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"Futurology"? How quaint.
Science Fiction works of the 30's are more forward looking than any movie or TV show since Star Wars and Trek. I think what is missing from this discussion is a sense for the truly deep time and vast distances that an SF world view encompasses. Think "Against the Fall of Night", not Buck Rogers.
Our predictions serve more as a mirror of current times, than a vision of the future. Whatever "humanity" might be after a billion years, it won't match Clarke's vision of unending resurrected generations tended benevolently by a colossal mainframe. But if such a species could continue to be called human, I'm with Art - we'll continue to need jesters to upset our bioengineered applecarts.
As usual with such discussions (and perhaps with all Salon discussions), it is the unexamined premises through which the contributors reveal themselves. We won't (and don't) have cocktails to increase our IQ - because IQ doesn't exist. See Gould's "Mismeasure of Man".
Transportation remains alluring. Tomorrowland is all about vehicles: Monorail, Autopia, Skyway, People Mover, Rocket to the Moon. The reason that this was our grandparent's SF, and not ours, is simply that transportation is more and more moot. I'm writing this from home via my office VPN.
The next big thing? It doesn't take the IQ of David McCallum to predict biotechnology.
The fundamental question isn't the possibility of cloning or jetpacks - the question is what will we do with these possibilities?
