Are people starting to get the fact that the high tech hucksters are - well - hucksters?

"Leading thinkers predict technologies that will turn the world upside-down," according to James Randerson at the Guardian, a prediction which he realizes, which isn't at all likely. (January 1, 2009)

Flying cars, personal jetpacks, holidays on the moon, the paperless office – the predictions of futurologists are, it seems, doomed to fail. The only thing predictable about the future is its unpredictability.

But that has not stopped edge.org – the online intellectual salon – asking which ideas and inventions will provide humanity's next leap forward. In its traditional New Year challenge to the planet's best thinkers it asks, "What will change everything – What game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see?"

By the way hat tip for this and a half dozen earlier stories to Stephanie West Allen at Brains on Purpose. I never purposely ignored her; I was just trying desperately to clean out an overloaded Inbox.