As we all look around and agree that the “rapture” a silly old guy in the U.S. had predicted for today … has not happened, it strikes me that predicting the future is a perilous business.

Or maybe just a foolhardy one.

I just read the “Foundation” series for maybe the seventh or eighth time, and as brilliant as was Isaac Asimov, the assumptions he made (or didn’t make) about the future — even in the near term — were fairly jarring.

Guestimating what humankind will be up to 30,000 years in the future was particularly dangerous in the early 1950s, when the Foundation books came out, just as technology and social changes were about to jump into overdrive.

To wit:

–Asimov’s characters are still smoking tobacco, 30,000 years hence. When he refers to imported goods, tobacco always comes up, and most of his main characters seem to smoke cigars. This is the single-most jarring everyday concept in the series.

–He clearly had no idea (well, who did?) of the arrival, before the century was out, of the worldwide web.

–He has newspapers being published, 30,000 years hence, when they may not survive, as printed products, even through century. This decade, for that matter. His characters often pick up news from radio or newspapers. The idea of handheld communications devices … didn’t see that coming.

–Space travel is predicted, as usual, on the idea of “jumps” that defy the speed of light. Maybe it is inevitable, but are we even at a far remove from seeing it, now? Anyway, seems shaky.

–His Foundation characters have no robots around, which is weird considering he wrote “I, Robot.”

–He makes reference to a slide rule, which certainly must be long gone 30,000 years in the future.

–He didn’t foresee something just on the horizon, the inclusion of women among decision-makers. His three books have women in the traditional roles of powers behind the scenes. But all his government officials are men. Every one of them. (Social change is really tough to call.)

–Humans will be able to make space “jumps” but even with all their technical advances, individuals are still living about 70 years, and that’s it. Same three score years and 10 we’ve been talking about since the Bible. Seems not unlikely that lifespans will be longer, in the future, and not 30,000 years from now.

–He doesn’t seem to have foreseen credits cards. His travelers carry around cash and exchange it.

–All worlds seem to have essentially the same mix of gasses … and similar gravity. Going from one inhabited planet to another … not a problem for anyone, far as we can tell.

–The whole universe is speaking one language. He mentions accents (and, indeed, he has the Second Foundation mindmasters speaking as if they are translating from the Yiddish). We can’t get one world to speak the same language (though English has a shot). But in his future, people from opposite sides of the galaxy understand each other perfectly well.

Still and all, it’s a great work, and his adaption of Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” and applying it to a galactic empire … yes, ingenious.

The Foundation trilogy won the Hugo Award in 1966 as the “best all-time series” in the science fiction genre, which is well-deserved, even if I have much more fondness for J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy.

So, Asimov was a brilliant guy, but not even he could figure out what man was going to do in the near future. When people start telling you what God is going to do … well, Asimov as a predictor begins to look a lot more prescient.