Agreed, miniaturization took a giant leap forward moving from valve's to transistors. Even in the 1980s Bell Labs said that in the future we will receive our telephone signals through the air and our TV signals through a wire. An accurate 30 year prediction.

Considering that the first cellphone was in 1973, predicting the ubiquity of mobile phones in the 1980s is like predicting that the internet is gonna be a big deal in 2010.

Those early cell phones were more like radios on boats and required an operator to complete a call. It wasn't at all clear in the mid-70's that cell phones would take over landlines because of the spectrum requirements of those early radios.

My point, though, is that bold people surely did make such predictions and there were naysayers as well. Just like the lab grown meat discussion.