Peter Adamson
speaker
1,322 appearances
7 recordings
1 series
first heard Jun 2026
last heard yesterday
Peter Adamson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 7 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 2.
Appearances
It maybe says a lot about it as its people.
I think you could say that applies to political dynamics as well.
You know, extreme politics often have a lot more consequence or a lot more impact than their likelihood or kind of rationale would indicate.
And often
The path that the status quo has a lot of staying power tends to be underrated both in futurology and politics in general.
But anyway, to get back to your question.
And this is where I think really things get interesting, frankly, when you think about twentieth century futurology, you start to have a whole array of different tactics, strategies, and, as you said, almost scientific or quasi technical ways of understanding the future.
And if we take a step back into the nineteenth century just for a second, you can understand why this happens if you think about the instance of weather prediction.
Because it really was the case that before around the middle of the nineteenth century nobody ever knew what the weather was going to do.
within certain parameters.
Obviously we had almanacs.
You'd be colder in the winter than the summer, but you didn't know when it was going to rain.
And that was only a matter that God knew.
And of course you had the kind of folk customs of, you know, does your knee ache or that kind of thing.
But, you know, sailors myths about the sun, that kind of thing.
But
Lo and behold, some scientists at the Smithsonian in Washington DC set up a network of weather observation and connected it to the new technology of the telegraph.
And they were able to suddenly start predicting the future simply by virtue of the fact that the pu that the weather in America generally moves from west to east.
Right.
And so if it was raining in Oklahoma.
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