The Long Boom: A History of the Future (1997)
wired.com
wired.com
The first thing that tipped me off was when they say that IMF was a force for good (let's just say that what is called //economic development// by some is more accurately described as //exploitation//). I would tag the IMF as //clearly// evil so already some alarms are ringing.
Then they throw in a "genetically modified foods are good" in there. Again something //clearly// evil. Why did they feel the need to mention that in their predictions?
Then they go straight into the heavy BS "democratizing, privatizing,..." at this point it is time to stop reading. I am disappointed in Wired.
PUSH! Kiss your browser goodbye: The radical future of media beyond the Web
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.03/ff_push.html
PUSH!, like the proverbial stopped clock, "came true" only after being utterly wrong for 15 years.
A new media industry also explodes onto the scene to take advantage of the network's unique capabilities...Relative newcomers like Disney and Microsoft ace out the old-guard television networks in a monumental struggle over digital TV. After a few fits and starts, the Net becomes the main medium of the 21st century.
Roughly 10 years too early. Media titans didn't begin really battling it out until the rise of Netflix, Hulu, Amazon video.
The development of online commerce quickly follows on new media's heels...By 2000, online sales hit US$10 billion, still small by overall retail standards. Around 2005, 20 percent of Americans teleshop for groceries.
Right, and wrong. Online commerce is obviously a very massive industry. That prediction was correct. But grocery shopping online? There are a lot of problems when the Internet meets the real world, and only a very few successful attempts at internet grocery services have been made.
Alongside the migration of the traditional retail world into cyberspace, completely new types of work are created. Many had speculated that computer networks would lead to disintermediation - the growing irrelevance of the middleman in commerce. Certainly the old-style go-betweens are sideswiped, but new types of intermediaries arise to connect buyers to sellers. And with the friction taken out of the distribution system, the savings can be channeled into new ventures, which create new work.
This seems to be a rather rose-tinted observation. The Internet and computers have also replaced or automated millions of management or menial labor positions. I'm not trying to judge whether it's a good or bad thing objectively, just point out that their paragraph misrepresents the other side of the coin.
By 2000, policymakers finally come around to the idea that you can grow the economy at much higher rates and still avoid the spiral of inflation. The millennium also marks a symbolic changing of the guard at the Federal Reserve Bank: Alan Greenspan retires, the Fed lifts its foot off the brake, and the US economy really begins to take off.
Ha. Haha.
Fortunately, the fifth wave of new technology - alternative energy - arrives right around the turn of the century with the introduction of the hybrid electric car. Stage one begins in the late 1990s when automobile companies such as Toyota roll out vehicles using small diesel- or gasoline-fueled internal-combustion engines to power an onboard generator that then drives small electric motors at each wheel...The early hybrids are also much more efficient than regular gas-powered cars, often getting 80 miles to a gallon.
Pretty much spot on.
Stage two quickly follows, this time spurred by aerospace companies such as Allied Signal, which leverage their knowledge of jet engines to build hybrids powered by gas turbines. By 2005, technology previously confined to aircraft's onboard electric systems successfully migrates to automobiles. These cars use natural gas to power the onboard generators, which then drive the electric motors at the wheels. They also make use of superstrong, ultralight new materials that take the place of steel and allow big savings on mileage.
Nope. Did not happen. New startups like Tesla are branches of the space-industry, not the airline industry.
Then comes the third and final stage: hybrids using hydrogen fuel cells...By 2010, hydrogen is being processed in refinery-like plants and loaded onto cars that can go thousands of miles - and many months - before refueling. The technology is vastly cheaper and safer than in the 1960s and well on its way to widespread use.
Nope. Hydrogen fuel cells have completely discredited as a viable source of power for transportation.
An equally important character is China's Deng Xiaoping. His actions don't bring about the same dramatic political change, but right around the same time as Gorbachev, Deng initiates a similarly profound shift of policies, applying the concepts of openness and restructuring to the economy. This process of opening up - creating free trade and free markets - ultimately makes just as large a global impact. No place is this more apparent than in Asia.
Yes, this happened.
Japan grasps the gist of this economic formula long before the buzz begins, pulling a group of Asian early adopter countries in its wake...By the end of the decade, Japan has watched the United States crack the formula for success in the networked economy and begins to adopt the model in earnest. In 2000, it radically liberalizes many of its previously protected domestic markets - a big stimulus for the world economy at large.
No, this didn't happen. Japan remains suspicious of outsiders.
For years, Chinese expatriates have established intricate financial networks throughout Western countries, but especially in Asia. Many Southeast Asian economies - if not governments - are completely dominated by the overseas Chinese...That date [2005] also marks the absorption of Taiwan into China proper.
Taiwan did not merge with China, but many Asian economies are very dependant on Chinese. Also, many African economies are as well.
Indeed, through the 1990s, the rest of Europe remains trapped in the legacy of its welfare states, which maintain their political attractiveness long after they outlive their economic worth. By 2000, chronic unemployment and mounting government deficits finally force leaders on the continent to act. Despite widespread popular protests, especially in France, Europe goes through a painful economic restructuring much like the United States did a decade before. As part of this perestroika, it retools its economy using the new information technologies. This restructuring, both of corporations and governments, has much the same effect it had on the US economy. The European economy begins to surge and create many new jobs. By about 2005, Europe - particularly in the northern countries like Germany - even has the beginnings of a serious labor shortage as aging populations begin to retire.
This did not happen.
By about 2000, the United States economy is doing so well that the tax coffers begin to swell. This not only solves the deficit problem but gives the government ample resources to embark on new initiatives. No longer forced to nitpick over which government programs to cut, political leaders emerge with new initiatives to help solve seemingly intractable social problems, like drug addiction. No one talks about reverting to big government, but there's plenty of room for innovative approaches to applying the pooled resources of the entire society to benefit the public at large. And the government, in good conscience, can finally afford tax cuts.
Hahaha.
The cost of four-year colleges and universities becomes absurd - in part because antiquated teaching methods based on lectures are so labor intensive.
Well this is definitely true.
In the first decade of the century, Washington finally begins to really reinvent government. It's much the same process as the reengineering of corporations in the 1990s. The hierarchical bureaucracies of the 20th century are flattened and networked through the widespread adoption of new technologies. Some, like the IRS, experience spectacular failures, but eventually make the transition. In a more important sense, the entire approach to government is fundamentally reconsidered. The welfare and education systems are the first down that path. Driven by the imminent arrival of the first of many retiring baby boomers in 2011, Medicare and Social Security are next. Other governmental sectors soon follow.
Nope.
As the global viewing audience stares at the image of a distant Earth, seen from a neighboring planet 35 million miles away, the point is made as never before: We are one world. All organisms crammed on the globe are intricately interdependent. Plants, animals, humans need to find a way to live together on that tiny little place. By 2020, most people are acting on that belief.
Just the opposite, we have become more partisan than ever before. Our increased supply of knowledge allows us to selectively listen to information that supports our beliefs and biases, and ignore opposing views.
Overall, the wired article predicted a few things right, but most of the predictions were grossly optimistic and ignored complications with the technology, the ability of politicians to ignore change, and how increased interconnectedness would change the world.
World wide networking making us more charitable? It seems to have had the opposite effect, I see more and more vitriol. We are more connected, but less aware of each other. I know what my distant relatives and friends are up to thanks to Facebook and Twitter, but know less about them as a person than I did 10 years ago. Even the concepts of friendship have been modified to suit our new online nature, taking the role once occupied by "acquaintances". When everyone is our friend, no one is.
Government and political headwinds have been able to almost completely ignore technological changes, operating much the same they were 20 years ago. Aside from ill-advised overreaching technology laws, and the usual fear mongering, the political process has not changed. Access to information has reinforced our biases, lets us filter out anyone who breathes a word of "Fox News" or "MSNBC" respectively.
And the few other predictions about internet groceries, solving clean-technologies seem to be over-representations of what computers can do. Computers are algorithm-solvers, not nannies. They can transfer, computer, and display information quickly. They can not grep the real world without massive amounts of outside human help.