I recall seeing a copy of Popular Science (i think it was) in the 50's which discussed the laughable predictions for the future which were made at the time of the New York World's Fair in 1939. A few years later, i saw a copy of that or a similar magazine in which it was seriously predicted that within 30 years, we would all have private helicopter-like vehicles, and quite a few other fancy gadgets (the helicopters stuck in my mind, because i thought that would be so cool). However, by the time i was in my 20's i had realized that all such predictions have a value approximately equal to what you paid for the magazine.
I've run across a few ideas in science fiction, of which i was once greatly enamored, which have become reality--card readers which respond to plastic cards, getting money (invariably referred to in the literature as "credits") in that manner, or using the cards to pay for one's purchases. But by and large, such predictions are usually products of a vivid imagination, which is nevertheless insufficiently vivid to actually think up the new ideas and products which
will populate the future.
I've seen the realization of exactly one cogent prediction of its type--and even that has not turned out as the author likely thought. Warhol said: "In the future everybody will be world famous for fifteen minutes." It has entered the language in the form of "his/her fifteen minutes of fame." But even that is not actually a prediction, as much as it has become self-fulfilling prophecy. Nowadays, almost everybody (not me, sister)
wants to be world famous for fifteen minutes . . . if not longer . . .
