History's boldest predictions, aged to perfection.
Since roughly the invention of the telephone, someone with a graduate degree has been absolutely certain that the latest generation was gargling the English language beyond recognition. They were wrong in 1923, wrong in 1985, and spectacularly wrong about texting. The language survived. The op-eds did not age well.
Tech prophets of the early 2000s were absolutely right that the internet would demolish the newspaper business model. They were absolutely wrong about what would replace it, who would survive, and whether anyone would pay for anything. Twenty-five years later, the New York Times has more subscribers than ever and charges you separately for Wordle.
For half a century, American suburbs have been declared dead, doomed, passé, or on the verge of transformation into something unrecognizable. They responded by adding a Costco and expanding the school district. This is the story of the most resilient prediction target in modern urban planning.
Since the 1970s, a rotating cast of technologists, futurists, and very confident venture capitalists have sworn that the humble password was about to become a museum exhibit. Spoiler: it is not in a museum. It is in your browser's autocomplete, misspelled, and also expired.
Since the early 1980s, telecommunications visionaries have promised that Americans would soon work from home in blissful, traffic-free productivity. They were eventually correct. What they failed to mention was the part where 'home' becomes indistinguishable from 'office,' your kitchen table doubles as a conference room, and your commute is replaced by a calendar so full it has achieved sentience.
For a hundred years, demographers, politicians, and very alarmed newspaper columnists have been absolutely certain about what America's population was about to do next. They have been wrong with a consistency that is, in its own way, almost impressive. The country kept being born, dying, arriving, and leaving on its own schedule, indifferent to the charts.
From the arrival of email to the Slack notification to the fully remote office, each new wave of workplace technology arrived with a prophecy attached: this would finally be the thing that ended idle human conversation at work. It never was. People kept talking.
Beginning in the early 1960s, economists and futurists declared with remarkable consistency that prosperity and automation would soon deliver Americans into a golden age of leisure—a retirement boom that would redefine what it meant to grow old in the richest nation on earth. Americans, for the most part, kept showing up to work.
Since the 1950s, sociologists have been absolutely certain they knew exactly how Americans would arrange themselves under a single roof. They were wrong in every direction—sometimes predicting the death of the family unit, sometimes its glorious communal resurrection, and occasionally both at once.
Since roughly the time Nixon was sweating through Watergate, educational futurists have been confidently announcing that the physical textbook was on its last dog-eared page. Microfilm, CD-ROMs, tablets, and learning management systems all took their swings. The textbook is still here, still heavy, and still costing $280 at the campus bookstore.
For a full century, economists, engineers, and excitable journalists have been warning that the machines were finally coming for our jobs — for real this time. The machines arrived. The jobs changed. Then we invented several thousand new jobs to manage the machines, worry about the machines, and write think pieces about the machines.
Since the Eisenhower administration, America's nutritional prophets have been issuing solemn death sentences for one food group after another. Butter was finished. Then it was back. Red meat was over. Then it was a lifestyle brand. The only thing that has reliably disappeared is the confidence we should have had in any of these predictions.
Since the early 1960s, a rotating cast of visionaries has solemnly declared that some new gadget was about to render the humble pencil, the dog-eared textbook, and the long-suffering classroom teacher obsolete. Six decades later, American students are still doodling in margins, and the prophecies keep arriving on schedule.
Every decade or so, a new technology arrives and a fresh chorus of experts announces that human concentration is finally, irreversibly finished. MTV was going to do it. Then video games. Then the internet. Then smartphones. Then TikTok. The brain, characteristically, did not check its notifications.
For fifty years, futurists have been confidently predicting that American workers were about to abandon their downtown offices forever. Some predicted it in 1973. Some predicted it in 2020. The office, battered and bewildered, is still there — and somehow rents in Manhattan have never been higher.
From radio ruining the youth of the 1920s to TikTok dissolving the last functioning synapses of Generation Z, every new communications technology has arrived with a complementary prophecy of cognitive catastrophe. The prophecy is always wrong. The technology always wins. And yet, somehow, the prophecy is never quite entirely wrong either.
Since the early 1980s, a succession of financial prophets, self-help authors, and investment newsletter editors have assured Americans that radical early retirement was not only possible but practically inevitable — for anyone willing to follow a simple system. The system kept changing. The retirement kept not happening.
For half a century, sanitary visionaries have promised that bidets, wet wipes, and assorted moisture-based alternatives would consign the humble toilet paper roll to the dustbin of history. They were wrong — until a Tuesday in March 2020, when they were briefly, chaotically, and accidentally right.
Since the 1970s, a dedicated corps of environmentalists, scientists, and alarmed magazine editors has been issuing the planet specific, dated ultimatums — extinction by this year, ecological collapse by that one, irreversible tipping points by the next. The planet has declined every appointment. The question of what this tells us about the art of prophecy is more interesting than the doomsayers would like.
For more than seventy years, sleep researchers, wellness gurus, and productivity experts have issued increasingly urgent warnings that modern Americans are dangerously, catastrophically under-slept and hurtling toward civilizational breakdown. Americans have responded by staying up until 1 a.m. watching television and feeling, honestly, pretty okay about it.