Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) was not just an author; he was a professor of biochemistry and a futurist who approached tomorrow through logic, not magic. His body of work—most notably the Foundation series and his Robot stories—has served as a roadmap for many Silicon Valley pioneers. But how accurately did the “Good Doctor” really see the world of 2025 and beyond?
The Bullseyes: Where Asimov Was Right
1. The Internet and Wikipedia Perhaps Asimov’s most startling vision comes from 1988. In an interview with Bill Moyers, he described a future computer as an “outlet into a worldwide library.” He predicted we could ask the machine any question and receive an answer with references. He essentially described Google and Wikipedia at a time when the World Wide Web was barely a concept.
2. The Ethics of AI Asimov didn’t coin the word robot (Karel Čapek did), but he did coin the term robotics. His “Three Laws of Robotics” remain the foundational text for discussions on AI safety today. While we aren’t programming moral codes into positronic brains just yet, the debate on how to prevent AI from harming humans is more relevant than ever.
3. Video Calls and Remote Work In an essay for the 1964 World’s Fair, Asimov envisioned that future communications would be sight-sound based, allowing us to see the person we are calling. He also predicted that technology would allow people to flee crowded cities for semi-rural living as work shifted online—a prophecy fully realized during the remote work boom.
The Misses: Where the Vision Blurred
1. The Atomic Age in Your Kitchen Like many 1950s futurists, Asimov overestimated the scalability of nuclear power. He imagined a world where “atomic batteries” powered everything from household appliances to cars. The realities of nuclear waste and the difficulties of miniaturization were overshadowed by mid-century optimism.
2. Moving Sidewalks Everywhere In his novel The Caves of Steel, cities are interconnected by massive systems of high-speed moving strips to transport the masses. While we see travelators in airports, urban infrastructure ultimately favored the private automobile and subways, not conveyor belts.
3. Overpopulation and Yeast Vats Asimov was deeply concerned about a population explosion and envisioned a future where we would survive on synthetic food made from yeast and algae. While lab-grown meat is an emerging industry, the pressing demographic issue in many developed nations today is actually falling birth rates, not Malthusian collapse.
The Jury is Still Out: Foundation and Big Data
The central invention of Asimov’s Foundation series is Psychohistory—a science that uses mathematics to predict the behavior of large masses of people. We aren’t quite there yet, but modern Big Data, algorithmic modeling, and predictive analytics (used in everything from elections to consumer behavior) are eerily close to Asimov’s concept.
We may not be living in a Galactic Empire, but we are undeniably living in Asimov’s world.
