Types of Future Predictions

Time for something interesting? Let’s go over time.

As you know, you can’t change the past, but you can change the future. On the flip side, you can tell the past, but you can’t tell the future. Though, some people have been able to predict the future. Inspired by the movie Back to the Future II, I came up with three different types of future predictions. They are Type A predictions, Type B predictions, and Type C predictions.

• Type A predictions are future predictions that actually have come true. While you can’t tell the future, some event or invention predicted by some scientist or someone else in the past were a theory from its time, but a reality in today’s time.
• Type B predictions are future predictions that have yet to come true, or are realistically impossible to come true. Those would be like inventions that are too advanced, or social progresses that haven’t occurred yet.
• Type C predictions are future predictions that could no longer be possible, either because they weren’t advanced enough, or because something else happened that made it obsolete.

Examples of Type A Predictions:

Going to the past, I’m going to cover at least five examples of how people have accurately predicted the future, whether they be 5 years later, 10 years later, 25 years later, or even 100 years later.

• Pretty much everything that has predicted the 9/11 Attacks prior to September 11th, 2001 would fall under this. And it’s not just limited to those 9/11 innuendos (like that magazine Bart Simpson carried in one of the Simpsons episodes in Season 9). For instance, the 1996 film Independence Day features the Empire State Building getting destroyed in the same fashion the World Trade Center fell.
• I can also say the same for any media that predicted Donald Trump’s presidency. Some have used that as a joke, sometimes even saying that he is the worst person you would want to see become president. Guess what happened in 2016.
• In 2014, someone made a tweet that the Cubs and the Indians (now the Guardians) would go against each other in the 2016 World Series. It would even go to seven games, where the last game will have extra innings. This is exactly how the 2016 World Series went.
• Some common technologies in past books and movies include solar panels, touch screens, video calls (like in Spaceballs), and computers are a reality in today’s world. Even the book 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was written before the existence of submarines.
• An engineer with the name John Elfreth Watkins Jr made several predictions about what will happen in the future. Some things he said include that people will see across the world, pre-cooked meals would be available, color photos will become a reality, and vegetables will be grown with power. Although some predictions were wrong, all of the predictions he made that I stated have come true.

Even some of my game ideas for the Animal Crossing series can fall under this. For instance, back in 2016, one of my ideas for the next Animal Crossing game (which is widely known as Animal Crossing: New Horizons in today’s age) was that you should be able to change the height of wall furniture (in both New Leaf and Happy Home Designer, you couldn’t change the elevation of wall furniture). This is one thing you can do in New Horizons.

Examples of Type B Predictions:

Of course, some things haven’t come true after the prediction, whether it’s because it’s not scientifically possible, hasn’t happened yet, or did come true, but not at the time they were expected to come true.

• Some sci-fi technologies, like light-speed travel, teleporting, time travel, and lightsabers, are impossible to make in reality. They may be cool concepts, but they won’t be coming any time soon.
• Remember George Orwell’s famous book 1984? He predicted that the world will become a dystopian society in 1984 with that totalitarian government in control. Not only have we not faced that yet here in America, but when 1984 came, we didn’t even face something like that.
• Pretty much all of these past global warming predictions about the Arctic having ice-free summers. While that is still bound to happen, there was one prediction where it will become ice-free for the first time in 2008. It hasn’t become ice-free yet, but the world is getting worse.
• Future Timeline, a website that has several blog entries about future predictions, one predicted the world will enter a Global Economic Depression from 2015 to 2019. That hasn’t happened when 2015 to 2019 came.
• Some people have predicted that DVDs and discs will no longer be in use in the future. Not only are they still in use, they have gained some resurgence in popularity. I can even point out the advantages DVDs have over streaming.

Regarding my ideas I had for the next Animal Crossing game, one idea I frequently had was that the Museum should have more exhibits than just fish, insects, fossils, and art. As of today, this is one thing that hasn’t changed.

Examples of Type C Predictions:

At the time the predictions were made, they were logical. But due to some events, like death, destruction, or business failures, these predictions have been rendered impossible.

• There were several times that people predicted that new media would eventually fail. One of the biggest ones was that in 1977, many distributors believed that Star Wars will not succeed. The distributor that took Star Wars, 20^th Century Fox, will also be closing their doors. Not only have these people been proven wrong, but Star Wars was so successful that it changed the film industry forever.
• Some technologies in sci-fi films were more advanced than the technologies in use at the time, but have been made obsolete thanks to the internet. Some, like GPS navigators, were even short-lived, thanks to the smartphone.
• A book with the name The Last Man was written in 1826, but was set between 2073 and 2100. One thing implied in the book is that the Ottoman Empire will still exist by the end of the 21st century. It has dissolved early in the 20th century.
• Someone has predicted that horses will still be in use, while cars are just a fad. While horses still exist today, people no longer use horses as primary transportation. It’s at the point where horses even need to ride trucks to get to some places.
• Basically any story set in the future that features a brand that went extinct prior to the events of the story would fall under this.

Regarding my ideas I have for the next Animal Crossing game, I suggested a map editor back in 2014 and in 2016, where we can create our own maps for our Animal Crossing towns before creating the towns. New Horizons’ terraforming features have made that obsolete

Back to the Future II Predictions:

Back when the original Back to the Future movie came out, it was set in 1985, which was the present (or the future according to the world in 1955). The past was 1955. But the future was 2015. While the first move was where the trilogy started, it was the second movie that took place in the year 2015 (which at the time of the release was 26 years away). But now that it has been 11 years since 2015 occurred, the “future” looked a lot different to the future we went through.

So I’m going to cover 10 future predictions. There are five Type A predictions, five Type B predictions, and five Type C predictions. There’s also the special case of the Cubs winning the World Series.

Type A Predictions:

• Many of the futuristic inventions, such as fingerprint scanners, instant meals, flat-screen TVs, prosthetics, and holograms have been created and are in use today. Heck, even some of the futuristic tech as seen in the Star Wars original trilogy now exist.
• Although a Jaws 19 movie hasn’t been made, they were right about the obsession of sequels in the film industry. In fact, originality became an issue in the 2010s, the very decade the first half of Back to the Future II took place in. Some of the worst offenders are Shrek, Ice Age, Pirates of the Caribbean, and especially Transformers.
• Video calls, like seen in the movie, are also reality, both in 2015 and today. I even do video calls with other people
• In regards to the Cubs winning the World Series, although they were one year off, they were right that the Chicago Cubs would win the World Series some point in the 2010s. Keep in mind that this was made back in the days the Chicago Cubs have not won a World Series in a long time. Although they were close to winning it in 2015, they did eventually win in 2016, thus ending a long, 108-year drought in World Series Championship.

Type B Predictions:

• While much of the future tech did get invented, some like the flying cars and hoverboards were too advanced, and are thus not yet in existence. They may exist one day, just not in 2015.
• On the newspaper, there was a hint that the United States has elected a female president. Not only was the president at the time male, but we never even elected a female president (there were two times that a woman made it to the general election, only to lose to Donald Trump because of how flawed they were as candidates).
• While hands-free gaming has become a reality, they weren’t really that popular even when they were first introduced. The movie predicted that we would no longer use handheld items when playing video games. Right now, people still use their hands to play games.
• In regards to the Cubs winning the World Series, they won in a five-sweep. Not only did a Cubs World Series use up all seven of their games (showing that they didn’t sweep the World Series), this implies that the World Series has expanded to nine games instead of seven games. The MLB still uses seven games as the maximum for the World Series.

Type C Predictions:

• The movie predicted that pack fax machines and wall fax machines would be dominant. However, the internet, which the movie didn’t focus on, became more dominant by the 2010s. In fact, the internet has made fax machines obsolete, showing that this prediction is behind the times.
• One of the saddest false predictions of the future was that Princess Diana never became the queen. She has died in 1997 in a car crash, and even if she didn’t get into a car crash, she divorced then-Prince Charles, thus making her not part of the royal family. Interestingly enough, Queen Elizabeth II became the longest reigning monarch of England the same year the movie took place in.
• The presence of Pontiac cars implies that Pontiac cars will still be in use by 2015. In reality, the brand went defunct, making this impossible by 2015.
• In regards to the Cubs winning the World Series, the movie shows that they won against the Miami Gators. They were right that Miami would eventually get a baseball team. But the team was the Marlins, and they were on the National League (making it impossible for them to meet in the World Series since the Cubs are also on the National League). However, the Cubs did go against the Marlins in the NLCS in 2003, only to lose to the Marlins (who eventually won the World Series that year).

As for today’s lesson – you may never know what happens in the future. Even the most logical predictions will not happen. Even the most insane predictions will come true.