Futurism’s past is littered with faulty forecasts

Still, some predictions that founder and sink show little sign of ever floating.

It’s one thing to capture the imagination with an inspiring demonstration of a new invention. But it’s another to roll it out for widespread use, said Dan Wilson, editor to Popular Mechanics magazine and author of “Where’s My Jetpack?”

“A lot of time the real problem is that they don’t scale,” he said. “They’re all really great inventions as long as you’re the only one who has one — like flying cars. There’d be real problems if everyone had one of these.”

Sometimes, an innovation comes along that inspires grand forecasts despite inherent drawbacks that are just too difficult to overcome — no matter how compelling the idea.

Take the case of jetpacks, first popularized by an artist’s imaginings on the 1928 cover of the magazine Amazing Stories. By 1961, Bell Aerosystems had created a Rocket Belt that worked. But though the device got off the ground, the idea never did — for a few very simple reasons.

“They consume fuel really fast; the fuel is expensive; it's volatile; they shoot superheated steam, and they're deafeningly loud,” said Wilson.

Many perfectly good ideas turn out to be lousy predictions. In 1900, the Ladies Home Journal figured that by year 2000, the letters ‘c,’ ‘x,’ and ‘q’ would be banished from English alphabet, according to Laura Lee, author of "Bad Predictions."

“They figured we’d be a lot more logical, and we’d simplify our spelling,” she said. “Everything would be phonetic, so you wouldn’t need those letters.

On the other hand, adherence to orthodoxy can be hazardous for forecasters. A century ago, the use of pneumatic tubes to deliver office mail prompted confident forecasts of citywide networks of tubes shuttling packages and pneumatic trains whisking passengers long distances. The arrival of electricity brought accurate predictions of high-speed, electrified trains. But with the horse-and-buggy era still in full swing, few believed that personal automated transportation would revolutionize everyday travel.  

“The thing that people tend to do is to project out whatever is happening at the moment,” said Lee. “And they fail to take into account that something else is going to come up that is new and exciting that they haven’t even thought of.”

The faultiest predictions, said Lee, are often those concerning things that will never happen: Cars will never replace horses, personal computers will appeal only to hobbyists, and the Internet is just a passing fad.

Interactive Visions of the future A look at some notable visions of the future of business, technology, and the economy, and how they have fared.

But if you’re talking about the future, never say never. The end of the Cold War, for example, eased 1950s-era fears of global thermonuclear war. But those gloomy forecasts have been revived by the recent proliferation of atomic weapons by new players like Iran and North Korea.

“There’s a big difference between ‘It hasn’t happened yet’ and ‘It never will happen,’” said Wilson.

And, much like weather forecasting, people who spend time trying to see into the future say your track record depends on where you’re trying to look. A weatherman in relentlessly sunny Los Angeles, for example, has an easier job than one in stormy New England. That’s what makes it so tough to forecast what will happen in over the next few decades in, say, the energy sector.

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