The Smell of Success

In futurist circles, a possibly apocryphal, but nonetheless irresistible, illustration of the hazards of prediction and linear extrapolation is the story of desperate city planners in fin-de-siecle London (or New York, or Paris in its various re-tellings). What was the source of their dilemma? Why, mountains of horse manure, of course.

Here is a quintessential re-telling, by Eric Morris at UCLA:

The situation seemed dire. In 1894, the Times of London estimated that by 1950 every street in the city would be buried nine feet deep in horse manure. One New York prognosticator of the 1890s concluded that by 1930 the horse droppings would rise to Manhattan's third-story windows. A public health and sanitation crisis of almost unimaginable dimensions loomed.

And no possible solution could be devised. After all, the horse had been the dominant mode of transportation for thousands of years. Horses were absolutely essential for the functioning of the 19th century city - for personal transportation, freight haulage and even mechanical power. Without horses, cities would quite literally starve.

Maybe it is our evangelism of plural futures, or a penchant for scatophilia, but this story has been frequent fodder for discussion here at the HRCFS. Case in point, see Stuart's post: Parables and Horseshit.


As the end of oil draws near, we cling to the hope for a 21st Century version of the transformation from horse to car that will save us from infrastructure collapse. But maybe we are seeing signs of another, more familiar problem:

Sarah Friedson of Westport rode her sister's pony to school Friday morning as both a prank and to protest the high price of gas, the 17-year-old said.

She hung a sign on the horse that read "Ride on '08" and "Save Gas $."

When she arrived on school property, accompanied by her father, Ronald who was trailing behind in his car, school officials told her police was on the way. link

So, were we wrong by ridiculing and castigating those old projections from the gay '90s? Maybe those apocryphal futurists and planners were just off by a few decades, and the gas-powered car was but a temporary solution. Now, people, what are we going to do about all the (coming) horseshit?!