David looks back to an NBC News report from 1994 when the Internet was just emerging in the public realm; a Meet the Press roundtable discusses.

This projection of a possible future is an interesting concept and still holds valid as a potential prophecy some 85 years later. 





Although so many aspects of our modern society are unassuming miracles of technology (Facebook, satnav, hedge funds) the more visually memorable things like flying cars, metropolis

Goodbye, little house on the prairie.

It's time for another installment of "This Week In Apple Rumors," where we bring you the latest speculation and gossip about the machinations and iWidgets coming out of the notoriously secretive company in Cupertino, Calif. In this edition, we bring you rumors about Apple's move into the medical sensor field, the "iPhone 6," and more. iMedicine

As government financing of basic research has fallen off precipitously, philanthropists have stepped in, setting priorities and drawing both gratitude and trepidation from scientists.

NEW YORK (AP) — Philanthropists Bill and Melinda Gates pitched an optimistic future for the world's poor and sick in their annual letter Tuesday, arguing passionately against three myths they say hurt efforts to bring people out of poverty, save lives and improve living conditions. In their sixth yearly letter, which in the past has focused exclusively on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's annual activities, the co-chairmen of the world's largest charitable foundation seek to dispel notions that poor countries are doomed to stay poor, that foreign aid is wasteful and that saving lives will cause overpopulation. "All three reflect a dim view of the future, one that says the world isn't improving but staying poor and sick, and getting overcrowded," Bill Gates writes in the 16-page letter. "We're going to make the opposite case, that the world is getting better, and that in two decades it will be better still." Gates says GDP per capita figures, adjusted for inflation to 2005 dollars, show that many countries such as China, India, Brazil and even Botswana that were once considered poor now have growing economies. And in Africa, a place the Microsoft co-founder says is all too often dismissed as hopeless, life expectancy has risen since the 1960s despite the HIV epidemic.

Humanity will change more in the next 20 years than in all of human history.

By 2030 the average person in the U.S. will have 4.5 packages a week delivered with flying drones. They will travel 40% of the time in a driverless car, use a 3D printer to print hyper-individualized meals, and will spend most of their leisure time on an activity that hasn’t been invented yet. 

The world will have seen over 2 billion jobs disappear, with most coming back in different forms in different industries, with over 50% structured as freelance projects rather than full-time jobs. 

Over 50% of today’s Fortune 500 companies will have disappeared, over 50% of traditional colleges will have collapsed, and India will have overtaken China as the most populous country in the world.

Most people will have stopped taking pills in favor of a new device that causes the body to manufacture it’s own cures.

Space colonies, personal privacy, and flying cars will all be hot topics of discussion, but not a reality yet.

Most of today’s top causes, including climate change, gay liberation, and abortion, will all be relegated to little more than footnotes in Wikipedia, and Wikipedia itself will have lost the encyclopedia wars to an upstart company all because Jimmy Wales was taken hostage and beheaded by warring factions in the Middle East over a controversial entry belittling micro religions.

Our ability to predict the future is an inexact science. The most accurate predictions generally come from well-informed industry insiders about very near term events.

Much like predicting the weather, the farther we move into the future, the less accurate our predictions become. 

So why do we make them?