The ever excellent Pods and Blogs programme is a regular feature on BBC Radio 5 Live’s Up All Night programming and does, of course, have its own podcast. It’s the type of programme that introduces you to great content you may never have actually searched for or found without prompting. It is highly recommended.
In this week’s broadcast, the programme featured Matt Novak who glories in the job title paleo-futurologist. His blog Paleofuture provides ‘a look into the future that never was’ by showing historical predictions for the future. In 1930, for example, the Syracuse Herald ran an article predicting the digital distribution of films in an article ‘Television will soon flash talkies through the ether’. Or how about 1981’s ‘Computer criminals of the future’ which predicts growth in computer fraud (although simultaneously predicting a decline in buglaries because computers will be guarding our homes!).
Bearded men of the 21st century is just one example of why we should all exercise extreme caution when predicting the future.