Name: A 30-year history of the future
Uploaded: 2014-07-08T15:00:54Z
Duration: 19 min 29 s
Description: MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte takes you on a journey through the last 30 years of tech. The consummate predictor highlights interfaces and innovations he foresaw in the 1970s and 1980s that were scoffed at then but are ubiquitous today. And he leaves you with one last (absurd? brilliant?) prediction for the coming 30 years.

MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte takes you on a journey through the last 30 years of tech. The consummate predictor highlights interfaces and innovations he foresaw in the 1970s and 1980s that were scoffed at then but are ubiquitous today. And he leaves you with one last (absurd? brilliant?) prediction for the coming 30 years.

A 30-year history of the future

The world has shifted from dismissing touchscreens and smart devices as impractical to living with them in every pocket. Decades of bold bets, like equipping children in rural Ethiopia with unboxed tablets, proved that people can learn and adapt remarkably fast without formal instruction. Connecting the last billion people remains a massive challenge, but historical breakthroughs hint it is possible. Tomorrow’s most radical ideas may seem absurd today, just as yesterday’s did.