Slashdot Mirror
These 19th Century Postcards Predicted Our Future
kkleiner writes "Starting in 1899, a commercial artist named Jean-Marc Côté and other artists were hired to create a series of picture cards to depict how life in France would look in a century's time. Sadly, they were never actually distributed. However, the only known set of cards to exist was discovered by Isaac Asimov, who wrote a book in 1986 called 'Futuredays' in which he presented the illustrations with commentary. What's amazing about this collection is how close their predictions were in a lot of cases, and how others are close at hand."
It has a name - apophenia. We unconsciously fit the predictions to the present and thus give them more credence than they deserve.
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
Mobile phones. Even as recently as 1980, when cellphones were already a reality, nobody saw the ubiquitous pocket phone coming.
1980?
How about Dick Tracy in 1946?
http://f00.inventorspot.com/images/Dt2wrr.jpg