[aadhavans]

> The articles predict ... a handheld electronic device with contrast equivalent to printed paper (Kindle Paperwhite etc)

Fascinating. I get predictions about something large-scale like the internet, but this seems like a rather specific to predict, doesn't it?

> regular manned missions to Mars and a human colony on the moon aren't any more realistic than they were back in the 90s.

Fingers crossed that the Artemis program gets us closer to the latter.

[pentaphobe]

Seems like the author kind of missed (or buried) the point when summarising the "global fibre-based broadband network" prediction as simply "(the internet)"..

I was using the internet in 1995 - and pretty sure at least part of that connection use was over fibre, so I don't imagine someone trying to get away with predicting that.

But the path to my house was still a phone line - so I assume the original prediction was more about that fibre eventually running to our houses - certainly something many of us were looking forward to back then particularly any time someone in the house picked up a phone and killed our connection :)

(EDIT: have added an amendment in reply to this comment after reading some of the original PDF)

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As for high contrast digital paper, that was also already part of the collective wishlist

Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age [1] came out in 1995 and featured an e-book with an embedded AI and nanotech based display surface

BUT e-ink was first investigated at Xerox PARC in the 70's and was already under development by 1995 at MIT's media lab (commercialised in 1997 but hardly as bug a leap as it sounds) [^2]

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age#Allusions_to_T...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_Ink#Background

[pentaphobe]

Ah, just saw that the author has included the original text as PDF so don't have to speculate about original intent after all

Does seem to mostly be "here are some people in touch with current developments happening in the world thinking about their next phase" more than full-blown futurism - but still super interesting to read (if only to see the vestiges of tech optimism pre-dotcom-enshittification)

A few things which leap out that weren't included in the original post:

- "everything will be smart - that is, responsive to its external or internal environment"

Predicted the glassy eyed dream at the time, but not the more cynical reality we got where that smartness more often benefits the seller than the consumer

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- "in-depth personal medical histories will be on record and in full control of the individual in some form of medical smart card or disk"

Another fun combo of rarely safe prediction based on developments of the time mixed with (in hindsight) overly optimistic assumptions about commercialism

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And the bit summarised as purportedly predicting "(the internet)" actually has a pretty neat bit which was missed

"face-to-face, voice-to-voice, person-to-data, and data-to-data communication will be available to any place at any time from anywhere."

Predicting Skype/zoom seems a tad more interesting (even though things like Dick Tracy or 2001: A space odyssey had long had us wishing for it before 1995)

The preceding bit aged less well

"...broadband network of networks based on fiber optics; other techniques, such as communications satellites, cellular, and microwave will be ancillary."

Interesting that they appeared to be emphasising an _increase_ in wired data transit

But not surprising, as back then any cellular comms were far from impressive in comparison to the big-ass wired links you could use from universities

(That said, even back then we had microwave links acting as secondary high speed links for campuses which didn't yet have fibre or coax installed)

[BoingBoomTschak]

>Predicting Skype/zoom seems a tad more interesting

The Mother of All Demos was in '68, though. Some of the past (now legendary stuff) like this or the Lisp workstations (Interlisp-D: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKjFJDZmWNM) still looks futuristic today.

[pentaphobe]

Oh neat! Had no idea about this - thanks for the share