Q:  Do you think that in his work he predicted the 
things we’ve seen happen in the last few years?

A:  Well, he never predicted the future, never ever 
tried to. And that was one of the things that 
irritated people. He said, “No, no, there a lot of 
groups of people busy predicting the future. I’ll 
leave them to it. That’s futurologists, and certain 
sociologists, and so on. That’s their job to look at 
the future. And historians take care of the past.” 
He said, “I’ll tackle the really tough one: the 
present. Let me see if I can predict the present.” 
Which is damn near impossible. So he spent his time 
trying to predict the present, not the future. He