9 "Guaranteed" Visions Of The Future That Will Make Us All Look Stupid

1. This

First of all, bear in mind that this video is purporting to show us what life will be like in a mere four years time.

This is the perfect example of a trap many futurist fall into. People involved in researching and predicting the latest tech trends are surrounded by this kind of imagery and technology a lot of the time and seem to have forgotten that the majority of us peasants are still trying to get to grips with our microwaves in our draughty converted Victorian maisonettes, and those are the lucky ones. As of 2010, 1.2 billion people were still living without electricity - 173 million of them in urban areas - and are likely to still be living without it in four years time.

This trap that the futurists fall into time and time again, is underestimating the speed of progress and overestimating the latest technology. Its what led those optimists in the 20th century to imagine the year 2000 as a glittering utopia of personal flight and nuclear powered cars, and it's what is leading the current futurists to imagine a near future in which literally every surface is a touchscreen.

The Exception: We literally all fall through a wormhole.

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