Naturally, the ones that get the most attention are the most outlandish:

“Nuclear-powered vacuum cleaners will probably be a reality in 10 years,” Alex Lewyt, president of vacuum cleaner company Lewyt Corp., told the New York Times in 1955.

“Democracy will be dead by 1950,” John Langdon-Davies wrote in his A Short History of The Future from 1936.

And yet, most futurists - or futorologists, as they are often called - miss the big ones. Who predicted the Internet before it became reality?

Some recent predictions about the Internet, however, are not nearly so outlandish. Now that we have the World Wide Web, many have been trying to see what the future holds - usually in an attempt to profit from the development of some new technology. One prediction holds that all content will by digital by the year 2010 and the slew of tech businesses is working hard to make good on that promise.

Given that, the future-nosis that the Web is going to bring the end to newspapers and television doesn’t seem so farfetched.

E-mail was what finally killed the Western Union telegram, despite its ability to linger on in the face of overnight mail, the fax and the telephone. Newspapers have seen major decreases in readership — between 5 and 10 percent, on average — over the last ten years causing major publications including the New York Times to decrease newsroom staff by hundreds go from the traditional broadsheet-style to “compact” — the same size as sensationalist “tabloid” newspapers but without the stigma of being called “tabloid.” And, for the first time since the invention of the television, the number of hours that people have been watching has been on the decline.

In addition, a recent unscientific survey I heard on — on a news Web site of course — has shown that the Web is the most popular place for those under 30 to get their news. I don’t really need to see much of a survey to verify this and can just ask acquaintances.

Even I, a newspaper employee, get the majority of my own news from the Web. It’s there as I check my e-mail. I pretty much know the content of the newspaper before I even see it on the stands in the morning.

Yes, it does appear like our source of news, entertainment and information is all going to come from cyberspace.

But, I’m still skeptical that it means no more newspapers.

We have heard about “the end” so many times before. Radio was supposed to kill newspapers, FM radio was supposed to kill AM, and television was supposed to kill AM and FM radio, as well as newspapers all over again.

In each case, there was simply a reinvention of the existing model. For example, radio was once a primary entertainment source with dramas, science fiction and other stories read out by voice actors. After the advent of television, amplitude-modulated radio focused on music and news. Then frequency-modulated radio came along with better sound and stole the music spotlight, but AM stayed around to provide news.

During this time, newspapers gradually transformed. No longer first in providing breaking news, they started to focus on investigative reporting and more in-depth features, still providing fresh information to their readers. This is likely to continue. While people will essentially get their headlines from the Web, few are going to read 2,000-word exposes on a screen they stare at for work all day. Nor will most people spend too much time looking at the compact screen provided by cellphones, which are also increasingly becoming a news source.

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