Ten predictions about future that turned out to be wrong PHOTO

Sky News has published an article outlining 10 of the predictions that didn't quite meet the mark. Caliber.Az reprints the article.

The past is a curious place - and the future imagined there is curiouser still. Here are 10 of the predictions that didn't quite meet the mark.

IT'LL NEVER CATCH ON - EXCEPT IT DID

The internet is just a fad

In the early days of the internet, a number of people saw it as a flash-in-the-pan idea. In 1995, Robert Metcalfe, founder of 3Com, said: "I predict the internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse."

Mr Metcalfe proceeded to eat his words - literally - during his keynote speech at the 1999 International World Wide Web Conference, where he blended up a copy of his printed column with some liquid and drank it.

Viewers will tire of TV

Hollywood film producer Darryl Zanuck of 20th Century Fox was sure the appeal of TV would be short-lived. In 1946, he said: "Television won't be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night."

According to Ofcom, UK adults spent nearly a third of their waking hours watching TV and online video content in 2020.

Online shopping will flop

The same article forecast "remote shopping, while entirely feasible, will flop because women like to get out of the house, like to handle merchandise, like to be able to change their minds".

While internet sales have dipped since their pandemic peak, in October 2022 they made up 26% of total retail sales in the UK.

Time was more accurate when it came to supermarket shopping, saying "the housewife should be able to switch on to the local supermarket on the video phone, examine grapefruit and price them, all without stirring from her living room".

Its take on the future of domestic gendered roles was a little off the mark, however.

NOT YET - BUT MAYBE SOON

The robot worker

The obsession with technology taking over human jobs is a tale as old as the industrial revolution, stoked in recent years by the acceleration of AI.

In 1982, writers in the Omni Future Almanac predicted workers including dry cleaners, farm workers and shop cashiers would be replaced by robots. While the robot job apocalypse isn't quite on our doorstep, automation means things such as supermarket checkouts and lifts no longer need a dedicated operator, and industries including the car industry have increasingly expanded their robot workforce.

A life of leisure

In 1966, Time magazine predicted that computers would be filling the roles of all but high-level executives, leaving 90% of the population to live a state-subsidised life of leisure.

"With government benefits, even non-working families will have, by one estimate, an annual income of $30,000 to $40,000," the article said.

GIVE SCIENCE A BIT MORE TIME

Fly me to the moon

Predictions of holidays in space aren't just the preserve of 60s sci-fi films. In 2010, Eric Anderson of Space Adventures told Space.com: "By 2020 you'll have seen private citizens circumnavigate the moon."

Elon Musk went further, saying: "I'm going to go out on a limb and say that by 2020 there will be serious plans to go to Mars with people."

Common cold cured

Sniffles and sneezes would be "only a memory" by 2000, Arkansas physician Dr Lowry McDaniel predicted in 1955. But scientists continue to be stymied by the fact there are at least 160 strains of rhinovirus, the pathogens that cause colds.

Humans will live to 150

California biologist Bernard Strehler sounded a warning in 1974: humans would soon live to 150, and society needed to prepare for it. The record for the oldest person is held by Jeanne Louise Calment, who died aged 122 in 1997.

IF IT AIN'T BROKE, DON'T FIX IT

The death of the letters C, X and Q

In a piece for the Ladies' Home Journal in 1900, John Elfreth Watkins, the curator of mechanical technology at the Smithsonian Institution, looked forward one hundred years and predicted the demise of the letters C, X and Q.

"They will be abandoned because unnecessary," he wrote - predicting newspapers would have spearheaded a move to phonetic spelling and Russian would be the world's second language.

No square meals

Like Violet Beauregarde chomping on her three-course chewing gum in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, people have been preoccupied for decades with a replacement for preparing and cooking food.

In 1966, California's Long beach Press-Telegram predicted future pantries would be stocked with freeze-dried meat, eggs and pre-sliced apples, ready to be rehydrated into meals in a flash.

New York Times science editor Waldemar Kaempffert foresaw a world where all food "even soup and milk" would be delivered to people's homes in frozen bricks, and chemical factories would convert "rayon underwear" into sweets.

While there's a market for dehydrated meals, they are mostly the preserve of astronauts and outdoor adventurers - and lockdown spurred a return to home cooking and whole foods.