May what you read here challenge you to start building the bridge to 2015 today. Predicting the future can be treacherous. According to many historic futurists, by now we should be colonizing other planets, flying around like the Jetsons and should have achieved either world peace or self-annihilation. We haven't even achieved the paperless office. More treacherous than predicting the future is lacking the imagination and the persistence to make the future reality.
Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves.
All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people. As early as 130 B.C., during the Roman Empire, Hero of Alexandria had recorded the technology and knowledge on the basics of the steam engine. Hero did not imagine the importance of his knowledge. The technology and knowledge were used to create impractical devices like one that made figures dance on an altar when the altar was lit with fire. Solomon de Cause was ap-parently sentenced to the madhouse by a cardinal who was irritated by de Cause's constant attempts to get him to listen to his ideas.