Popularity of using "in five years" to predict near-magic technology
Whenever I read an article about a cure for peanut allergies (my daughter has a life threatening nut allergy), the articles always quote some researcher as saying it'll happen "in five years."
Curious about the popularity of "in five years," I googled the following terms:
"in two years" -- 1,320,000 results
"in five years" -- 1,420,000
"in ten years" -- 584,000
"in fifteen years" -- 59,000
"in twenty years" -- 176,000
"in fifty years" -- 74,300
"in a hundred years" -- 77,500
"in a thousand years" -- 56,300
"in ten thousand years" -- 3,370 (first hit is Cory!)
"in a hundred thousand years" -- 828
"in a million years" -- 202,000
"in a billion years" -- 5,410
"in a trillion years" -- 933
"in a quadrillion years" -- 51
"in a googol years" -- 38
"in a googolplex years" -- 2
"never" -- 296,000,000
"Never" wins by a huge margin, but "in five years" comes in second.
UPDATE: "in one year" barely beats "in five years" -- 1,490,000
Reader comment: Mark says: "I am a diabetic and have been for about 15 years. You get about one or two miracle / fantastic solutions promised for some facet of diabetes every year. Pancreatic implants, eyeball blood-glucose monitoring, nano-whatnot. I have also noticed that they are always promised in 4 yearly timeframes. Enquiring to a scientist friend of mine, he pointed out that this is the life-cycle of a research grant. At the end of which, all bets are off."
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