Fifty years ago, American scientist and author Isaac Asimov published a story in The New York Times that listed his predictions for what the world would be like in 2014.
Asimov wrote more than 500 books in his lifetime, including science fiction novels and nonfiction scientific books, so he was well-versed in thinking about the future.
In his article, called “Visit to the World’s Fair of 2014,” Asimov got a whole bunch of his guesses right — and his other predictions are making us a little envious of his imagined future.
via Isaac Asimov’s Predictions For 2014 From 50 Years Ago Are Eerily Accurate.
Asimov was one of my favorite authors, although I have to admit to only reading a small slice of the books he wrote. I’m not particularly surprised that his prediction hit rate is high. Most of his misses, like those of so many by scientists, are generally in assuming that we’d all be scientists or technicians by now.
Be sure to check out the source material at Open Culture.
I love the term “electroluminescent panels.” It’s such a modern technology described in such a quaint and archaic way.
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That reminds me of some of the old sci-fi (30s and 40s) I once read, where there was a good deal of that. They didn’t have TVs yet, so they referred to monitor screens as “view plates”, and they had a variety of names for what we would call a particle beam today.
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