This has the feel of having been written by an impressionable 20-something. In 1988, predicting "One essential thing would be a screen on which you could display things, and another essential part would be a printing mechanism on which things could be printed for you. And you’ll have to have a keyboard on which you ask your questions’ although ideally I would like to see one that could be activated by voice," was if anything badly retro. Everything he mentions there except voice control was already a standard consumer product in 1988! And voice control was how the computers in Star Trek worked 20 years earlier.
From 1964: "Complete lunches and dinners, with the food semiprepared, will be stored in the freezer until ready for processing. I suspect, though, that even in 2014 it will still be advisable to have a small corner in the kitchen unit where the more individual meals can be prepared by hand, especially when company is coming." Frozen TV dinners were a decade old when he wrote that. And they don't even vaguely dominate the food market today in the way he suggests they will. (If anything the big differences between 1964 and today are much greater availability of fresh foods and eating out being much more common.)
EVERYONE predicted video-phones back in the 60s -- hell, the Jetsons cartoon beat him to the punch there by a couple of years! Generally, people predicted they would be common much earlier than they actually were, and no one predicted you'd carry them around in your pocket -- or be more likely to just text a message than to use them.
For my money the most interesting predictions here are the ones where he predicts things will go more slowly than most people at the time thought -- for instance, predicting man will have not walked on Mars in 2014 was surprisingly conservative for an SF writer in 1964, but it was also dead right.
From 1964: "Complete lunches and dinners, with the food semiprepared, will be stored in the freezer until ready for processing. I suspect, though, that even in 2014 it will still be advisable to have a small corner in the kitchen unit where the more individual meals can be prepared by hand, especially when company is coming." Frozen TV dinners were a decade old when he wrote that. And they don't even vaguely dominate the food market today in the way he suggests they will. (If anything the big differences between 1964 and today are much greater availability of fresh foods and eating out being much more common.)
EVERYONE predicted video-phones back in the 60s -- hell, the Jetsons cartoon beat him to the punch there by a couple of years! Generally, people predicted they would be common much earlier than they actually were, and no one predicted you'd carry them around in your pocket -- or be more likely to just text a message than to use them.
For my money the most interesting predictions here are the ones where he predicts things will go more slowly than most people at the time thought -- for instance, predicting man will have not walked on Mars in 2014 was surprisingly conservative for an SF writer in 1964, but it was also dead right.