We humans are notoriously rubbish at making reasonable predictions largely because we merely extrapolate and never grasp the complex web of inter-connections necessary for substantive change to occur. Furthermore, we’re always driven by the same hardwired primitive needs and so our patterns of behavior remain relatively constant, interrupted only briefly by periods of media-induced mass hysteria. That’s why The Jetsons was as accurate as Star Trek (e.g. not in any way at all), and why we’re not all enjoying the huge death toll that would be the automatic result of civilians owning flying cars. It’s why we’ll see managers insisting we all return to the office (a 19th-century solution to the need for centralized data processing) in a matter of months hence. It’s why nothing will really change at all until the media settles on its next wonderful sensation to terrify us all out of our slender wits once more.