H.G. Wells produced many novels and works of non-fiction about the future. The foregoing transcript was aired by the BBC on 19 November, 1932 at the end of a radio program about communications.

It seems an odd thing to me that though we have thousands and thousands of professors and hundreds of thousands of students of history working upon the records of the past, there is not a single person anywhere who makes a whole-time job of estimating the future consequences of new inventions and new devices. There is not a single Professor of Foresight in the world. But why shouldn’t there be? All these new things, these new inventions and new powers, come crowding along; every one is fraught with consequences, and yet it is only after something has hit us hard that we set about dealing with it.

Tonight we are confronted with two facts, one bad and one good; the first, which has only been hinted at, that acts of war have become hideously immediate and far reaching; and the second that the whole round world can be brought together into one brotherhood, into one communion, one close-knit freely communicating citizenship, far more easily today, than was possible with even such a little country as England a century ago.

View the full trnascript - http://www.swin.edu.au/agse/courses/foresight/attachments/wanted - Professors of Foresight (wells).pdf

Thanks to the folks at Swinburne University for making this available.