Never underestimate the future... or how hard it is to predict

Stumbled on this while scouting for images...
Claims to be how scientists at RAND in 1954 predicted home computers might look in the year 2004.
UPDATE: But it is (I'm informed in the comments below) a fake. Despite (pity!) I'll still leave the final question. See end of this post!

The text is a little hard to make out. It reads: "Scientists from RAND Corporation have created this model to illustrate how a "home computer" could look like in the year 2004. However the needed technology will not be economically feasible for the average home. Also the scientists readily admit that the computer will require not-yet invented technology to actually work. But 50 years from now scientific progress is expected t solve these problems. With teletype interface and the Fortran language, the computer will be easy to use."

Anyone fancy lashing up a model of the equivalent 50 years from now?

The Trap; And why we species begins to re-assert

The BBC2 TV series 'The Trap' goes some way to explaining why the technical tools of web2.0 are allowing us to wake up and re-establish ourselves as a 'we species' (see Alan Moore and Communities Dominate Brands)

If you've missed any, catch up here

In a nutshell it takes the idea that game theory and its simplified view of how humans act has been over-applied since the days of the Cold War.

The claim that ideas inspired by game theory freed the individual from institutional, market and political direction is false, The Trap argues. It has resulted in an actual loss of freedom - a world which does it by the numbers.

The view of humans perpetrated by game theory, it transpires, is only actually demonstrated in test environments by two groups of people: economists... and psychopaths.

Small wonder then that when social networking allows us to re-establish and rediscover ourselves as members of sticky societies (communities of shared interests) mistrust in the post Cold War order abounds.