'Great mind' Bill Gates'1987 predictions 'eerily close to reality' 25 years on

London -  Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates predicted in 1987 how technology would change the world and people would have flat panel displays, interactive entertainment  gadgets and voice recognition apps in the future, according to a report.

Gates, during an earlier interview, had predicted LCD televisions, Siri-style voice recognition, YouTube, Wikipedia, and card-less payments.

He, however, thought that his own firm Microsoft would be behind such technology, and not rival companies like Google and Apple, The Daily Mail reports.

In 1987, the magazine OMNI featured predictions from some of the 'great minds', including Gates, who at the age of 32 was the world's youngest self-made billionaire, with Windows  beginning to establish itself as the dominant workplace operating system.

"In 20 years the Information Age will be here, absolutely. The dream of having the world database at your fingertips will have become a reality." Gates had said.

"You'll even be able to call up a video show and place yourself in it. Today, if you want to create an image on a screen - a beach with the sun and waves - you've got to take a picture of it," he  said.

"But in 20 years you'll literally construct your own images and scenes. You will have stored very high-level representations of what the sun looks like or how the wind blows. If you want a

certain movie star to be sitting on a beach, kind of being lazy, believe me, you'll be able to do that. People are already doing these things," he added.

According to the paper, Gates was specifically asked to predict the world 'in 20 years' time', or 2007, but perhaps only some of them have come true in the last few years.