Forget Nostradamus and the other charlatans. Has anyone done a reasonable job of predicting future events based on logic and history? Did anyone in the early 1900s correctly predict the coming of television, the internet, the Straight Dope, or any of the other wonderful things we take for granted today?
While we’re on the subject, are any organizations or individuals making any predictions about how the next century will unfold?
In my world (high-tech startups), every day is about predicting the future. You spend millions of dollars and ungodly hours building something that you hope people will buy.
There is lots of logic and history taken into account. Also, a lot of midstream corrections. And let’s not discount luck.
Some companies are better predictors than others.
True, business is all about trends and outcomes. But I was referring to prediction on a larger scale, not necessarily for any set purpose.
Strategic Forecasting: http://www.stratfor.com
“Because everything is waterproof, the housewife of the year 2000 will be able to do her interior cleaning with a hose.” --Popular Science, 1950
You could check out almost any of Jules Verne’s books… He got an awful lot of things right, 50-100 years in advance. Of course, he also got an awful lot of things wrong, and he didn’t specify dates for most of his ideas, so let’s not get too excited.
To be annoyingly literal, here’s MIT’s contribution to predicting the future, albeit in a very specific instance. A quote from the page:
And apparently the Aussies (and the British) were into this even earlier:
From the Los Angeles Times
Monday 24 July 2000
Canine Clairvoyants
By ROY RIVENBURG, Times Staff Writer
synopsis:
Jacqueline Stallone, the mother of Sylvester Stallone, has two miniature Dobermans named Rachel and Hannah that are psychic. The dogs channel messages from the spirit world and telepathically send them to Ms. Stallone. The dogs also have healing powers. (Ms. Stallone herself is an astrologer and “rumpologist”, a profession similar to phrenology except that instead of bumps on the skull you study a person’s derrière.)
Some of the amazing canines’ predictions:[ul][li]GW Bush will win the next presidential election by a margin of a few hundred votes.[/li][li]They predicted that the Taco Bell Chihuahua would lose its job. (The dogs view this as a case of ethnic discrimination.) Calista Flockhart will soon also be out of a job.[/li][li]Bill Clinton will come to Hollywood and manage a movie studio.[/li][li]There is a strong possibility that Hillary Clinton will become a US senator.[/li][li]Elvis Presley and Jim Morrison are not still alive.[/li][li]OJ Simpson did not kill Nicole Brown Simpson.[/li][li]When asked a question about the Middle East, the dogs started fighting with each other! On another political note, the dogs do not like communism.[/li][li]Madonna will retire after her next delivery. Magic Johnson will be cured of AIDS.[/li][li]Within 10 years, prisoners will be sent to Mars and guarded by robots.[/li][/ul]
Ms. Stallone surmises that the dogs acquired their powers by sleeping on some prayer rugs from the Middle East.
No one expected the Straight Dope. Just like the Spanish Inquisition.
in the realm of science/technology, I suspect some “predictions” are self-fulfilling (i.e., someone has an idea for a new tech that someone else thinks is cool and makes happen)
or some predictions have been based on what is likely to happen (perhaps like Asimov’s(?) prediction of a global satellite communication network?)
Nostradamus predicted I would make this post.
It was Clark who first predicted communication satellites, I believe, not Asimov, and at the time, it wasn’t really considered likely by most folks. As for self-fulfilling prophecies, that was believed of many of Verne’s predictions, until his “lost work”, Paris in the Twentieth Century, was rediscovered a few years ago. Among the predictions in there are electric executions, calculating machines, fax machines, and traffic jams, and nobody knew about the predictions until long after the reality. Then again, he also predicted that an apartment would contain a single transforming piece of furniture which would function as bed, kitchenette, toilet, and piano, and his calculators and fax machines filled a room.
By the way, I don’t recommend that anyone actually read Paris in the Twentieth Century unless purely for the historical value… There’s a good reason it was never published in the first place.
Already been invented, and you don’t even need a hose. See here for more.
yes, it was Clark…thanks.
Asimov’s Foundation series was based on the premise that a man had figured out an immensely complicated mathematical process for working out future history. He called it “psycohistory”. Makes for a somewhat interesting read, if you like thinly veiled allegories about historical processes.
I hate to be too pedantic, but chaos theory implies that we can’t work out the future too well, because it would require understanding the present to an impossible degree.