About forecasting, intelligent fridge and emotions

In the BBC article The business of future gazing by Spencer Kelly, there are some pertinent elements about forecasting ideas:

"So if I'm tracking what people are starting to do research and development on today, by going to conferences and reading technical magazines and stuff, I've got a fair idea of what's likely to be around, and I can guess fairly accurately how long it's going to take before it comes. (...) "Then using common sense you can discount the ideas, like internet fridges, which are never going to take off. [Ian Pearson] The idea of incorporating a computer, which has got a lifetime of about a year, into a fridge which has to last 10 years just doesn't make any sense, so you can say there's probably no real mass market for internet fridges." [Of course I like that, the 'internet fridge' has always seemed to be dull IMO]

In fact, the intelligent fridge is just one of many inventions we were promised, which failed to take the world by storm. Of course it is much easier to explain why something did not work, than trying to predict what will work in the future. (...) But even while laughing off the internet fridge and the flying car, today's futurists continue to make outlandish predictions. (...) "You can get really focused on technology and the latest innovation, but the fact is the future is about emotion. It's about how people feel about technology, it's about how people actually want to live, and that's what really makes the difference." [Patrick Dixon] (...) The futurologists are not trying to make them happen, they are just considering the implications of them happening.

As Adam Greenfield says on Anne's post about forecasting and design, it's rather heading towards being a "critical futurist, exploiting some of the potential you're diagnosing in the current, scenario-based futures planning model."