This is a photo of my grandfather, Will Jenkins, taken in 1909 at 13 years old with a self-made glider. He received $5 from a Civil War veteran after writing an essay on Robert E. Lee. As a science fiction writer, in 1946 he predicted a global computer network like Alexa. However, despite predicting the future, he couldn’t understand why his daughter wanted to work in the 1950s. A RAND forecasting study from 1964 predicted automation and other advancements inaccurately, showing a trend of asking the wrong questions about technology evolution. The failure to anticipate universal computing and the internet highlights a common challenge in predicting technological developments.
https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2017/01/11/wrongquestions