[jyl]

Also, note that the unthinkable does happen. Florentines during the Renaissance never thought that a year after the Black Death came, 4/5 of them would be dead. English towns in 1914 never thought that in four years, almost all their young men would be buried in France.

In the 1950s, a common vision of the future was that labor saving technology would result in everyone having so much free time that leisure would become the country's primary occupation. It didn't happen, but maybe that future will just take longer to arrive than expected, and maybe it won't be handled as munificently as once thought.