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The ContrafabulistsKin Lane and Audrey Watters – monitor predictions that technologists and marketers make about the future of technology. No surprise, most of the predictions are made about AI, a development whose future folks have been predicting incorrectly since the 1950s.

Here are the predictions made this week:

There were so many predictions this week about an Oprah Winfrey Presidential run. One example, from E! Online: “Oprah Winfrey ‘Intrigued’ by 2020 Presidential Run, Gayle King Says.”

According to Futurism.com, “By 2040, Hundreds of Millions May Be Affected By River Floods Across the World.”

Futurism also claims that “Aliens, Autonomous Cars, and AI: This Is the World of 2118.” I guess we’ll have fixed the river flooding problems by then, eh?

“83% Of Enterprise Workloads Will Be In The Cloud By 2020,” Forbes predicts.

From Nesta: “In 2018, artificial intelligence that can read your emotions and predict mental health outcomes gets used and abused, says Lydia Nicholas.”

Apologies for so much focus on ed-tech.But according to Campus Technology, these are “7 Ed Tech Trends to Watch in 2018.” One of these is “digital course materials,” so you can tell that these futurists are really thinking out of the box here.

“5 AI trends to watch in 2018,” according to O’Reilly Media.

From Dell and the Institute for the Future: “The next era of human | machine partnerships.” You know that made-up statistic about how 65% of the jobs of the future aren’t invented yet? This report takes the bullshit bigger: “The experts that attended the IFTF workshop in March 2017 estimated that around 85% of the jobs that today’s learners will be doing in 2030 haven’t been invented yet.”

“The AI World Will Listen to These Women in 2018,” says MIT Technology Review. Guys, I bet it won’t.

Audrey Watters


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Predictions: The History of the Future

A Contrafabulists Production

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