The Future That Never Was

4 October 2007 at 8:57 am Peter G. Klein Leave a comment

| Peter Klein |

I’ve been thinking about Oskar Morgenstern, specifically his collaboration with John von Neumann (mentioned briefly here). The relationships between Morgenstern and von Neumann, and between Morgenstern and his Habilitation supervisor Ludwig von Mises, raise interesting questions about the possible “Austrian” roots of game theory. (See the discussion by this brilliant economist-blogger.)

Some of Morgenstern’s most important works — Economic Prediction (1928), “Perfect Foresight and Economic Equilibrium” (1935), and On the Accuracy of Economic Observations (1950) — deal with problems of prediction in economics. (Morgenstern holds to a middle ground between the perfect-foresight, rational expectations view of Lucas and Sargeant and the “radical uncertainty” position associated with Shackle and Lachmann.)

Prediction was on my mind when I stumbled across a reference (in yesterday’s WSJ) to the Paleo-Future Blog, a fun site dealing with past predictions about technological progress. Even just a few decades ago everyone assumed that by 2007 we’d have personal robots, flying cars, and push-button meals. (We do have personal communicators, microwave ovens, and an internet nobody foresaw.)

See also this review of Daniel Wilson’s Where’s My Jetpack?