Asimov may not have been a professional forecaster, but he was still someone who had thought a lot about the future in the most realistic way possible (and he got invited quite often on TV to talk about it, if I remember correctly), especially considering that he wrote also a crazy amount of scientific nonfiction. Maybe he’s more famous as a science fiction author, but he was also a very well-known futurologist, not just some random smart guy who happened to make some predictions. I would be quite surprised to hear about anyone else from the 60s with a better futurology record than him.
That said, I am still quite convinced that the average smart person would still make terrible predictions about the long-term future. The best example I can offer is this, one of the rare set of illustrations that got printed in 1899 France to imagine what France would look like in the year 2000. Of course, the vast majority of these predictions were comically bad.
It is worth to notice that we mainly know about these postcards because Asimov himself published a book about them in the 80s (this is not a coincidence because nothing is ever a coincidence).
Asimov may not have been a professional forecaster, but he was still someone who had thought a lot about the future in the most realistic way possible (and he got invited quite often on TV to talk about it, if I remember correctly), especially considering that he wrote also a crazy amount of scientific nonfiction. Maybe he’s more famous as a science fiction author, but he was also a very well-known futurologist, not just some random smart guy who happened to make some predictions. I would be quite surprised to hear about anyone else from the 60s with a better futurology record than him.
That said, I am still quite convinced that the average smart person would still make terrible predictions about the long-term future. The best example I can offer is this, one of the rare set of illustrations that got printed in 1899 France to imagine what France would look like in the year 2000. Of course, the vast majority of these predictions were comically bad.
It is worth to notice that we mainly know about these postcards because Asimov himself published a book about them in the 80s (this is not a coincidence because nothing is ever a coincidence).
I disagree that “France in the Year 2000” predictions were wrong. If judged by function rather than aesthetics they are more than half accurate.