Futurism's Track Record

Unmentioned in your post but personally more problematic is failing to predict something. Predicting X and getting less than X, well, okay. Failing to predict at all things like home computers, the web, the fall of the Soviet Union, antibiotics, now those are serious black eyes for futurism.

I think best summary on technological predictions is Your Flying Car Awaits by Paul Milo. In short: most predictions are wrong, no matter who did them and in what technical field. Overoptimistic are more common than too conservative. Also, predictions made in late 19th - early 20th centuries are vastly more correct then those from 1950 - 1970.

As for predicting things like consequences and commercial sence (given that tech is feasible), problem is that they are dependent on a lot of exact implementation details and outside factors.

One good example is airships. The idea was first mentioned in late 17th century, the first prototype flew in mid-19th and mass-production started just before the WW1. During that time lots of different authors did lots of predictions how airships will be used and change the world. They all were totally wrong (except maybe Jules Verne). Airships cannot capture or destroy cities, cannot sink navies, they are not practical for carrying paratroopers and useless as fighters. In civilian use airship is just flying catastrophe, about 1000 rate more dangerous than same tech level airplane, expensive and ineffective. This all comes from details like airframe strenth and wind drag which are hard to predict. The same thing, just lesser in magnitude happened with civilian nuclear ships and supersonic airliners.

Also, there is no good way to predict political and legislative changes. It could happen that for example medicine wasn't so regulated but Internet was banned from the very beginning.

Interesting idea. I think one thing you have to do, though, is to be very systematic in your choice of which past predictions that you study. Otherwise there is a risk you end up focusing on those who were right, or those who were spectacularly wrong, etc.

I guess in general it is easier to predict technological progress than its impact on society, and of course generally easier to predict incremental changes of existing technologies than qualitative shifts.

A major problem is, I guess, inventions, or aspects of inventions, that people have a hard time even conceiving of at present.

Meteorologists are quite good at predicting the weather in the near future with some accuracy but far worse when you move ten days ahead. Similarly the further you go into the future the harder it obviously becomes to predict. That said, general trends can be predicted both weather- and climate-wise though exact dates cannot be given.

Anyway: do others who have studied the history of futurism, elite common sense, innovation, etc. have different impressions about futurism’s track record? And, anybody want to do a PhD thesis examining futurism’s track record? Or on some piece of it, ala this or this or this? :)

What kind of PhD program would you do this in? I'm guessing econ, just because broadness.

Transhumanists need to stop setting arbitrary dates within current life expectancies for when we allegedly "become immortal." These forecasts make no logical sense, and you wind up sounding like asses for publishing them.

For example James D. Miller in Singularity Rising writes:

But now if you die before 2045, you might miss out on millions of years of life. The high cost of death has made survival to 2045 your top priority.

Uh, guys, plenty of people alive in 2014 will probably live another 31 years any way through natural maturation and aging; they won't mysteriously become capable of living for "millions of years" by surviving to January 1, 2045.

If you want to set a date which shows some ambition and at least makes more sense than implying that living another 31 years = "living forever," pick one in the 23rd Century like, say, 2245. If you can survive to 2245 in good shape, you might have successfully overcome major hurdles to your radical life extension so far. ("Past performance doesn't guarantee future results.")