disappointment in time capsules seems to run endemic
…
In his book Predicting the Future, Nicholas Rescher writes that “we incline to view the future through a telescope, as it were, thereby magnifying and bringing nearer what we can manage to see.” So too do we view the past through the other end of the telescope, making things look farther away than they actually were, or losing sight of some things altogether.These observations apply neatly to technology.
But when it comes to culture we tend to believe not that the future will be very different than the present day, but that it will be roughly the same.
And when culture does change, the precipitating events can be surprisingly random and small.
Source: Tom Vanderbilt Explains Why We Could Predict Self-Driving Cars, But Not Women in the Workplace