According to some experts, 2015 will by the year of wearable technology; according to others, the year of low oil prices. The only safe prediction on New Year’s Day is that in a few months, most New Year’s Day predictions will be wrong.Alex McClintock takes a look at why we’re so bad at forecasting the future and how we can improve.
Humans have been trying to predict the future since ancient times. Generally speaking, the results have not been good. You may have noticed that the world did not end on December 21, 2012, as supposedly foretold by the Maya. Nor, for that matter, did it end with the Y2K bug.
It’s not just the end of the world we’ve been bad at predicting, though. Just days before the Wall Street Crash of 1929, prominent economist Irving Fisher said shares had reached a new, ‘permanently high plateau’.
In 1943 the president of IBM predicted that there might one day be a market for as many as five computers.
On the opposite end of the technology spectrum, 1950s promises of flying cars and meals in pill form are yet to be realised.
