“Well, we didn’t see that coming.” These must be the hardest words for any futurologist to write and they comprise a pained opening sentence written by Tom Standage, the new editor of the soothsaying magazine produced annually by The Economist.

The past 12 months have been tough for future-gazers.

“As well as causing death and hardship around the world… one of the pandemic’s less important side-effects was to invalidate most predictions for 2020, including our own,” Standage’s article in the newly published The World in 2021 gloomily reflects on the title’s prophesies from the previous year, made just weeks before the emergence of Covid-19.