Long Now’s Long Bets project is founded on the premise that we can improve our long-term thinking by holding ourselves accountable for the predictions we make about the future. By revisiting our forecasts as time goes by, we reveal the subtle mechanics of society’s evolution, and teach ourselves something about what kinds of visions might turn into reality.

Jerry Lockenour, a professor of engineering at the University of Southern California, has turned this premise into a lesson plan. Students in his Technology Development and Applications class are going back to the future: they are studying a 01988 issue of the Los Angeles Times’ Magazine, which offered a vision of the futuristic LA of 02013.

“In class we study emerging science and technology that can change the future,” he said. The magazine helps students see the relevance of the developments they are reading about in textbooks and professional journals, he said.

The 01988 feature offers a detailed description of a day in the life of a fictional family. Written in consultation with more than 30 futurists and experts, the article offers prospects for the technological innovations, environmental challenges, economic issues, and demographic shifts we might expect to deal with in 02013.

The LA Times itself recently interviewed Lockenour’s students to evaluate the quality of its 01988 predictions. “To their surprise, the students – some of whom weren’t even born when [the magazine’s] look into the future was published – found that many predictions have become reality.” Though robots have not quite become a staple in our households, we do indeed drive our cars with the aid of “electronic navigation systems,” schools have embraced the interactive learning potential of computers, and the population has indeed exploded.

To read the complete feature – and compare its vision of the unimaginable future to today’s present moment for yourself – please visit the LA Times’ website here.