It is always interesting to read educated predictions of the future (and not just populist statements like “Print is Dead”).
Often we chuckle about these predictions a few years later, but not because they didn’t come true, more that they either appeared faster than predicted. And not only that, often they even had a larger magnitude than predicted. Remember Bill Gate’s reportedly “640KB ought to be enough for everyone”, Huxley’s “Brace New World” or the visions in Star Trek (communicator).
Interestingly we do not even need to go back a decade or two, a bit over two years ago I remember most people and analysts thinking Steve Jobs was over-optimizing the adoption of tablets when he presented the iPad (“just a large iPhone”).
The truly amazing predictions though are the ones that were made a long time ago and came true.
Mark Potts article “A Vision for the Future of Newspapers—20 Years Ago” summarizes a great prediction by Robert G. Kaiser, which I didn’t know before. It’s a great read, I can warmly recommend it:
http://recoveringjournalist.typepad.com/recovering_journalist/
And thanks to Mark for the great article.
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Tue, Aug 21, 2012
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