Following on January 11's "Among the Prophets: Science fiction and the art of prediction".
From Hackaday, June 16, 2025:
Predicting the future is a dangerous occupation. Few people can claim as much success as Arthur C. Clarke, the famous science and science fiction author. Thanks to the BBC and the Australian Broadcasting Company, we can see what Sir Arthur thought about the future in 1964 and then ten years later in 1974.
Perhaps his best-known prediction was that of communication satellites, but he called quite a few other things, too. Like all prognosticators, he didn’t bat a thousand, and he missed a wrinkle or two, but overall, he has a very impressive track record.
Horizon
In the 1964 BBC show, Horizon: The Knowledge Explosion, Clarke himself talked about how hard it is to predict the future. He then goes on to describe ultra-modern cities prior to the year 2000. However, he thought that after the year 2000, we won’t care about cities. We’ll communicate with each other without regard to location. Shades of the Internet and cell phone!
He clearly saw the work-from-home revolution. However, he also thought that we’d enslave other animals, which–mercifully–didn’t come to pass. His thoughts on computers were much more on point, although we still don’t quite have what he thought we would.
Direct information dumps to your brain are probably not happening anytime soon. Suspended animation isn’t very popular, either. Of course, all of this could still happen, and it would be totally spooky if he’d been 100% right.
To wrap up, he talks about a replicator when K. Eric Drexler was not even ten years old. We won’t say he called out the 3D printer, exactly, but he was on the track....
....MUCH MORE
