Would’ve been cool. 
I recall a story from the old Omni magazine – I think it was “Some of My Best Friends Are Americans” – depicting a conquered U.S. under Arab/Muslim rule and Shari’a law. But it wasn’t memorable; crappy as '50s Red-Scare material, and not by accident.
One major development that was overlooked by a hell of a lot of science fiction authors: women’s lib.
How about mp3 players?
eta: of course after I post I realize tape players could be the precedent, but being able to carry entire music catalogs in your pocket? Any cites so specific?
The closest thing I can think of is the earpieces in Fahrenheit 451. I think those are actually radio receivers, but they kind of predict people taking music everywhere with them and listening to it all the time, and you can’t always tell if someone is using them so you can talk to them and they won’t hear you.
Asimov , even though he was himself a scientist (Ph.D in chemistry) missed a lot of stuff: like genetic engineering, and pocket sized computers. His “FOUNDATION” series also had some weird ideas-the Galactic Empire: it has a technology so advanced, that travel between stars is possible-yet, they have a monarchical government!
What all SCI-Fi writers missed (in their predictions of the future) was mankind’s inability to put aside superstition: a large number of Americans today believe in ghosts, evil spirits, and astrology :eek:
Actually, that isn’t so apropos, since Multivac is almost always presented not as a global network, but essentially as one giant super-mainframe housed in a secure location - one computer so big that very few people or companies on the planet need to have a computer anything nearly as powerful. Yes, there are network connections made TO multivac, but with the central processor in just one place it’s not much like the internet we have now. That’s something that a lot of SF people writing about computers missed.
Of course, it’s true that SF is about the attitudes and ideals of the time when it’s written more than a genuine attempt to predict the future.
Look up to my earlier post. Asimov used miniature computers in the original Foundation stories, even calling them “pocket calculators”, and Asimov bragged about getting the color of the readout right.
I’m not denying that he missed stuff, but you’ve chosen an example that he DID predict.
I’m thinking about changing my username to Rad Bradbury.
If we must settle it, for sale right now there’s an Advance Reading Copy of Ender’s Game dedicated by Card to his editor… the date on the book is 1985. We can conclude it’s a 1985 title.
Of course, were one to nitpick, Ender’s Game was originally a short story published in Analog in 1977…
To be fair, Star Wars happened in the past… You know, “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.” 
As far as I know, the earliest story that posits something like the internet was a 1909 story, The Machine Stops, by E.M. Forster.
Most of the things that SF writers missed are things that didn’t happen based on what they saw was possible with extrapolated technology:
Nuclear power has not been widely adopted. People way back in the 50s knew that fossil fuels shouldn’t be counted on for a long-term source of portable power. The concept of fuel cells dates back to 1839, and several SF authors posited batteries/power cells charged by nuclear power, with hydrocarbons being used only for plastics.
Futuristic weapons (railguns, lasers, smart rocks from orbit) are not widespread, and the best of them are still barely practical even though the technology for them is half a century old or more.
Computer analysis of patterns is still pretty bad. I remember reading a book called David’s Sling from 1988 that — while managing to hit the mark on a lot of developments that have taken place, and a few that are still pending — posits much better fuzzy logic than we can do with processors that are so powerful that they are probably beyond what anyone would have thought possible 20 years ago.
Mass transit is not common in most of the world, and in places where it is, is based on technology that was common 100 years ago. Many, many authors thought that mass transit would be the only way to go. It didn’t take much predictive power even in the 40s and 50s to see traffic jams and usable land being eaten up by roads as a future concern. Massive moving walkways, fast trains, evacuated underground tube shuttles, and automated cars are a few of the ideas thrown out there. Instead, we have halfway decent trains in just a few nations, running between large cities. That’s about it as far as mass transit. Even the fastest trains still run on rails, making them nothing more than mature 19th century tech.
Social changes are a lot harder to hit, and almost no SF writers, hard or soft, would venture to place much weight on their predictions about society 20 or 30 years from now. They might reasonably extrapolate some patterns of behavior based on new technology, but that’s nothing more than guessing how people would use the new tools. Someone predicting a future form of music or fashion is probably going to have a worse success rate than Nostradamus. Writers smart enough to come up with good stories know that.
No one predicted Youtube. Anyone with a video phone can upload a video for all to see. If you need to show the world a crucial message, you no longer need to break into one of those top secret terminals that can broadcast to every single TV set.
Robert Heinlein discussed cell phones offhandedly in his 1948 Space Cadet- in the first chapter, two characters discussed their “wallet phones”, one talking to his parents on his and the other stating that he intentionally packed it in his suitcase so his parents couldn’t call him.
If you remember, this was a plot by the Chinese to destroy the west through pornography. If they are responsible for internet and cable porn, we appear to be sucking it up, as it were, without any ill effects.
Heinlein in Space Cadet has the protagonist keeping his phone in his luggage and not wanting to answer it, sort of a proto cell phone.
Robert Heinlein predicted cell phones once, for 20 minutes, in 1948.
Well, there’s Dune and the Zensunni Fremen Jyhad …it just takes a while, is all.
I don’t think there is much Heinlein didn’t predict, to be fair. He predicted:
Satellites (especially geo-synchronous ones)
Waterbeds
Rise of religious fundamentalism in the US
Abandonment of the space program
Cell phones (or analogs of)
Society moving away from racism, but never leaving it entirely behind
America winning against Communism
Lots of good stuff he did - one of my favourite authors
Twice, at least – Space Cadet and The Puppet Masters, both noted above.
He also suggested portable handheld phone units with landkline bases. I suspect he’s responsible for a lot of the visual throwaways in the movie Operation Moonbase, and this is one of the cuter bits. They don’t explicitly point it out, but if you pay attention you notce that the telephone handsets used in the film aren’t connected to the bases by cords. They each have a little antenna, and there’s a matching antenna on the base on the desk. That’s the kind of phone we’re still using in our kitchen.
This is the sort of cute throwaway detail that Heinlein himself called an “easy trick”. He was more concerned with longer-reaching changes and cultural movements, although he was a master of these little mini-predictions. One that hasn’t come to pass is the “dilating door”. Heinlein uses it as another throwaway “The door dilated…” , without explaining further imn at least two of his novels. Larry Niven liked it so much that he appropriasted it himself. And it’s sort of appeared on the screen – in the movie version of The Puppet Masters a doorway actually DOES dilate, although it’s in the Puuppet Masters’ reguime rather than that of the humans.
In Adventure Comics #369, published in June of 1968, a charcater Shadow Lass mentions “school-a-thon,” which is simply going to school via computer. The frame shows her with a computer setup and headphones.
In 1968!