> I would also classify most science fiction as pretty solidly out of touch with what reality is going to look like.
What exactly do you mean by ‘out of touch’?
(Personally, I avoid ‘most science fiction’ by not reading all of it. :\) But seriously, I try to read and watch the insightful and brain stretching kinds.)
You wouldn’t be the first to express disbelief. The majority of possible scenarios never happen. But the practice of thinking through them and taking them seriously is valuable. Consider the history of the discipline of scenario planning…
> Early in [the 20th] century, it was unclear how airplanes would affect naval warfare. When Brigadier General Billy Mitchell proposed that airplanes might sink battleships by dropping bombs on them, U.S. Secretary of War Newton Baker remarked, “That idea is so damned nonsensical and impossible that I’m willing to stand on the bridge of a battleship while that nitwit tries to hit it from the air.” Josephus Daniels, Secretary of the Navy, was also incredulous: “Good God! This man should be writing dime novels.”
> Even the prestigious Scientific American proclaimed in 1910 that “to affirm that the aeroplane is going to ‘revolutionize’ naval warfare of the future is to be guilty of the wildest exaggeration.”
> In hindsight, it is difficult to appreciate why air power’s potential was unclear to so many. But can we predict the future any better than these defense leaders did…
Read more at https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/scenario-planning-a-tool...
> Scenario Planning: A Tool for Strategic Thinking
How can companies combat the overconfidence and tunnel vision common to so much decision making? By first identifying basic trends and uncertainties and then using them to construct a variety of future scenarios. By Paul J.H. Schoemaker
Of course, reading sci-fi novels is not the same as systematic scenario planning. But the former tends to show greater imagination and richness.