people than in 1980. Every robot can replace six people. But computers have made more jobs than they have destroyed, and so will robots. The blue-collar worker is replaced by the steel-collar worker, controlled by a pink-collar worker.

Why will so many women be working in factories?

One-third of our secretaries, typists and stenographers will be replaced by machines. We already have machines you can dictate to that type accurately up to 92 percent of what you’ve said. Then you can push a button and convert it into nine languages.

Are there any problems with that technology?

It won’t translate idiomatic expressions into a foreign language yet. If you say in English, “The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak,” it may come out in a foreign language as, “The wine’s fine but the meat is rancid.”

What other jobs will women do?

There is no job a woman won’t have by 2000, except possibly a Catholic priest’s. I told a major manufacturer 20 percent of his factory force is going to be female in the 1990s. He said, “My God, that’s marvelous. Now we can lower the salaries 20 percent.” The man’s got an elevator problem—his doesn’t go all the way to the top.

What doesn’t he understand?

That toward the year 2000 [male and female] salaries will be getting closer and closer. The reason? When [today’s young] men get into positions of responsibility, they will say, “Hey, look, I saw what happened to my wife, and it’s not going to happen to my daughter or anyone else.” New ideas don’t happen because of facts. They happen because of time.

Will people be richer in the future?

We’re not going to have a working class and a leisure class. Economically speaking, the upper 10th and the lower 10th of the working population are getting closer together to make one great big middle class. Employment of blacks will improve but not as fast as people want it to. The new poor will be single heads of households, both black and white.

What’s going to happen to housing costs?

You bring down the cost of housing by building the way you build cars. And who will probably build houses? The automobile industry. You design your own house the way you want by sitting at the computer. You build them in factories by robots. You take two pieces of reinforced fiberglass—five times the strength of steel—with a piece of Styrofoam sandwiched in the middle. You put in hot water, cold water, electrical lines, telephone lines, cables for your TV and computers. Then dirigibles deliver the whole house. You just bolt it down. You make the outside look like brick or stone or whatever, since it’s made of fiberglass, and then every 15 years you steam-clean it. Just as we have every accessory built into a car, we’ll have every accessory built into a house.

Will lots of couples work at home?

Oh yeah. Twenty-two percent of our population will work at home [on computers] by the year 2000. You save time getting dressed. You save gas. The funny thing is, when both spouses work at home, the divorce rate goes up.

What are the consequences of so much computer communication at home?

Well, with nuclear fusion, the cost of electricity won’t be a problem. Energy will be so cheap it will be unmetered. Water will be metered because our potable water supplies are declining alarmingly. The other effects? By 1995 you’ll have shopping at home, electronic delivery of mail, education at home, the whole bit. You want a medical diagnosis? Lay your hand down, put a cuff on top. It’ll absorb a small part of your blood and transmit data to a medical diagnostician, who will tell you whether or not you’re okay. These things are going to happen sooner than you think.

What else will technology do in medicine?

The average person born in the year 2035 will live to be 100. We’re going crazy with medicine. We have 15,000 people over 100 today. We’re going to have 100,000 by the year 2000. Willard Scott can’t read the names on the Today show anymore. By 2030 we’ll be able to reconnect spinal-column tissue. People won’t be paraplegics anymore from spinal injuries. I don’t think cancer—even the most virulent kinds—will be around by 2010 or 2020. Research going on now is using every conceivable technological advance, and we expect there will be profound innovations in the next 30 years. We’ll be able to put AIDS in remission by 1990. Lawsuits are one of the precursors for measuring what’s going to happen next, and the Americans and French are fighting over AIDS medication patent rights, so you know they’ve got something that works.

Are you basically optimistic or pessimistic about the future?