these are good / accurate, but what's the error-rate? assuming these have been cherry picked, and he made more predictions
In addition to writing about current (and future) technology, Kevin Kelly also put together Vanishing Asia, a photo book documenting disappearing communities and traditions across Asia<p>Possibly the best photography book I've come across. It's out of print, but I managed to snag a copy on eBay last year
By my own, completely arbitrary split of this into 16 predictions, I would say that this hits on maybe 8 of 16 if we are being a bit generous. Which is good, but certainly not "Inevitable" (the title of the book).<p>With that said, maybe he meant inevitable as N approaches infinity... So there's still time!<p>Aside: I think the biggest interesting prediction he had was that AI would obey a user driven network effect. It seems like a very clean prediction, and yet it has failed to materialize? I wonder if this has more to do with just how scrape-able the whole internet was or with distilation or what? There is certainly an advantage to having good user data, but it seems like it is largely something that can be worked around (by hook or crook)?
Google’s main product was and continues to be ads
If you really want your mind blown look at how accurate Ray Kurzweil was from his 1999 book Age of Spiritual Machines<p>The most striking thing is that almost all of his missed predictions were missed not because the technology was not available, but because society rejected or didn’t adopt that technology
> but because society rejected or didn’t adopt that technology<p>OK, so imagine that in 1980, I predicted that we'll colonize Mars by the year 2020. Today, I'm arguing that I was right in my prediction - in broad strokes, we have the technology! Nothing is stopping us. It's just that politicians have different priorities.<p>Of course, that's a load of bull. You can't decouple predictions about the future of mankind from what said mankind actually decides.<p>I looked up the predictions on Wikipedia and I'd say that most of them are general enough that they'd hard to disagree with back in 1999 (there will be bioengineering, there will be portable computers, there will be robots, there will be AI), but the timing or the specifics are off on almost every single one of them.
I think it is largely domain dependent. He's had solid predictions around computing, but for biology (and longevity) he seems to be way off.<p>For instance, by his prediction, we're already many years past a 100 year average life expectancy (with 120 years expected by the end of the decade).<p>I think his mistake was tightly coupling exponential compute with exponential progress in biology - which has so far not panned out.
<i>> but because society rejected or didn’t adopt that technology</i><p>I would argue that society would likely have been glad to adopt, but the profit-seeking motive got in the way (again).
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