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Keywords: Predictions

  • RELIGION

    Pope against the machine

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 23 May 2024

    When Pope Francis delivered a message for the World Day of Social Communications, he focused on AI. The pope posed a wide range of questions including how to regulate its development and use in order to avoid the manipulation of truth and the inevitable centralisation of wealth and power.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Projections and predictions for the year ahead

    • Barry Gittins
    • 18 January 2024
    1 Comment

    It’s that time of year when futurists and prophets play fast and loose, projecting visions rife with both promise and peril, weighing the possible against the improbable. As we contemplate competing pictures of the future, although every forecast risks missing the mark, one thing is certain: 2024 won’t be a year for the faint-hearted.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The RBA's man with the hammer

    • James Massola
    • 13 June 2023
    2 Comments

    In a year defined by surging living expenses, RBA Governor Philip Lowe finds himself the object of public ire, his failed rate predictions and aggressive anti-inflation measures becoming a litmus test for the enduring effects of a global crisis. Will the Labor party dare sever ties with Lowe, or will they allow him to continue wielding the hammer, regardless of the mounting human cost?

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Our hopes and fears for 2022

    • Barry Gittins
    • 14 January 2022
    4 Comments

    We’ve been in a pressure cooker, these past two years. More than a score of historians had memorably described 2020 as the sixth-most ‘stressful year ever’. Predictions and speculations look ahead; I looked at the past trends of the past two years and make these humble observations. With the stage set for dire times, here are six trends to look for in 2022. Here’s hoping.

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  • ECONOMICS

    Wage inequality is a bigger threat to workers than robots

    • David James
    • 21 November 2016
    9 Comments

    The idea that machines will replace humans, transforming the work force, is far from new. As technology develops at an accelerating pace, there is growing concern that new social divisions are emerging. While there are signs of deepening social divisions between the rich and the rest of the working population, previous predictions of a collapse in employment have proven to be wrong. This is largely because a confusion arises from conflating production and transactions. They are not the same thing.

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  • Romero answers the question of who a pastor should side with

    • Frank Brennan
    • 01 June 2015
    4 Comments

    We recall that Oscar Romero was chosen by the Vatican to be the new archbishop of San Salvador in 1977 because he was regarded as a safe spiritual leader who was acceptable to the politically powerful in El Salvador.  It was thought that he would not challenge the status quo.  Such predictions came to nought given the events of 12 March 1977 when his friend, the Jesuit Fr Rutillio Grande SJ was killed with two of his companions.

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  • ECONOMICS

    Joe Hockey's crystal ball

    • David James
    • 06 March 2015
    8 Comments

    The 2015 Intergenerational Report is reminiscent of a comment by that great 20th century philosopher and baseball player Yogi Berra: 'It’s tough to make predictions – especially about the future.' Many economic commentators have pointed out, rightly enough, that Treasury cannot even get its one year predictions right. Nevertheless, it is worth looking at how the 40 year forecasts are constructed to see the kind of thinking involved.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Harry Potter's victory over Christian wowsers

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 14 July 2011
    13 Comments

    Harry Potter has been with us for nearly a decade and a half. Contrary to the predictions of some wowsers, the series has not led generations into paganism. Instead they have been exposed to a simple but profound message lifted straight from the gospels.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Diary from the eye of the flood

    • Susan Prior
    • 17 January 2011
    12 Comments

    According to predictions based on earlier floods the ground floor of my house was was going to be inundated, so all our worldies were brought upstairs. We waited. It rained. Then on Tuesday morning something interesting started to happen.

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  • RELIGION

    Anglicans and Catholics

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 18 November 2010
    20 Comments

    Predictions that massive numbers of Anglicans will become Catholic seem far-fetched. Certainly, the Anglican communion is sharply divided by proposals to ordain women Bishops and to ordain as Bishops men in openly homosexual relationships. But only some of those opposed would feel any attraction to Rome.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Economists and other prophets

    • Brian Matthews
    • 12 August 2009
    3 Comments

    Economists are often, sometimes spectacularly, wrong. But like all prophets, they are unabashed by and unpunished for abject failures. They pop up from each new set of ruins, surprised yet unrepentant, princes of a plethora of evanescent predictions.

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