The most striking thing is that almost all of his missed predictions were missed not because the technology was not available, but because society rejected or didn’t adopt that technology
OK, so imagine that in 1980, I predicted that we'll colonize Mars by the year 2020. Today, I'm arguing that I was right in my prediction - in broad strokes, we have the technology! Nothing is stopping us. It's just that politicians have different priorities.
Of course, that's a load of bull. You can't decouple predictions about the future of mankind from what said mankind actually decides.
I looked up the predictions on Wikipedia and I'd say that most of them are general enough that they'd hard to disagree with back in 1999 (there will be bioengineering, there will be portable computers, there will be robots, there will be AI), but the timing or the specifics are off on almost every single one of them.
All the hills he suggested heading towards were the right hills even if he assumed they were higher in altitude than they were
More importantly the mountain that is the technological singularity he did a good job defining the hilly path for
AGI (strong AI in his words) is just one of the major foothills
For instance, by his prediction, we're already many years past a 100 year average life expectancy (with 120 years expected by the end of the decade).
I think his mistake was tightly coupling exponential compute with exponential progress in biology - which has so far not panned out.
I would argue that society would likely have been glad to adopt, but the profit-seeking motive got in the way (again).
I was focused on augmented reality largely in part because it was such a big enabler of all other AI technologies
However people have almost uniformly rejected AR glasses my entire career for social reasons and that is only increasing
To the point where in 2016 I was debating with Jessica Alba and she was firm that they won’t take off cause most people don’t want to wear glasses
Transcribe conversations with my own hardware at home.
Turn by turn directions
Pomodoro timer
Read books on my lunch break
Read recipes while cooking
Instruction manuals
RSS feeds
How often do yout ravel were you woulduse turn by turn direction? You don't have a navigation system in your car?
You prefer reading through glasses on a display than book or ebook reader with eink display?
Just because some people thought that VR or AR are the big thing, doesn't mean it has any tangable relevance.
I was wearing glasses and got lasic, for me the whole AR/VR thingy was quite weird from the get go. Oh you want people constantly wearing something on their face for what benefit?
I even own a HTC Vive Pro and especially when you realize what it actually means to have Virtual Reality without the benefits of a real holodeck, its not what the movies and everyone depicted.
Every book like Neuromancer was always cool because you imagined (and it was depicted like this) like a place to be. It ignored everything inbetween. He drove a motorcycle and he was able to feel it. In a holodeck you feel things too.
I also don't get your Jessica Alba reference tbh?
I think personal taste/preference not having to wear something, not having to handle it day to day (charging, configuraing etc.) is the stronger thing than social reasons.