The Observer asks How will you watch TV?
The year is 2016 and Chloe is 16.Chloe has never heard of CDs or DVDs
A fatal flaw of futurology. The article assumes that in ten years time Chloe's parents will be sufficiently rich and pro-technology that Chloe will have all the latest gizmos. Yet it implies that right now, at the age of six, poor little Chloe has no CDs or DVDs to call her own.
I first became suspicious of stupid journalists predicting future technological changes in the mid Eighties when someone proclaimed "By the year 2020 we will all be living to 150." I used my fingers and calculated that would be very reassuring for the hordes of 115-year olds watching it.
About 8 or 9 years ago a friend predicted that within ten years no one would go out to the cinema or any live shows or football matches because everything would be piped Virtual Reality style into people's living rooms. I said I doubted it. Many people are resistant to technological innovation, even if only on cost or round tuit grounds.
The article is interesting but it does seem very predicated on the expected behaviour of those born in the Eighties onwards. Yet all the actuarial predictions are that that generation will be working harder and longer to fund the pensions of all the rest of us who will be sitting round idle enjoying our not-so cutting edge technology.
