> Everything we do today might be scrutinized in great detail in the future because it will be "free".
s/"free"/stolen/
The bit about college courses for future prediction was just silly, I'm afraid: reminds me of how Conan Doyle has Sherlock not knowing Earth revolves around the Sun. Almost all serious study concerns itself with predicting, modelling and influence over the future behaviour of some system; the problem is only that people don't fucking listen to the predictions of experts. They aren't going to value refined, academic general-purpose futurology any more than they have in the past; it's not even a new area of study.