Futurists

An interesting article from Rule 42 on Futurists' predictions from the past. A taste:

Arthur C. Clarke, Profiles of the Future
Date: 1963
Accuracy rate: 39%
Best predictions: Global library, subnuclear structure
Worst predictions: Cyborgs, fusion power

Clarke began this book with the statement “It is impossible to predict the future.” What he attempted to do instead was outline, in seventeen different chapters, seventeen different directions in which future research and technology might head, and the consequences of various inventions of the future. For the most part, he successfully navigated between what he identified as the Scylla and Charbydis of prophecy: the failure of nerve (not properly extrapolating from what already exists) and the failure of imagination (not factoring in the unexpected developments of the future). And since he was wise enough not to commit to concrete dates in those seventeen chapters, it’s nigh-impossible to grade his predictions, except to say that they still seem plausible.

In an appendix, however, he offered a “Chart of the Future,” and it is this frivolous exercise that I took advantage of. While Clarke correctly predicted translating software and personal radios, we still don’t have “wireless” energy or fluency in cetacean languages. Nevertheless, Clarke’s multiple visions of our future still seem much more cogent than most of the other futurists I read; he was just off on the time frame, which, as he admitted in his introduction, was not his strong point. I’ll give him a few more decades.

Some funny and interesting stuff. Read the whole thing.

(Hat tip: Boing Boing)
__