Predicting the Future

In my recent Interactive Media Strategies lecture I was shown examples of books which had, to an extent, successfully predicted the future. The Neuromancer by William Gibson back in 1984 made use of the term “cyberspace” and described a “graphical representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system”, while most people recognise the move towards the world described by Orwell in his book 1984, written in 1949. These authors have shown great insight into the progression of technology and how it would be utilised in years to come. That's right isn't it, people haven't read the books and then just decided to work towards creating these predictions have they?

What I'm really asking is who decides the direction of our future? Does it simply come about or do we attempt to achieve what we have dreamt or even read about? I haven't read Orwell, but aren't the predictions in that book rather dark and unpleasant. That isn't a future anyone would actively strive for is it? As I have hinted at in my previous post, The Ins and Outs of Progress, surely the future should be shaped by technology that delivers some real benefit rather than what someone has dreamt up to establish an interesting premise for a story.