Thinking about the future

We are entering the season of reviews of the year past, and predictions for the year ahead. Mostly, I guess, this is a media agenda driven by the fact that everyone is on holiday (at least in the UK) for most of the second half of December, and review/prediction pieces are things that can be knocked out and released in the fallow news period of the Christmas fortnight.

As we head into that prediction frenzy some thoughts about soothsayers (with reference to Dan Gardner’s book Future Babble):

– the predictions that get the most media coverage are the ones that are most newsworthy; they are the ones that are most outlandish, and also the ones that are least likely to come to pass;

– predicting “no change” is really dull and so is therefore not newsworthy. However it is the mostly likely outcome;

– we seem to be really good at over-predicting things in the short term, yet underpredicting the long term. I personally wonder if this is related to similar things to that that drive the technology Hype Cycle

So, with all that in mind, my prediction for 2012 is that it will be surprisingly similar to 2011, but with subtle differences, and by 2022 everybody will be travelling on hoverboards…