Future Files

Trying to predict the future is a discouraging and hazardous occupation.

The prophet invariably falls between two stools. If his predictions sound at all reasonable, you can be quite sure that in twenty or most fifty years, the progress of science and technology has made him seem ridiculously conservative.

On the other hand, if by some miracle a prophet could describe the future exactly as it was going to take place, his predictions would sound so absurd, so far fetched, that everybody would laugh him to scorn.

This has proved to be true in the past, and it will undoubtedly be true even more so of the century to come. The only thing we can be sure of about the future is that it will be absolutely fantastic.

So, if what I say now seems to you to be very reasonable, then I'll fail completely. Only if what I tell you appears absolutely unbelievable have I any chance of visualizing the future as it really will happen.

—Sir Arthur C. Clarke (1964)