{"id":367,"date":"2009-01-24T22:21:26","date_gmt":"2009-01-24T22:21:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meeseeks:5080\/blog\/?p=367"},"modified":"2009-01-24T22:21:26","modified_gmt":"2009-01-24T22:21:26","slug":"the-better-angels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/2009\/01\/the-better-angels\/","title":{"rendered":"The Better Angels"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[WARNING:\u00a0 In-jokes for telecoms people!]<br \/>\nPrediction, particularly of the future,\u00a0is difficult, <a href=\"http:\/\/meeseeks:5080\/blog\/2009\/01\/evaluating-prophecy\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">as we know<\/a>.\u00a0 We notice a good example of the difficulties reading Charles McCarry&#8217;s riveting political\/spy thriller, <em>The Better Angels<\/em>.\u00a0 Published in 1979 but set during the final US Presidential election campaign of the 20th Century (2000? 1996?), McCarry\u00a0gets some of the\u00a0big predictions spot on:\u00a0suicide bombers,\u00a0Islamic terrorism, oil-company malfeasance, an extreme right-wing US President, computer voting machines, a Greek-American in charge of the US foreign intelligence agency, uncollected garbage and wild animals in Manhattan&#8217;s streets, and,\u00a0of course,\u00a0the manned space mission\u00a0to Jupiter&#8217;s moon,\u00a0Ganymede, for\u00a0instance.\u00a0 But he makes a real howler with the telephone system:\u00a0 a\u00a0brief mention (p. 154) of &#8220;the\u00a0Bell\u00a0System&#8221; indicates he had no anticipation of the 1982\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Modification_of_Final_Judgment\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Modified Final Judgement<\/a> of Judge Harold\u00a0H Greene.\u00a0 How could he have failed to see that coming, when AT&amp;T&#8217;s managers were preparing for decades for the competition which would follow, evident in the masterful way these managers and their companies have prospered since?!\u00a0 A future with a unified Bell system was so weird, I was barely able to concentrate on the other events in the novel after this.<br \/>\n<em>Reference:<\/em><br \/>\nCharles McCarry [1979]: <em>The Better Angels<\/em>. London, UK:\u00a0 Arrow Books.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[WARNING:\u00a0 In-jokes for telecoms people!] Prediction, particularly of the future,\u00a0is difficult, as we know.\u00a0 We notice a good example of the difficulties reading Charles McCarry&#8217;s riveting political\/spy thriller, The Better Angels.\u00a0 Published in 1979 but set during the final US Presidential election campaign of the 20th Century (2000? 1996?), McCarry\u00a0gets some of the\u00a0big predictions spot [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,67],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forecasting","category-prophecy","p1","y2009","m01","d24","h22"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}