When we think of predictions for the future, we think of things like 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Jetsons. These predictions may not be correct, but they were at least based off of what people truly believed at the time. Things like this also come to mind.
In the 1800's, they predicted things like [this,] (http://singularityhub.com/2012/10/15/19th-century-french-artists-predicted-the-world-of-the-future-in-this-series-of-postcards/) simple technologies using steam, clockwork, and records.
However, I couldn't find anything earlier. What did the people of the 17th and 18th centuries (as well as earlier, if possible) predict for their perfect vision of the future? Was this idealizing simply a product of the birth of the technological age?
Good call. There's a reason I start science fiction as a genre with Frankenstein 1817. There were only a few outliers that weren't satires that weren't really trying to be convincing (Cyrano de Bergerac's Voyages to the Moon and the Sun 1657, Gulliver's Travels 1726). The outliers are Kepler's Somnium 1634 that created a lunar ecosphere but didn't predict the future; The Reign of King George VI, 1900-1925 1763 which is a textbook of future history without any social or technological change. 1771 brings L'an deux mille quatre cent quarant by Louis-Sebastien Mercier (Memoirs of the Year 2500) which may fill the bill but I haven't secured a copy. Le dernier homme by Jean-Baptiste Cousin de Grainville is the first Dying Earth story, leaping to the very far future, but it's 1805.