Predicting the future goes hand-in-hand with preparing for the future, a skill humans have developed to survive tough times and to make their world a better place (mostly, but not always). While we live at a point where futurism is growing more mainstream, even if the term and field are not household names, futurists have made predictions for some time. Ed Fries, formerly of Microsoft, has shared his collection of century old, French futurist postcards in which artists forecast life in 2012.

The postcards depict a variety of scenes, including the one above where a family takes a trip to the moon. Others include a Skype-like system of communication, flying cars, and aquanauts riding seahorses. You can see them at Wired, in an article by Greg Miller.

As a set, the images can hold greater value for our future if you look at what they did and did not get right. The future doesn't unfold randomly or as a set of dominoes as each advance has its turn. Market forces dominate research and development and economy of scale can help make extremely expensive products affordable. Attractive ideas cannot be adopted if they can't be afforded. Ideas that serve no purpose very rarely have success even if they are dirt cheap for consumers.

I'm not saying anything new here when I point this out, many products have failed on both ends of the spectrum and there are surprises that go against the norm. Yet, I'm often amazed at how often ideas are coveted in future media even when there seems to be almost no mainstream interest or application.

That doesn't mean desire can't drive adoption, but it rarely does so without purpose. Let's look at the postcards (you can see the collection on Wired's site) and consider each idea:

• Flying to the moon: Aside from scientific research, the only reason humans would do this is the desire to go somewhere novel. It's possible lunar vacations could be the next Mount Everest, though a mountain involves physical effort and preparation, not just paying a massive sum. This seems a service unlikely to move beyond billionaire affordability in this century.
• Video telephony: These services have been available for over a decade. The ability to display video across the Internet provided the technology, so linking two people in real time was a technical challenge and the service was ripe for adoption.
• Flying cars: A technology with serious engineers and investment behind it for over 30 years, flying cars are just coming to market. While the idea of quick flight over long distances is attractive, the limitations are too great. First, a price in excess of $250,000 isn't affordable. Second, the vehicles still don't offer comfortable road driving. Third, the interface is too different from the current technology of choice: cars. Until flying cars have car like rides, controls, and efficiency, they're really just folding airplanes.
• The next two depict flying machines: In one, the flyer is catching birds and in the other a plane acts as an elevator. Catching birds is a ludicrous endeavor, but could we do have helicopters capable of safely delivering workers to heights difficult to reach via ladders and other equipment. While our helicopters may not look like the postcard designs, the technology is essentially the same.
• Aquanauts on seahorses: Scuba gear is used around the world. Whether someone genetically modify seahorses to the size of ponies remains to be seen, but it hasn't happened yet.
• Machine labor: We're at the start of an automation revolution today, so we don't have to go far to see this prediction is accurate.
• Flying taxis: See above, not likely.
• Auto rail systems: Depending on how you look at it, and how automated vehicles develop, this may be completely wrong or dead on. While cars won't ride on rails, guiding pins in roadways have been tested as guides for autonomous vehicles.

The illustrations made me take a step back and reflect on my expectations of the future. These ideas came at a time when all of this was pure fantasy and there were very few lines of research leading towards an actual product or service. Skype is a great example of a product nearly every human would have used and has been extremely successful, yet it required the development of the Internet to come to market.

When forecasting advancements, it's important to have not only an idea of the process of development, but also the development of proceeding and supportive advancements. Autonomous cars, for example, have been forecast for several decades and attempts have been made to modify roads and vehicles in many ways. Yet LIDAR and a computer sophisticated enough to handle the processing of digitized shapes into understandable objects were required for the field to begin global testing. While testing is moving forward quickly with autonomous vehicles, room-temperature superconductors have been on the edge of discovery for nearly twenty years with the promise of zero resistance energy transmission.

Another consideration is price, which I pointed out earlier. An advancement has to fill a need or at least a desire, and the price has to reflect the value to the individual. Health-tracking wearables are entering the market and become more sophisticated with each generation. For individuals with health issues, previous medical devices have cost thousands of dollars. By offering products with similar capabilities at prices the average user can adopt, the economy of scale will put our health data in our hands, removing the need to depend on a doctor or other specialists for certain types of advice.

Finally, when identifying adoption of an advancement - just because you build it doesn't mean they'll buy it - we have to consider how much change it requires, especially in society. Today, robots are mostly limited to manufacturing facilities or simplified, single purpose machines such as our Roomba and Braava. Humanoid-style robots are in development and will be part of security, medical, and social support services very soon. Signs already point to mixed acceptance of robots in public spaces and concerns over the morality of robots having responsibility or even control over humans. A severe backlash could end with legislation banning robots from some locations or roles. And that's before the development of mores around the acceptable use of robots.

Inspiration can come from many places and I was surprised how much inspiration I received from these postcards. I hope my thoughts have provided some inspiration for you, even if you don't agree with my viewpoints. If you have any thoughts, please share them through our social streams or on the site. Thanks.