Forecasting the Future?

Early January is the time for predictions. It is the time for every self-proclaimed prognosticator, prophet, psychic, political pundit, economist and futurist to tell us what to expect in the coming year.

I try to stay out of the prediction business if I can help it. Sometimes I can't help myself. Here is an example of something I wrote just before the November election about Hillary Clinton.

I also know that if Donald Trump defeats Hillary Clinton we will see unbounded anger and antagonism directed at the Clintons by liberal Democrats. They will be seething that Hillary could have allowed Donald Trump to keep the Democrats from winning The White House and controlling the Supreme Court. Hell hath no fury like a scorned liberal Democrat!

It still baffles me that Democrats are spending all of their time blaming the Russians for Trump's victory and not focusing any of their anger at Hillary and John Podesta. I still think that I might be proven right on this one in time. However, it looks like a very poor prediction right now. I should have considered my own advice in these pages before I wrote that.

Two years ago I wrote in these pages that "Predictions Are Perilous" on the 30th anniversary of the movie "Back to the Future" which depicted life 30 years into the future (2015). That movie actually got a few predictions right--flat screen tv displays, iChat, Google glass. However, we still don't have hoverboards and there was no consideration of smartphones, email or the internet in the film.

My view on the predictions business was reinforced this weekend as my wife forced me to go through several shelves of old books that I had stored in the basement. As I sorted through those volumes I came across this book that I had purchased and read back in 1980. I was curious to see how the predictions in that book looked several decades later. I blew some dust off the cover and leafed through the pages to see if anyone correctly predicted the future.

The Book of Predictions was actually a book that followed a best seller by the same three authors titled "The People's Almanac" that was published in the mid 1970's. That book had a chapter that dealt with future predictions which was very popular with readers. Therefore, the authors decided to devote an entire additional book to nothing but predictions. Famous predictions from the past that came true. Past predictions that never materialized. And, of course, future predictions. That is the most interesting part of the book now that we find ourselves almost 40 years after those predictions were made.

Predictions were made in the book by experts in various fields of science and technology, psychics, science fiction writers, Nobel Prize winners and even bookmakers.

How much did they get right?

For the most part, the book proves that predictions are perilous. That is especially true for the so-called psychics. It seems that psychics, like everyone else, find it difficult to break free from current thinking to really see the future. That is very apparent in a number of predictions from this era when inflation and interest rates were high, oil supply was a concern and space exploration was still a big topic. You see this bias in some of the predictions that never came to pass over the next 35 years.

• Inflation will stabilize at 23% in 1983.
• Henry Kissinger will be elected Senator from New York in 1984.
• Nuclear weapons will be outlawed and the U.S and Soviet Union will disarm by 1989.
• The first manned flight to Mars will occur in 1992.
• Pollution will become a thing of the past because laws will force industry to use only clean energy( solar and electromagnetic) by 1992.
• John F. Kennedy, Jr.. will become President of the U.S. one day.
• The wastelands of Utah and other barren areas will be reclaimed through the discovery of heretofore unknown water sources for irrigation in 1999.
• People will be living up to 150 years by the year 2000. By 2010, there will be a cure for every known illness of the 20th century.

The experts were better in their predictions than the psychics. However, they were also wildly optimistic on where we would be in space travel with predictions that the first child would be born in space by 2000, space cities and factories would be in operation by 2010 and space mining for minerals would be going on by 2020.

The best predictions by experts seemed to be in the technology field. For you younger readers who have no perspective of what life was like in 1980, these predictions may look like no-brainers in hindsight. I can assure you they were far removed with our experience in 1980.

For example, here is what Bell Laboratories predicted back in 1980 for the telephone services of tomorrow. Voice mail, call waiting, caller ID, a personal nationwide telephone number, cordless phones, plug-in phones with no need for a phone installer, the ability to call home and remotely control appliances and thermostats, and home information systems that would operate through the communication of computers over phone lines. Pretty darn good predictions of what came about over the next 35 years. No one in that Book of Predictions got it right better than the Bell Labs people.

Another expert in the book that seemed to be pretty good with their predictions was Joseph Martino of the University of Dayton who forecasted the penetration of different technologies into the home and office.

Remember that he made these predictions at a time when tv games, electronic funds transfers, cable tv, video discs and email were either non-existent or generally below 10% in penetration. These were his predictions of when the believed these various technologies would reach 90% penetration in the U.S.

Households with tv games                1992
% of retail sales using EFT               1995
Email replaces 90% of snail mail      2005
Households with cable tv                   2000
Households with video disc               2006

I did not check to see how accurate he was on these dates but he had to be pretty close on most of these. If anything, he was probably too conservative in his forecasts.

I especially liked what predictor G. Harry Stine had to say in the book.

I do not make predictions; if you want a prediction of the future, go see a fortune-teller. A prediction implies that an event will occur in the future with a better than 99.99% certainty.

I make forecasts, and there is a difference. A forecast implies there is a high probability but not a sure bet that something will occur.

A short-range forecast for less than 10 years is always over-optimistic; a long range forecast for more than 10 years is always conservative. 

Let this be a lesson for you... and me. Stick to forecasting and stay away from predictions.

By the way, how many forecasted these things back in 2006?

None of these existed 10 years ago.

iPhone
iPad
Kindle
4G
Uber
Airbnb
Android
Oculus
Spotify
Nest
Stripe
Square
Instagram
Snapchat
WhatsApp

What was that about 10-year and under forecasts always being over-optimistic?

That must be 1980 thinking.