"Having been trained at the U.S. Naval Academy and practically experienced in the powerfully effective forecasting arts of celestial navigation, pilotage, ballistics, and logistics and in the long-range, anticipatory, design science governing yesterday's naval mastery of the world from which our present day's general system's theory has been derived, I recall that in 1927, I set about deliberately exploring to see how far ahead we could make competent forecasts regarding the direction in which all humanity is trending and to see how effectively we could interpret the physical details of what comprehensive evolution might be portending as disclosed by the available data, I came to the conclusion that it is possible to make a fairly reasonable forecast of about twenty-five years."