These are some really prescient predictions...<p><i>- The home will double as a place of employment, with men and women conducting much of their work at the computer terminal. This will affect both the architecture and location of the home. It will also blur the distinction between places of residence and places of business, with uncertain effects on zoning, travel patterns and neighborhoods.</i><p>(This basically describes my life ;)<p><i>- Home-based shopping will permit consumers to control manufacturing directly, ordering exactly what they need for "production on demand."</i><p>(Kickstarter is a nice example.)<p><i>- There will be a shift away from conventional workplace and school socialization. Friends, peer groups and alliances will be determined electronically, creating classes of people based on interests and skills rather than age and social class.</i><p>(You're participating in one such peer group right now...)<p><i>- A new profession of information "brokers" and "managers" will emerge, serving as "gatekeepers," monitoring politicians and corporations and selectively releasing information to interested parties.</i><p>(Bloggers, obviously, but more interestingly, Wikileaks, Lulzsec, Anonymous...)
<i>- Copies of the report, titled ''Teletext and Videotex in the United States,'' were scheduled to be available after June 28 from McGraw-Hill Publications, 1221 Avenue of the Americas, New York, N.Y. 10020</i><p>Typical New York Times. No URL.
When this was written the Internet hadn't really been developed very far and the report cited is talking about videotex services (like France's Minitel or the UK's Prestel). <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videotex" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videotex</a><p>These services tended to be centralized and look nothing like the current Internet (although France's Minitel network did use packet switching and some service providers ran their own data nodes).<p>I remember really well playing with Prestel and Minitel in the early 1980s using acoustic couplers and dedicated terminals. The feeling associated with the sudden access to unlimited information at incredible speeds (1200/75 baud) was really amazing (even just being able to look people's phone numbers up on white pages). Wikipedia has a nice example of French Minitel terminal from the year this report was written: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Minitel1.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Minitel1.jpg</a><p>What's most interesting is that there wasn't much 'future' in this report given that France already had a functioning viewdata system at that time and it was clear from the services that were being offered that the things mentioned in this report were actually available or easy extrapolations.<p>Also notable was that viewtex services used a subscriber pays model where access was metered by the minute and added to the phone bill. On Minitel some services were free (except for the per minute charge), e.g. white pages, other were premium (access to special databases, for example) and some were very expensive (access to Le Minitel Rose where pornographic chat etc. was available).<p>As William Gibson might have said: the future was already here, it just wasn't evenly distributed yet.
Amazing predictions, IMHO, except for the last one:<p><i>The study also predicted a much greater diversity in the American political power structure. ''Videotex might mean the end of the two party system, as networks of voters band together to support a variety of slates - maybe hundreds of them,'' it said.</i><p>Am I alone in thinking that it we're more polarized and entrenched in our two party system than ever, with internet aided confirmation bias being one of the primary causes? (I.e., political "filter bubbles.")
I'm reminded of Philip K. Dick's prediction that mankind would be networked together across nations and continents, making us into a super-efficient race of engineers.<p>SO CLOSE. (OK, I paraphrased the above).<p>In this case, this article represents some pretty awesome ideating. I bet that not many of the article authors invested in Google, Dejanews, Yahoo, or AOL, though.<p>I had a brilliant moment of ideating in 1993 when I realized "Domain Names are going to be huge. There will be a landrush."<p>I pooled my dollars with some friends, and we bought ... foo.net. Cha-ching! Shopping.com, tv.com, etc. didn't really cross my mind.<p>What's really super hard in my opinion is setting oneself up to benefit from these tectonic trends; at least, it's hard for me!
The accuracy of these predictions is remarkable, from the anticipation of shifts in social interaction to the fragmentation of the two party system.<p>On this last point, is there any documentation of the role of the Internet in the development of the tea party movement?
I wonder if the accuracy of this report was just base on some lucky guesses.<p>Right now, there are probably hundreds of such predictions about the future. Look at them again in 20 years, most of them will probably be incorrect. Yet there is always this one report (like this one from 1982) that will be shockingly accurate. The problem is that by then, it won't provide any useful information. We need is to know this is correct in 1982, not 2011.
While we're looking at other predictions of the future, here's another standout from a 1981 KRON broadcast which I'm sure you'll remember:<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WCTn4FljUQ" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WCTn4FljUQ</a>
He died in 1996, so he got to see the transformation happening:<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1996/08/30/us/robert-reinhold-ex-reporter-for-the-times-is-dead-at-54.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/1996/08/30/us/robert-reinhold-ex-repo...</a>
Line from the article, "But for all the potential benefits the new technology may bring, the report said, there will be unpleasant ''trade offs'' in ''control."<p>That surely came about in ways they could not have imagined.
Another great prediction of the rise of electronic commerce way back in 1967 from the Harvard Business Review archives.
Including an amazing illustration.<p><a href="http://blogs.hbr.org/hbr/hbreditors/2011/03/hbr_predicts_the_future.html" rel="nofollow">http://blogs.hbr.org/hbr/hbreditors/2011/03/hbr_predicts_the...</a>