Scholars Mind

Predicting Ten Years Out

With apologies to Mr. Armstrong, sometimes people also predict too much for the next ten. Consider these predictions for the year 2028, made in 2018. Are there any that haven’t come true yet but that you think still might in the next two years?

In 2018 a venture firm bet that by 2028 one in ten people in rich countries would spend eight hours a day inside a VR headset. It is 2026. Score the list.

Key concepts

Form Factor
The physical shape a technology arrives in, and the habits that shape demands. Most of the 2018 predictions turned on a new one — glasses, earbuds, a retinal display — beating the touchscreen, so grading them means asking whether the shape caught on, not whether the parts got built.

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Every work — at a glance

  • Kindred's Predictions for 2028 — Kindred Capital (prediction list)

    Ten 2018 predictions for 2028 — the phone replaced, cash gone, 75% freelancing, 10% addicted to VR.

What to know

  1. 01
    A forecast can be right about the thing and wrong about the clock, and that is the usual failure. Autonomous driving, meat substitutes and cashless payment all arrived — none at the share of daily life the 2018 list gave them by 2028. So 'hasn't happened yet' is a verdict on the timing, and the honest scorecard needs three columns rather than two: happened, pending, never going to.

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Across subjects

In December 1900 the Ladies' Home Journal ran John Elfreth Watkins's predictions for the year 2000. He called television and the mobile telephone, and also

Theme connection

"Are We There Yet?"

Grading someone else's homework is the easy half. The harder question is whether ten-year lists are worth making at all: they direct money and stretch what engineers think is allowed, and they cost the person who writes them nothing when they are wrong. A prediction with no scorecard is advertising.

Practice — a sample

HISWhich of Watkins's 1900 predictions for the year 2000 did NOT arrive?

  • A Apple-sized strawberries
  • B Television
  • C Ready-cooked meals
  • D Mobile telephones
  • E Photographs by wire

Sign in to answer and see why each option is right or wrong.

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