There are a lot of fun predictions. Ggl "1900 OR 19th.century predictions". Though they're now much less accessible than before Google news archive died, and

There are a lot of fun predictions. Ggl "1900 OR 19th.century predictions". Though they're now much less accessible than before Google news archive died, and the past was paywalled.:/ I'd love to see a taxonomy of prediction failure. What were the underlying ideas, and how did they go wrong. Ideas limited/blocked/displaced/abandoned due to technological/economic/market/social issues missed because ..., or some such. One thing to note is just how poor the analysis of old predictions is. It requires both engineering and historical expertise to address "why did US buildings stop being connected by bridges?" or "on what are robot arms (still) bottlenecked?". My fuzzy recollection is Peter Norvig gave a 'you can't predict the future' talk which dissed Ladies Home Journal(?) for 'no more horses'. And there's a lot of "the future / new tech is unpredicatable/surprising" which doesn't get questioned with a "So you follow science research? No. The engineering literature? No. The industry press? No. What part of your being surprised by technological change strikes you as surprising? Well, people in my echo chamber didn't parrot anything about it!" Sigh.