Sci-Fi Writer Correctly Predicted Almost Everything About The World Today 60 Years Ago

Guessing what's coming up ahead ain't a walk in the park, you know? I mean, not everyone's got that Baba Vanga mojo.

But someone who comes pretty close to the Bulgarian mystic is a British science fiction writer who went by the name Sir Arthur Charles Clarke.

During his life, Clarke wore many hats: futurist, inventor, undersea explorer, television series presenter, and, of course, the author of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Yet, a significant part of his legacy lies in his bold predictions about the future back in the swinging '60s.

Clarke was in his 40s when he made these predictions Hulton Archive / Getty Images

Fast forward 60 years, and it's downright spooky how many of his visions have become our reality.

In a chat on BBC's Horizon program, titled 'The Knowledge Explosion', which aired in September 1964, Clarke dropped this gem:

"The only thing we can be sure of about the future is that it will be absolutely fantastic. So, if what I say now seems to you to be very reasonable, then I’ll fail completely."

He painted a picture of the future cityscape, set in the far-off year of 2000. Explaining how he saw the world, Clarke said:

"These things will make possible a world in which we can be in instant contact with each other wherever we may be, where we can contact our friends anywhere on Earth even if we don’t know their actual physical location."

And hey, look around — that's pretty much our reality now, right? We can reach out to anyone, anywhere, through texts, calls, and social media.

But Clarke wasn't done yet. He went on to predict:

"It will be possible - perhaps only 50 years from now - for a man to conduct his business from Tahiti or Bali just as well as he could from London."

"In fact, if it proves worthwhile, almost any executive skill, any administrative skill, even any physical skill, could be made independent of distance."

"I am perfectly serious when I suggest that one day we may have brain surgeons in Edinburgh operating on patients in New Zealand."

2001: A Space Odyssey won multiple academy awards Robert Nickelsberg / Getty Images

He even touched on artificial intelligence, known as machine learning back then, saying:

"The most intelligent inhabitants of that future world won’t be men or monkeys. They’ll be machines. They will start to think, and eventually they will completely outthink their makers."

"Is this depressing? I don’t see why it should be. We superseded the Cro-Magnons and Neanderthal men, and we presume we’re an improvement."

Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

Clarke wrapped up the broadcast by saying the future is 'endlessly fascinating' and, try as we might, 'we will never outguess it'.

Clarke bid adieu to this world in March 2008 due to respiratory complications and heart failure. He was 90 years old.