🌙 To get some of the bolder predictions out of the way - the astronomer Fred Hoyle foresaw a “Fall of Rome” type event, a NASA administrator imagined some of us would be “natives of the moon”, while a panel of scientists felt we’d have “specialized human mutants” by now.
🚬 Some of the earliest predictions come from 1925, as writers and commentators set their sights 100 years to the future. Back then, a professor claimed tobacco smoking would be “a thing of the past” by now - pretty remarkable, considering how little was known about its health risks at the time. But a quarter of consumers worldwide still smoke, reminding us that social change can be very slow.
💁♀️ The 1920s also saw one estimate that by 2025 “all wealth” would be “feminine hands”. That was a tad optimistic, though recent years have highlighted the growing influence of the “girl economy”. Professor Archibald Low predicted that women would “dress logically in a one-piece hygiene suit”, while another notorious prediction said women will opt for silicon rather than human partners. Let’s check in again on that one in 12 months.
💼 In 2000, TIME did a piece forecasting the hottest jobs of the future, and predicted the emergence of “data miners” who “will be on hand to extract useful tidbits from mountains of data, pinpointing behavior patterns for marketers”. Sounds like some people we know…
🛜 In 2014, a report compiled by Pew Research Center expected the Internet of Things and augmented reality to boom. Around that time many people predicted smartphones would be replaced by wearables (in one futurist’s words: “if you have a smartphone, people will laugh at you”). But even now, only 5% own a VR headset.
⚖️ Many contributors to a second Pew report forecasting 2025, this time written in the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter protests, thought social justice would move up the agenda. But our research shows racial relations have slipped down America’s priority list - from the 3rd biggest concern in 2020 to 11th in 2024.
🚗 In 2017, economist Tony Seba suggested that no petrol cars would be sold in 2025. But this year only two countries (Norway and Ethiopia) will get close to this benchmark. And from our own research, we know that petrol/gasoline (55%) is still by far the fuel type most car intenders plan on getting for their next vehicle.
🥑 A common prediction for 2025 was reduced meat eating. In 2019, a UK supermarket predicted a quarter of Brits would be vegetarian this year; instead, only 5% are, and the number of vegans has actually decreased in recent years.
🩷 Some predictions are accurate by luck, but are worth sharing anyway. In 2005, someone suggested Barbie would have a “major comeback” (only a few years off), while Wired’s 2009 jest about future Star Wars sequels feels eerily on point now. And you have to give the New York Times some credit for calling that Beefeaters would still be guarding the Tower of London “in 2025 AD”.
