You count kitchens that can produce automeals, including making bacon, as a "hit"? I counted it as a miss. Where is there such a kitchen?
That is, "heating water and converting it to coffee" can't be considered standalone, since percolators existed when Asimov made the prediction. Auto drip coffee ("Mr. Coffee") is from the 1970s, so I think that's a hit. But toasters existed in 1964, so "toasting bread" can't mean just that. What device can I acquire for "frying, poaching or scrambling eggs"? And for making bacon?
I don't think the increase of life expectancy in Japan, which is the only one with an average life expectancy of 85 or above, is due to "mechanical devices to replace failing hearts and kidneys." That is, he emphasized mechanical devices, and not the general increase of life expectancy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aging_of_Japan attributes it instead to "high education, devotion to raising healthy children, late marriage, increased participation of women in the labor force, small living spaces, education about the problems of overpopulation, and the high costs of child care and education."
So I would say that's closer to a miss than a hit.
The reference to the "worldwide propaganda drive in favor of birth control" is interesting because I think the drive was much bigger in the 1960s/1970s with the Zero Population Growth movement. The 1980s saw the single child policy in place in China, and the 1970s saw the discourteously attempts as "rational" birth control in India. Instead, I think the current trend is towards female education and equal rights for women, which also ends up decreasing the number of children. So it's hard to say if this is a "hit" or "miss", since I don't know what Asimov meant.
You said that "Synchronous satellites, hovering in space will make it possible for you to direct-dial any spot on earth" is a hit. That's a hard one to judge, but it's technically incorrect. GOE systems like Inmarsat don't reach every spot on earth, like the highest 30 or so degrees of latitude, or valleys. It's LEO systems like Iridium that can provide global satellite coverage.
I'm curious about how you can quantify "The lucky few who can be involved in creative work of any sort..." as a hit. How much more is it true than it was in 1964? It seems to me that the richest people in the world (as a proxy for 'true elite') is not made up primarily by those who are best characterized as "involved in creative work."
* automeals: It's less about the specific items that can be cooked and more about the proliferation of single-purpose kitchen devices and the general trend towards easier cooking. Stuff like microwave bacon cookers, slap chops, pasta cooking containers and other infomercialware
* Life expectancy hasn't quite hit 85 but it's close enough to count. And while education and healthy eating has contributed to it, undoubtably as well, so has pacemakers and dialysis machines.
* Birth control: I agree with you but I still think this is directionally right. We have more birth control today than 50 years ago, even if it isn't the main thrust right now.
* Satellites: The mechanism may be wrong but we can, indeed, direct dial any place on earth right now.
* Lucky few: I interpreted this to mean the elimination of "good blue collar jobs" and the bifurcation of society into the educated few with "good" jobs and the underclass working commodity service jobs.
It's very hard for me to judge the 1960s, but that was the era of the TV-dinners and Swanson frozen food delivery trucks. Certainly my grandmother had single-purpose kitchen devices, like a pressure cooker, sausage maker, and gelatin molds that I haven't seen in most modern kitchens, along with a mechanical knife grinder/can opener and grapefruit spoons, which I only rarely see these days. Also, my parents received two fondue sets for their wedding - apparently fondue dinners were the in-thing then. My rough sense is that there's no increasing trend towards gadgets, but only a change in the details.
Which is why I conclude that Asimov meant something more than a bunch of kitchen gadgets and a more diverse selection of TV dinners.
FWIW, I do think that the life expectancy in Japan definitely counts. I just don't think that pacemakers and dialysis machines contribute enough to be notable.
What's amazing about satellite phones is actually how wrong the prediction was, despite being 100% correct. While it's completely correct that sat phones can reach everywhere on earth, the economics behind Iridium failed because it turns out to be easier to set up cell phone towers and lay down transoceanic fiber connections. People generally don't want to direct dial "any place on earth" but rather "any place on the earth where other people live". It's also possible to provide cell service underground, like subway stations, where satellites can't reach.
I think your "lucky few" interpretation is valid. Really I'm complaining more about the vagueness of the prediction. It could equally well have been made 100 years previous.
men will continue to withdraw from nature in order to create an environment that will suit them better - Hit
By 2014, electroluminescent panels will be in common use. Ceilings and walls will glow softly, and in a variety of colors that will change at the touch of a push button - Close
Windows need be no more than an archaic touch, and even when present will be polarized to block out the harsh sunlight. The degree of opacity of the glass may even be made to alter automatically in accordance with the intensity of the light falling upon it. - Miss
if its windows are not polarized, they can nevertheless alter the "scenery" by changes in lighting - Miss
Suburban houses underground, with easily controlled temperature, free from the vicissitudes of weather, with air cleaned and light controlled, should be fairly common - Miss
Kitchen units will be devised that will prepare "automeals," heating water and converting it to coffee; toasting bread; frying, poaching or scrambling eggs, grilling bacon, and so on. - Hit
reakfasts will be "ordered" the night before to be ready by a specified hour the next morning. - Miss
Complete lunches and dinners, with the food semiprepared, will be stored in the freezer until ready for processing. - Hit
I suspect, though, that even in 2014 it will still be advisable to have a small corner in the kitchen unit where the more individual meals can be prepared by hand, especially when company is coming. - Hit
Robots will neither be common nor very good in 2014, but they will be in existence. - Hit
It will be such computers, much miniaturized, that will serve as the "brains" of robots. - Hit
In fact, the I.B.M. building at the 2014 World's Fair may have, as one of its prime exhibits, a robot housemaidlarge, clumsy, slow- moving but capable of general picking-up, arranging, cleaning and manipulation of various appliances. - Honda, not IBM but Hit
The appliances of 2014 will have no electric cords, of course, for they will be powered by long- lived batteries running on radioisotopes. - Miss
And experimental fusion-power plant or two will already exist in 2014.- Hit
Large solar-power stations will also be in operation in a number of desert and semi-desert areas - Hit
An exhibit at the 2014 fair will show models of power stations in space, collecting sunlight by means of huge parabolic focusing devices and radiating the energy thus collected down to earth. - Miss
There is every likelihood that highways at least in the more advanced sections of the worldwill have passed their peak in 2014; there will be increasing emphasis on transportation that makes the least possible contact with the surface. - Miss
There will be aircraft, of course, but even ground travel will increasingly take to the aira foot or two off the ground. - Miss
Much effort will be put into the designing of vehicles with "Robot-brains"vehicles that can be set for particular destinations and that will then proceed there without interference by the slow reflexes of a human driver. - Hit
For short-range travel, moving sidewalks (with benches on either side, standing room in the center) will be making their appearance in downtown sections. - Miss
Traffic will continue (on several levels in some places) only because all parking will be off-street and because at least 80 per cent of truck deliveries will be to certain fixed centers at the city's rim. - Miss
Compressed air tubes will carry goods and materials over local stretches, and the switching devices that will place specific shipments in specific destinations will be one of the city's marvels. - Miss
Communications will become sight-sound and you will see as well as hear the person you telephone. - Hit
The screen can be used not only to see the people you call but also for studying documents and photographs and reading passages from books. - Hit
Synchronous satellites, hovering in space will make it possible for you to direct-dial any spot on earth - Hit
For that matter, you will be able to reach someone at the moon colonies - Miss
As for television, wall screens will have replaced the ordinary set - Hit
but transparent cubes will be making their appearance in which three-dimensional viewing will be possible. - Miss
In 2014, there is every likelihood that the world population will be 6,500,000,000 and the population of the United States will be 350,000,000 - Hit
Boston-to-Washington, the most crowded area of its size on the earth, will have become a single city with a population of over 40,000,000. - Miss
Most surprising and, in some ways, heartening, 2014 will see a good beginning made in the colonization of the continental shelves. - Miss
Ordinary agriculture will keep up with great difficulty and there will be "farms" turning to the more efficient micro-organisms - Mixed
Processed yeast and algae products will be available in a variety of flavors. The 2014 fair will feature an Algae Bar at which "mock-turkey" and "pseudosteak" will be served. - Hit
It won't be bad at all (if you can dig up those premium prices), but there will be considerable psychological resistance to such an innovation. - Hit
A larger portion than today will be deprived and although they may be better off, materially, than today, they will be further behind when compared with the advanced portions of the world. They will have moved backward, relatively. - Hit
There are only two general ways of preventing this: (1) raise the death rate; (2) lower the birth rate. Undoubtedly, the world of A>D. 2014 will have agreed on the latter method. - Hit
Indeed, the increasing use of mechanical devices to replace failing hearts and kidneys, and repair stiffening arteries and breaking nerves will have cut the death rate still further and have lifted the life expectancy in some parts of the world to age 85. - Hit
There will, therefore, be a worldwide propaganda drive in favor of birth control by rational and humane methods and, by 2014, it will undoubtedly have taken serious effect. The rate of increase of population will have slackened*but, I suspect, not sufficiently. - Hit
One of the more serious exhibits at the 2014 World's Fair, accordingly, will be a series of lectures, movies and documentary material at the World Population Control Center (adults only; special showings for teen-agers). - Miss
The world of A.D. 2014 will have few routine jobs that cannot be done better by some machine than by any human being. Mankind will therefore have become largely a race of machine tenders. - Hit
All the high-school students will be taught the fundamentals of computer technology will become proficient in binary arithmetic and will be trained to perfection in the use of the computer languages that will have developed out of those like the contemporary "Fortran" (from "formula translation"). - Miss
Even so, mankind will suffer badly from the disease of boredom, a disease spreading more widely each year and growing in intensity. - Hit
The lucky few who can be involved in creative work of any sort will be the true elite of mankind, for they alone will do more than serve a machine. - Hit
Indeed, the most somber speculation I can make about A.D. 2014 is that in a society of enforced leisure, the most glorious single word in the vocabulary will have become work! - Miss