It Will Soon Be Possible
Tesla is far from the only person to have declared that “it will soon be possible…” Sentences that begin with this and similar phrases (e.g., “In a few years, everyone will…”) almost always make ambitious predictions about the near future. Search online for examples like them, then discuss with your team: for each one, are we there yet, and how long did it take us to get there? If not, how close are we? Here are three examples to get you started.
- “…for one man to be heard by every human being on Earth” (1925)
- “…to launch a satellite that makes its own solar array in orbit” (2019)
- “…for humans to live a thousand years or more” (2025)
In 1925 someone predicted it would 'soon be possible for one man to be heard by every human being on Earth.' A century later, a teenager with a phone and a livestream basically can. The phrase 'it will soon be possible' launches almost every bold prediction — and the fun is checking, years on, whether 'soon' ever came.
Key concepts
- The Rhetoric Of 'soon'
- 'Soon' sounds precise but hides huge uncertainty, from 'next year' to 'never' — spotting how much weight a vague 'soon' carries is the first step to judging any prediction.
- Fulfilled, Pending, Or Failed
- A simple taxonomy for old predictions: it came true (when?), it's still plausibly coming (how close?), or it was never going to happen.
- Technological Convergence
- When a predicted capability arrives not from one invention but several combining — 'heard by everyone on Earth' came through radio, TV, internet, and smartphones converging, not one device.
- Partial Fulfillment
- When a prediction is true in spirit but not in letter — we can reach 'every human' in principle yet not literally all eight billion at once, so judging 'are we there yet?' means deciding how close counts.
What to know
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01
Many 'soon' predictions come true sideways — the 1925 'heard by everyone' arrived through convergence (radio plus internet plus phones), not one device, so fulfillment is about whether the capability exists, not its predicted shape.
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