Crystal balls

I recently picked up a copy of Our Future: Dr Magnus Pyke Predicts, a paperback from 1980 in which the wildly gesticulating boffin has a guess at what life might be like 50 years hence:

News is what journalists put into newspapers and news bulletins. Because we get news from a number of different channels, it does not follow that we are any better informed.

Which should remind us that transmission of facts was hardly perfect even before the Babel of the blogosphere got in on the act. But then the good doctor goes and spoils it with his guess at how the news might be physically delivered:

...newspapers could be printed on washable nylon sheets, to avoid the necessity of cutting down so many trees.

Oh well. At least old Magnus had a few more strings to his bow:



Sad to note from Dr Pyke’s Wikipedia page that his later years were dogged by people yelling “SCIENCE!” at him in the street.

(For some reason, people used to say I looked like Thomas Dolby. Or the saxophonist from Haircut 100. Or even John Denver. When really, I knew I was Andy Partridge.)