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April 25, 2014

Strange But True!

Q. Dust off your crystal ball and try looking 50 years into the future. When sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov did this 50 years ago in 1964, how well did he hit today's mark?

A. As expected, Asimov had plenty of savvy technological hits, anticipating self-driving cars, video calling, widespread use of nuclear power, single-duty household robots, says David Pogue in Scientific American magazine. Asimov also worried about coming world overpopulation, estimating it at 6.5 billion, which isn't far off today's 7.1 billion. However, Asimov missed in that underground homes and those underwater never became popular, nor did cars and boats that levitate on jets of compressed air.


 
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