What will the world look like in 2024 AD? Fifty years ago, the Saturday Review published a probe into the future with pieces from Isaac Asimov, Jacques Cousteau, Neil Armstrong, and more

As we close out 2024, I thought it would be neat to share and scan a magazine I've been holding onto for the occasion. Published in 1974, this 138-page issue invited over a dozen great minds to publish pieces on the year 2024.

What did these thinkers get right? What did they get wrong?

Hosted in a few places:

Archive.org – PDF optimized

Scribd – PDF not optimized

Imgur – image album

While the ads and graphic design are cool, the Table of Contents of the written pieces:

• Page 6: Prophecy and Pessimism – Norman Cousins, Editor. How the human mind will respond to challenge is the dominant reality of tomorrow.
• Page 8: Recycling Social Man – Rene Dubos. A philosophy for the continuance of life for 50 more years.
• Page 12: Tomorrow: The View from Red Square – Andrei D. Sakharov. Reflections on personal liberty in a totalitarian state and a sampling of Russian futurism.
• Page 18: After the Deluge, the Covenant – McGeorge Bundy. A former presidential aide looks back on the history of the world from 2024 to 1974.
• Page 25: A World Atlas for 2024 – Milovan Djilas, Emmet John Hughes, Lord Trevelyan, and Kei Wakaizumi. Four political pundits from diverse global areas predict the changes of national borders.
• Page 32: Out of This World – Neil Armstrong. Underground on the moon and other flights of fancy by the first lunar explorer.
• Page 35: Space Riders in the Sky – Wernher von Braun. Satellites will forecast the weather and crop yield, find minerals, and usher in worldwide videophones.
• Page 41: The Perils and Potentials of a Watery Planet – Captain Jacques Cousteau. The globe is mostly water, which, if we clean it up, could provide dazzling benefits.
• Page 46: The Medical Prognosis: Favorable, Treatable, Curable – Michael E. Debakey, M.D. The eminent surgeon foresees a half-century of exciting medical breakthroughs.
• Page 54: Beyond the City Limits – Moshe Safdie. The young architect who created Habitat envisions himself in a utopian setting.
• Page 58: The 21-st Century Woman — Free at Last? – Clare Boothe Luce. An evaluation of woman's role shows little improvement and only distant hope.
• Page 63: Toward Global Interdependence – Kurt Waldheim. Tomorrow's world needs a sense of interdependence for survival, says the U.N.'s fourth Secretary-General.
• Page 73: Report to the President – Harold Howe II. A definitive paper to "Madam President" as imagined by the onetime U.S. Commissioner of Education.
• Page 74: The Case for Educare and the Open University – Fred M. Hechinger. Explaining the meaning of the Educare Act, which was "enacted" in 2008.
• Page 78: Clippings from Tomorrow's Newspapers – Isaac Asimov. News items that might appear in 2024 juxtaposed with clips from 1924.
• Page 82: Will There Still be a God? – Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C. A case for the endurance of religion and belief in the technocratic decades ahead.
• Page 90: The Literary Light as Eternal Flame – Normal Podhoretz. Literature will survive experimentation, activism, and boredom.