Throughout the 128-year history of the magazine, its writers have attempted to predict what the future will look like. Now that the future’s here, is it everything they dreamed of?
First and foremost, let’s get one thing out of the way: No, humans haven’t developed nuclear fusion power yet. Despite predictions made by WEM writers from 2002, 1973, 1997, 1962, 2012, and 1956, fusion power is still years away from being feasible.
The Wisconsin Engineer magazine has an impressive archive, containing 128 years of content across over 700 individual issues. Isabelle Egizio, one of the magazine’s co-Editors-in-Chief, attributes this longevity to the magazine’s ability to evolve. “Throughout its history, [the magazine] has greatly adapted to current events,” Egizio explains. But how well has it done with the future?
The earliest future prediction published in the magazine came in 1931, in an article estimating the future population of Madison. Its writer foretold that, unless a “new era” began in Madison, the city’s population would cap at 68,000 in the mid-1940s.
Shockingly, this prediction was almost exactly accurate. The 1940 census recorded a population of 67,447 people. In 1945, the Baby Boom hit — exactly the “new era” the writer warned would change his results. Madison’s population has since skyrocketed to over four times the cap the 1931 writer predicted.
Sadly, this successful prediction streak ended after one round. The magazine’s predictions of hypersonic commercial flight in 1959, declining College of Engineering enrollment in 1988, and flying cars in 2002 all proved obviously incorrect. Today, no commercial plane breaks the sound barrier, engineering enrollment is at an all-time high, and flying cars seem more distant than fusion.
“We have a lot of stories that have aged well… and a lot of stories that have not,” comments Laila Smith, the magazine’s other co-Editor-in-Chief. “I think it’s inevitable that we’ll be wrong about things,” she adds.
However, there is one thing that the magazine seems able to predict flawlessly: construction. In 2002, the magazine foretold that the Madison of 2025 would have holes for construction everywhere, engineering buildings that constantly get remodeled, and a front-lawn fountain that still doesn’t work.
“That one was pretty spot-on… construction is everywhere,” says Smith. “I don’t think there’s been one week, or even one day, of my college career where I haven’t walked by construction,” Egizio adds. Anyone living in Madison today has to agree.
Even for the best of writers, it’s impossible to predict surprises and the effects they have on the future. While the present hasn’t met up to all the optimistic forecasts of what should be, unexpected events can, and have, greatly benefited humanity. Inventions such as microwaves, penicillin, and bubble wrap were all surprises that had wide-ranging effects nobody could have foreseen.
“[The magazine] has a lot of stories that have aged well… and a lot of stories that have not.”
Laila Smith
Egizio puts this more succinctly, saying “the accuracy of our predictions is severely limited by our knowledge of the present.” Smith concurs, adding “there will always be new problems that arise that people don’t predict.”
Despite knowing the risks, both Editors-in-Chief offer a few forecasts themselves, summarized at the end of the page. You’ll notice that neither list contains a prediction of when nuclear fusion power will finally occur – the magazine won’t make that mistake a seventh time!
Laila Smith’s predictions:
- Students will be frustrated by multi-factor authentication for decades to come
- The engineering program will grow quickly with arrival of the new buildings
- The Engineering Centers Building will never be saved from flooding again
- Legos will be a hit forever and will be made out of bioplastic
Isabelle Egizio’s predictions
- The world’s population will reach a maximum in the next few decades, then taper off
- Madison will become a bigger city as UW builds up its infrastructure
- Hybrid cars will skyrocket in popularity and be the most common kind of car
- The fashion trends of the 90s will return, and then the decades will keep looping