Rendezvous With Rama author Arthur C. Clarke predicts telemedicine, telecommuting and mobile phones, in a 1964 BBC interview. Too bad we don't have space colonies or mentally enhanced chimpanzee servants yet.


I love where he says, "If what I say seems to you completely reasonable, then I will have failed completely. Only if what I am about to tell you appears absolutely unbelievable, have we any chance of visualizing the future as it really will happen."

The Clarke interview (which starts at 3:50 in the video above) comes via Singularity Hub, which notes:

Considered one of the ‘big three' science fiction writers of the 20th century, Clarke also helped originate the idea of using geostationary orbits for communication satellites. As such, it may not be surprising that while many of his predictions seem outlandish his thoughts on telecommunication were remarkably prescient. By the year 2000 a good deal of the world could talk to their friends (via mobile phones) without knowing their exact locations. We've also seen how business travel may be slowly being replaced with telepresence, and telemedicine is a rapidly developing technology. All of these predictions can be heard in the first half of the Horizon program


Here's the second part of the 1964 interview:

