In April of 2013, less than two years ago, Google Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz and Kleiner Perkins announced the Glass Collective, “an investment syndicate among our three firms, to provide seed funding to entrepreneurs in the Glass ecosystem to help jumpstart their ideas.”

Follow this link and take a look at the picture. Does this look like the future? Two years ago, it did, at least to some pretty smart people.

The main reason I’m running the photo is to make an actual serious point, which is that nobody in this industry ever has any idea what is going to work. Nobody. Not even these big-brained masters of the universe who are entrusted with billions of dollars. These are smart guys. The one on the left founded Netscape. The one on the right was an early investor in Google. The one in the middle was in a boy band, I think. Anyway, they’re experts. They spend their whole lives trying to spot trends and pick winners, and they are paid ungodly amounts of money because they are considered the best in the world.

And yet, back in 2013, less than two years ago, these three experts really believed Glass was going to be huge. They were very passionate about it. They got into huge arguments over it.

Point is, it’s hard to predict the future, to know what will grab hold and develop traction.

Two years ago, many people thought that the future would be viewed through Glass, that any fashion or privacy concerns would be worked through and that Glass would see widespread adoption.

Predicting the future is hard, but innovation is critical. Efforts like Glass, or Google’s self-driving car, like the SpaceX effort to launch a rocket and land it back on Earth (that attempt will take place tomorrow), like the iPod, the iPhone or any of Apple’s ventures into the unknown, are critical to moving the ball forward.