Imagine being in 1925 and predicting what the future would be like in 1945, now that the Great War was over so that nobody would even think of starting another major war. You might predict cities built almost entirely underground with kilometer-high skyscrapers http://www.popsci.com/archive-viewer?id=YScDAAAAMBAJ&pg=40 https://futurelapse.blogspot.com/2015/05/underground-living-... since skyscrapers had been rising dramatically in height. Pneumatic tube systems would probably make most deliveries https://www.fastcompany.com/3049647/what-the-city-of-the-fut... since they were already in service in large cities, and it was clear that cities would get denser and denser. Since Television was already being demonstrated, you might imagine doctors diagnosing patients over the radio waves https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/telemedicine-predicte... using Vidicon tubes that made the house calls for them, along with a Teledactyl that transmitted haptic information to allow doctors to feel the patients; moreover, you could watch theatrical performances from far away. Maybe you'd predict that in 20 years abstract art would be even more influential than it was in 1925, and that the US might institute some kind of social security scheme, and perhaps many more cities would have subways, and maybe more utilities would be publicly owned rather than operated for profit. Given the growth of Communist movements in the 1920s, you might predict they would expand further. Maybe you'd predict that future musical instruments would be electric.

Some of that sort of happened, though mostly later (the electric guitar dates from 1932). But think about what you'd be missing: atomic energy (the Cockcroft–Walton generator wouldn't split the lithium atom until 1932(?)). Manchukuo and the rest of World War II. Alcoholics Anonymous. Mechanical refrigerators. Widespread washing machines and consequently women's liberation. The Little Prince. The jake walk. The Long March and Communist China. Looney Tunes. Airlines. Mass nonviolent civil disobedience. Independent India. The end of the British Empire. Comic books (outside Japan). Neoprene and nylon. The end of dirigibles. Vaginoplasty. The Hoover Dam and the Tennessee Valley Authority. Bugs Bunny. Computers and the theory of computable functions, and the death of Hilbert's decidability program. Universal censorship of mass-market films in the US under the Hays Code. Liquid-fueled rockets and ballistic and cruise missiles. The discovery of the Lascaux cave paintings. The discovery that the universe was less than 20 billion years old. The Moonies. The Great Depression. Perón. Merchandising agreements for children's characters such as Pooh. Radar. Antibiotics. Nineteen Eighty-Four. The end of the gold standard after 2500 years. Pluto. Maybe even talkies — you might have predicted in 1925 that talkies would become a mass phenomenon, but it might have been unimaginable that they would entirely displace silent film.

Maybe you would have predicted one or two of these. But nobody imagined very many of them.

So, what are the major developments you're missing over the next 20 years, which will change the world into which AI-powered hand dryers could potentially be born?