Our Government Isn’t Failing Us. Our People Are.

This post
shows someone expressing disappointment with some future predictions given
by Kurzweil back in 1999. Here they are as documented by the poster:

• Individuals primarily use portable computers

• Portable computers have dramatically become lighter and thinner

• Personal computers are available in a wide range of sizes and shapes,
  and are commonly embedded in clothing and jewelry, like wrist watches,
  rings, earrings and other body ornaments

• Computers with a high-resolution visual interface range from rings and
  pins and credit cards up to the size of a thin book. People typically
  have at least a dozen computers on and around their bodies, which are
  networked, using body LANS (local area networks)

• These computers monitor body functions, provide automated identity to
  conduct financial transactions and allow entry into secure areas. They
  also provide directions for navigation, and a variety of other services.

• Most portable computers do not have keyboards

• Rotating memories such as Hard Drives, CD roms, and DVDs are on their
  way out.

• Most users have servers on their homes and offices where they keep large
  stores of digital objects, including, among other things, virtual
  reality environments, although these are still on an early stage

• Cables are disappearing

• The majority of texts is created using continuous speech recognition, or
  CSR (dictation software). CSRs are very accurate, far more than the
  human transcriptionists, who were used up until a few years ago

• Books, magazines, and newspapers are now routinely read on displays that
  are the size of small books

• Computer displays built into eyeglasses are also used. These specialized
  glasses allow the users to see the normal environment while creating a
  virtual image that appears to hover in front of the viewer

• Computers routinely include moving picture image cameras and are able to
  reliably identify their owners from their faces

• Three dimensional chips are commonly used

• Students from all ages have a portable computer, very thin and soft,
  weighting less than 1 pound. They interact with their computers
  primarily by voice and by pointing with a device that looks like a
  pencil. Keybords still exist but most textual language is created by
  speaking.

• Intelligent courseware has emerged as a common means of learning, recent
  controversial studies have shown that students can learn basic skills
  such as reading and math just as readily with interactive learning
  software as with human teachers.

• Schools are increasingly relying on software approaches. Many children
  learn to read on their own using personal computers before entering
  grade school.

• Persons with disabilities are rapidly overcoming their handicaps through
  intelligent technology

• Students with reading disabilities routinely use print to speech reading
  systems

• Print to speech reading machines for the blind are now very small,
  inexpensive, palm-size devices that can read books.

• Useful navigation systems have finally been developed to assist blind
  people in moving and avoiding obstacles. Those systems use GPS
  technology. The blind person communicates with his navigation system by
  voice.

• Deaf persons commonly use portable speech-to-text listening machines
  which display a real time transcription of what people are saying. The
  deaf user has the choice of either reading the transcribed speech as
  displayed text or watching an animated person gesturing in sign
  language.

• Listening machines cal also translate what is being said into another
  language in real-time, so they are commonly used by hearing people as
  well.

• There is a growing perception that the primary disabilities of
  blindness, deafness, and physical impairment do not necessarily.
  Disabled persons routinely describe their disabilities as mere
  inconveniences.

• In communications, translate telephone technology is commonly used. This
  allow you to speak in English, while your Japanese friend hears you in
  Japanese, and vice-versa.

• Telephones are primarily wireless and include high resolution moving
  images.

• Heptic technologies are emerging. They allow people to touch and feel
  objects and other persons at a distance. These force-feedback devices
  are wildly used in games and in training simulation systems. Interactive
  games routinely include all encompassing all visual and auditory
  environments.

• The 1999 chat rooms have been replaced with virtual environments.

• At least half of all transactions are conducted online

• Intelligent routes are in use, primarily for long distance travel. Once
  your car’s computer’s guiding system locks on to the control sensors on
  one of these highways, you can sit back, and relax.

• There is a growing neo-luditte movement.

I think the reason these predictions fail, and many
similar types of predictions
I’ve made myself, is that we as intellectuals and optimists think other
people work the same way we do. We make a faulty assumption that it just
takes a little progress before people will catch on and see the benefits of
a given type of progress–and that then they’ll take notice and give
resources to accelerate the pace of advancement.

That’s fantasy.

Reality has within it an inherent friction to progress, and all optimists
underestimate the resting inertial mass of “it’s how we’ve always done it”.
And as much as we, as optimists and futurists, are able to logically accept
this as a real obstacle, we still fail to take it into account when we give
predictions about the future.