I looked at the list and thought it strange. As you said, some items have more details than others. Why? Did Ray see stronger reasons for less likely predictions, to put them on par with the vaguer ones? What role does his Law of Accelerating Returns play in this? As the more detailed claims are more wrong than the vague ones, has he become more skeptical of his ability to make predictions using his rationale?
I also agree that (this sort of) futurism isn’t about prediction. Many of the claims aren’t useful. Worse still, not only are some of the predictions are vague but some are difficult to interpret specifically in ways that introduce bias. For example: what is a “growing” Luddite movement? Is (2007AD, 5,000ppl) → (2008AD, 10,000ppl) growing? Is “dramatically lighter and thinner” meant to be wearable computing (which seems to be implied from the theme of the other predictions), netbooks (which actually exist, and seem to be the default assumption of people looking at it today) or something else entirely?
I looked at the list and thought it strange. As you said, some items have more details than others. Why? Did Ray see stronger reasons for less likely predictions, to put them on par with the vaguer ones? What role does his Law of Accelerating Returns play in this? As the more detailed claims are more wrong than the vague ones, has he become more skeptical of his ability to make predictions using his rationale?
I also agree that (this sort of) futurism isn’t about prediction. Many of the claims aren’t useful. Worse still, not only are some of the predictions are vague but some are difficult to interpret specifically in ways that introduce bias. For example: what is a “growing” Luddite movement? Is (2007AD, 5,000ppl) → (2008AD, 10,000ppl) growing? Is “dramatically lighter and thinner” meant to be wearable computing (which seems to be implied from the theme of the other predictions), netbooks (which actually exist, and seem to be the default assumption of people looking at it today) or something else entirely?