Nobody predicted the smartphone era. Of all the brilliant science fiction authors, none envisioned the device carried almost ubiquitously by Americans today, though a few came close in some narrow ways.

Even more astounding is the fact that absolutely nobody imagined how it would drastically alter and shape personal behavior.

Arthur C. Clarke conceived flat-screen tablets, but his characters didn't text each other. Ray Bradbury failed to even remotely consider that technologies like Kindle or Audible would make the idea of book-burning obsolete.

Classic sci-fi writers probably couldn't see past the global contexts of world war totalitarianism and apocalyptic atomic hysteria. They were mired in fear of future worlds fraught with state fascism as a controlling force.

But even after the Cold War and USSR collapse, late 20th century writers still had a universal blind spot about handheld devices capable of delivering 24/7 communication and connectivity.

Perhaps the biggest miss of all was a failure to foresee advanced technology as an active agent of degeneration and decay of social character. Last-century writers and thinkers were well acquainted with the double-edged sword of innovation--nuclear energy could power cities or wipe them off the Earth--but the most severe abuses were at the national or governmental level.

Their futurist philosophies centered........

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