What Cars Of The Future Looked Like In 1990

Watched Total Recall with my daughter a few nights ago. It allowed us to see what the near future was supposed to look like from the perspective of 1990 (the cars in particular). It's amazing how far off the mark the implied predictions are about technology only 21 years into the future. Though it wasn't quite as bad as Logan's Run. ;-)

It's for this reason that I am very skeptical of claims that we will run out of oil in 20 years (in 1978 my 3rd grade teacher told us oil would be gone by 2010), the global average temperature will be 2 degrees higher in 100 years, the stock market will be ABCD a year from now, we will be overrun by landfills, run out of water, etc. I find such claims as these to be a mottled combo of hubris and ignorance. (pic via IMCDB)

I realize that people user computerized models to allegedly predict climate decades into the future. But those models are inherently flawed, we can not possibly know all of the variables that need to be taken into account. Those are just the unavoidable flaws, I'm convinced that many of them are tweaked and rerun until the "researchers" find the results they prefer.

Definitely read some Julian Simon:
Book Review: Hoodwinking the Nation by Julian Simon
Book Review: It's Getting Better All the Time: 100 Greatest Trends of the Last 100 Years
Julian Simon - The Doomslayer (Wired) (or PDF here)

Additional links:
Substances, Resources, and the Future
Why Economic Experts' Predictions Fail

More On The Cars of Total Recall:
Total Recall taxi at Hemmings Blog
The futuristic cars of Total Recall
Really? that was the Boonie Bug in Total Recall?