This is a charming clip from a 1967 film Year 1999 A.D.. Although the predictions of how the actual technology would work is laughably naïve, it is actually pretty much spot on in terms of how the new technology would affect people’s lives.

The other funny thing is that they totally didn’t see changes in gender roles coming! Mom does the shopping, dad pays the bills and handles all the other “important” family business. This makes me happy to see how much attitudes have changed in my lifetime.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XxKORHKcjg

Science fiction movies and books almost always get the psychology wrong. I am not surprised: most people who are very knowledgeable when it comes to technology usually lack social skills—I read somewhere that most of them are probably even mildly autistic.

Hey, I resemble that remark!

Actually, I feel autistic sometimes but I actually score very low on the scale…*shrugs*

So we have families with two people working and the economy is still falling apart and this is an example of bad predictions from science fiction? 

How about:

Subversive (1962) by Reynolds Mack
http://www.digilibraries.com/ebook/115574/Subversive/

How much science fiction assumes people are smarter than they are and society ends up doing dumb things with technology that SF did not predict.

psik

Hey, I resemble that remark!

I, too, resemble that remark!

Jokes apart, have you heard about Paul Otlet (1868-1944)? He’s one of the fathers of information science.