Norman Macrae

Foreseer of the spread of the internet and biographer of Johnny Von Neumann, Macrae was considered by some to have been one of the world's best forecasters when it came to economics and society. A British economist, journalist, and author, he joined The Economist in 1949 and retired as its deputy chief editor in 1988.

Macrae foresaw the Pacific century, the reversal of nationalization of enterprises, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the spread of the internet, all of which were published in the newspaper during his time there. Not content to slow down, his first ten years in retirement produced the biography of Johnny Von Neumann (the mathematical father of computers and networks), a column for the UK Sunday Times, and a "Heresy Column" for Fortune. He was the father of mathematician, marketing commentator, and author Chris Macrae.

Their joint future history on death of distance in 1984 forecast that 2005–2015 would be humanity's most critical decade, irreversibly impacting sustainability. In 1984, Macrae wrote The 2024 Report: A Future History of the Next 40 Years. It was the first book to provide readers with a brainstorming journey of what people in an internetworking world might do, and to predict that a new economy would emerge with revolutionary new productivity and social benefits enjoyed by all who interacted in a net-connected world.

In this book, he wrote: "Eventually books, files, television programmes, computer information and telecommunications will merge. We'll have this portable object which is a television screen with first a typewriter, later a voice activator attached. Afterwards it will be miniaturised so that your personal access instrument can be carried in your buttonhole, but there will be these cheap terminals around everywhere, more widely than telephones of 1984."