When you’re trying to finish up the edit on your near-future cli-fi action-adventure comedy that you’ve been working on for 24 years, it gets you thinking about all the things you thought would be around by 2020, but aren’t.
The Jordan Times read my mind today (that technology probably exists) and re-published a USA Today summary of 20 Predictions for 2020.
It’s interesting to see what people got right and wrong, regardless of the amount of time between their prediction and 2020.
For instance:
1. Life expectancy will rise to over 100.
Nope, Ray Kurzweil, in 1999, it didn’t.
Or how about:
3. Books will be dead.
Suck on it, Ray Kurzweil! They’re still around, 675 million of them in 2018 [according to that same article].
Apparently, in 1968, Stanford University professor Charles Scarlott thought we were going to replace natural gas with nuclear.
And, also in 1968, Ithiel de Sola Pool of MIT thought nationalism would wane.
Wrong and so wrong!
Lot of expectations on 2020. In the 1990s I didn’t think books would be dead by 2020, and I thought I would have published some of them. I was wrong so far, but I still have the whole rest of the year to be right.
PS: I’m throwing a launch party for my self-publishing endeavor, actual launch included, so send me a note if you want to join…it’s part of my 2020 Leap Year Extravaganza!
