Thought for the day

I was listening to the radio the other day and I heard the following exchange:

– Presenter: “I’ve got a futurologist with me tonight. So that means you’re an expert on the future.”

– Futurologist: “Well, just technology in my case, not the whole future, that’d be rather a lot.”

And it got me thinking. Isn’t that the problem with futurologists (in our sector they’re often called analysts), you can’t just take technology in isolation and try and predict its future as everything else gets in the way?

If it was just down to the technology, we could all be driving around in hover cars like we were promised all those years ago – but we’re not. So surely before making these wild predictions about technology in the future, people should also consider the society that might, or most likely might not, use that technology.

What do you think?