Back to the Future?

Paleo-Future (Palaeo-future?) is for history junkies who wonder how the future looked from the past. Relish thought-transmitting headgear for women, paperless offices and personal hovercraft! here at home I treasure a yellowing cutting from the Times of July 1971 claiming, as a mathematical certainty, that all vestiges of organised religion would have disappeared by 2011.

Our forebears didn't always get it wrong, however. Some 1900 cards from the French Government's national collection certainly ring a few bells...

The UK National Curriculum?










Cable TV Porn channels?










The Iraq War?










Without launching into a great Rumsfeld "unknown unknowns" thing, this proves the Mark Twain principle that what makes a monkey out of you isn't what you don't know. It's what you think you know, but it's wrong!
What false certainties do we cherish about our future, or, for that matter, our present?