D. Boucher uses Google Labs' Ngram Viewer to look at instances of the word "future" in books since 1800, and concludes that "the future is behind us."
Future related (more like, future mentioning) books have taken giant steps back since the beginning of the millennium. According to the data, “future books” peaked around the year 2000. The latest data available, 2008, demonstrates that the level of future mentioning books is back to where it was in the 1970s era. Could it be that there was structural change after the tech-wreck bubble (2001 recession) or even slightly before that period in anticipation of the crash?
Boucher speculates that "our current technological prowess may distract us from the future," and that "technology is a detriment to forward-looking thinkers." My own suspicion is that the peak around 2000 is an artifact of Y2K, and that use of the term is not going to continue to slide but will stabilize before too long.
I think it's a bias in the database (the Ngram deafult settings are 1800-2000). Actually, quite many searches for words on Ngram show a decline between 2000 and 2008.
Posted by: Thomas | December 26, 2010 at 12:35 AM
Good point. I've heard from others that there are issues using Ngram past 2000, which makes sense, given copyright etc.
Posted by: Alex Soojung-Kim Pang | December 26, 2010 at 09:10 PM