Really? I think rather than prediction as our future creating engine, it's been critical thinking and problem solving. Most inventions are solutions to problem

Really? I think rather than prediction as our future creating engine, it's been critical thinking and problem solving. Most inventions are solutions to problems, not solutions in search of problems. Industrialization was in response to a need to scale up production. The internet was in response to a discoverability problem. Smartphones were in response to a need to do personal computing on the go. Monetizing those things was the inflection point for success in all those cases, but even prior to monetization most human ingenuity has been based in problem solving. Which is looking backwards. Not forwards.